I do not bother to stifle my guffaw. “Spare me, Jamie,” I say dismissively. “She’s the villain. Seriously, why are you so concerned about her? I feel like every time I see you lately, you’re defending everyone I hate and telling me I should feel sorry for them.”
“And I feel like every time we talk, you’re using words like hate and displaying a stunning lack of sympathy for people you used to call friends.”
I spit an incredulous puff of air but can find no words to accompany it. Jamie and I have had disagreements before, but I’ve never felt judged by him. He shakes his head at me and says, “I’m sorry for all the crap you’ve had to eat lately, but I’d have thought you’d develop empathy from it, not rage.”
Just then, the bell rings, and he walks away from me.
I feel a slight tug to run after him and hash this out, but it’s nothing compared to the righteous anger I feel at being so misunderstood. How did this become about me and my shortcomings? Kiara’s the monster here. I shake my head and embrace a disappointment in Jamie that I’m entirely unused to. It’s easy to sing “Kumbaya” when your life has only ever known harmony, but when yours is a song of dissonance, what’s wrong with occasionally indulging in a good old minor second?
I grab my stuff and head off to my next class. Ahead of me, I spot Amber walking alone into chem lab. Wes’s words echo in my mind.
One down, one to go.
I follow her into the classroom. She notices me staring and throws me her best scowl, but I don’t look away. Silently, I wish her sweet dreams tonight. And I smile, knowing that it won’t make a difference once I’m done with her.
Chapter Eighteen
While Kiara’s demise was handed to us on a silver platter, Amber’s proving to be a harder target. Gigi’s vanity and Kiara’s secret life were clear Achilles’ heels to exploit, but with Amber, what you see is pretty much what you get. The best we can hope for is to totally freak her out with a proper haunting and irrefutable proof of it.
The previous night was my last in the clinic. This morning, I was released from observation with a slap on the back and a prescription. So tonight’s my first chance to see how the Dexid works from the comfort of my own bed.
After a “Yay, You Sleep Like the Dead” celebratory dinner with my mom, I climb the stairs to my room. The nylon restraints that decorate the four quadrants of my bed lie open, awaiting my arrival to justify their existence. For a moment, I consider using them as backup, just in case. But as quickly as the thought ripens in my mind, it rots. The concept of just in case feels like a betrayal—to Wes, to the new me. There are no safety nets for what we’re doing and no going back. Like the strong, fearless young woman I am, I stick out my tongue at the restraints and pop four Dexid: two from Grady’s stash and two from my very own prescription bottle. For the first time since I was a kid, I get into my own bed and prepare for a peaceful night’s sleep.
Peaceful is not what comes next.
My body thickens, expands, weighs down heavily on the softness of my bed. I feel my cheeks and throat marshmallow-puff out until my eyelids shut closed and there’s no room for my breath. My arms, my legs, my torso are all swallowed whole, sucked into the quicksand of the duvet. I am absorbed into the suffocating foam of the mattress.
There is nothing left.
Then…
I awake in the station, relieved to have survived being eaten alive by my bed. Is this what sleeping at home will be like from now on? Or is it the four Dexid playing cruel tricks on me? I find Wes, who is as excited as ever, and I decide not to mention my man-eating mattress for now. We get to work.
We locate Amber, pursue her onto the train, stalk her into her dream, and…
Invade
her
body.
The clock reads 1:15 a.m. on Amber’s computer, which I’ve just brought to blinding LED life with the click of a mouse. Her webpage is already open, and her ever-present webcam begins live streaming me, as Amber, sleepy eyed but ready for my close-up.
Or am I?
My eyes aren’t adjusting to the computer light like they should. I squint at it in an effort to dull the searing black spots that come from looking at it for too long. The tingling sensation that accompanied my previous spirit walks now burns my flesh, converting the once-pleasurable electric hum into a crackling alarm. This body itches, feels too tight.
Everything is off tonight, from being devoured by my duvet to feeling like a donor organ that’s been rejected by its new host. I want out. Now.
I notice a heavy paperweight beside the computer and for a second actually consider using it to knock myself out of this place, when a pubescent male voice chirps behind me.
“What are you doing?” Amber’s pimply faced, beanpole of a stepbrother, Matt, asks as he enters the room. Matt is the one remnant of Amber’s past that she can’t escape. They were loser lovebirds for a week in fifth grade until their parents started dating. Suddenly, what was likely the only good thing in either of their social lives became fodder for some seriously gross teasing. Matt was all I could think of that might make Amber squirm.
I step away from the desk, tucking my fisted hands behind my back, and stare at him. My scalp is throbbing. I want to rip all the itchy hair out. I don’t know how much longer I can maintain this self-control.
Then I see that half-cocked grin of Wes’s as it spreads across Matt’s brace-face. I relax.
Though the plan had been for Wes to overtake Matt’s sleeping body all along, it’s a relief to see a sign of him inside there. I leap to my feet, ready to throw myself/Amber at him, but he raises a hand to stop me. He points at the webcam—a silent reminder of our mission. I come back to myself, remembering the script. There will be plenty of time to play. First thing’s first. I wink at Wes/Matt with Amber’s long-lashed eye and slip back into my spot in front of the computer.
“What am I doing?” Amber asks in the bad porn acting voice that I manipulate. “Why, stepbrother, I’m just sitting here, waiting for you.”
“But ours is a forbidden love,” Wes, as Matt, replies. He walks over to Amber and kneels next to her, making sure he’s fully in the frame of the webcam. “We mustn’t.”
“Oh, but we must,” porno Amber says. Then Wes and I, as Matt and Amber, proceed to make out.
When we hatched the plan, I admit I was curious to know what it would feel like to kiss my boyfriend through the mouth of someone else. I mean, it isn’t every day you get the opportunity to do something so randomly weird. I expected it to be funny, or trippy, or hot. But it isn’t. At all. Maybe because it’s Amber, who I currently loathe, or the fact that I’m not the least bit attracted to Matt. Or maybe it’s because this, more than the hair cutting or the Instagram exposé, feels a little too much like a violation. After a few moments, I start to feel gross. I try to pull away, but Wes stays with me, pressing Matt’s mouth deeper and harder onto mine.
I play along for another tongue twist or two, until finally, I can’t take it. I slam the laptop shut and shove Wes off.
“What was that?” he asks, wiping saliva from Matt’s mouth.
“That was gross,” I reply, folding Amber’s arms across her chest.
“It wasn’t meant to be fun,” Wes says, rolling his eyes. “It was meant to be effective. Let’s make sure the webcam was working.”
“It was,” I say coolly. The itching scalp returns.
“Then we should know by homeroom if incest is best!” He laughs, and Matt’s voice cracks.
I duck out from under his arm and throw Amber onto her bed.
“Come on now,” he says. “We’re only doing what we agreed to. This is about justice. Remember, Amber recorded Gigi kicking your ass in the bathroom and then Snapchatted the highlights. And what about that poor Jenny girl you mentioned? Doesn’t she deserve to be avenged? You were the one who thought making
Amber cheat on her new boyfriend would offer that justice. But if you’re having second thoughts—”
“I’m not,” I snap, partly from frustration with Wes, partly from the hivey burn that’s traveling across my body. “I just…it feels wrong.”
“Of course it does!” Wes says. “Look at these two. There’s nothing titillating about getting it on with either of them. That said,” he adds, flashing that knee-weakening smile, “I like kissing you in any form.”
Wes puts Matt’s hand on Amber’s leg. “Try this for me. Close your eyes.” His fingertips gently caress my lids shut. “And hear my voice,” he says in a whisper so soft that Matt’s squeaking frog-like tones disappear, and I can imagine it’s Wes, body and soul, beside me. When his lips find mine, I’m no longer Amber kissing Matt, but Sarah hungering for Wes.
I sense his body, hovering above mine like we’re locked in synchronous orbit, as it guides me back onto the bed until I am lying flat underneath him. I gasp quietly as his weight presses against me, and I wrap my legs around his thighs. We push our pajamaed bodies together, a desperate attempt at fusion, not on Amber’s bed, but in the void of the subconscious that defies space and, for a period of no determination, eradicates time.
I taste him, hear his sighs, feel his breath. I forget that it’s not him I’m touching, and in a moment of blissful amnesia, I open my eyes.
Matt’s face floats above me.
I push him off and stumble out of bed. I shake my head, my hands, wringing my sin out of me. And that’s when I see it—the computer is open again, and the camera light is on.
I look at Wes, stunned. Matt stares back at me blankly and shrugs. The crackling buzz returns, and I feel Amber’s dinner erupt inside me. I run to her bathroom to puke it up. When I’m done emptying her stomach, I need to escape. I hit my head on the doorframe, hard.
I stand above Amber’s hollow body as she stretches and sighs, dazed from my attack.
I hear the grunts of the Burners, who have been waiting, as they close in behind me.
I am still.
I welcome them.
I don’t know how to run from this.
Chapter Nineteen
Once again, I’ve awoken from the Burner’s embrace frozen inside my own body, my eyelids only half-shut. Though I’m in my own bed and there’s no threat of Josh or Gigi to terrorize me or of Wes to betray me, I’m scared nonetheless.
It’s hard to fully express how total immobility messes with you. How it feels, physically, mentally, to literally find yourself unable to lift a finger or form a word. You feel helpless when you can’t call out, frightened when you realize how exposed your body is, panicked when your brain instructs your head to turn but the impulse is ignored. More than anything though, you feel raging frustration. It is the subtext of every other emotion. Because what’s happening makes absolutely no sense to your fully functioning brain, which keeps thinking it can reason its way into one little twitch.
But even with the lingering anxiety and physical trauma, there is one thing worse—being trapped with your own thoughts. I keep seeing Matt’s face approaching mine, imagine his blank, possessed eyes, smell his hot, wet breath, taste his tongue in my mouth. I try to tell myself it’s Wes I was kissing, to rationalize the event. But I can’t. It’s Matt’s body I’ve done things to that he didn’t okay, to say nothing of Amber. I think of myself lying helpless on the bed at the clinic as Josh and Gigi did their worst. Am I the same as them? The thought makes my stomach turn.
But what really makes me want to puke is that I’d recognized this in the moment and stopped myself, only to give back into temptation the second Wes put up a fight. Am I one of those yes girlfriends? Does he have that much control over me?
Wes. The boy who has been used and exploited since he was a child, who needs my love and support more than words can explain, who knows and understands me in a way that literally no one else can, is now also the boy who went behind my back the moment I disagreed with him. And there’s something else, something in his attitude about our revenge plans that scares me more than I want to admit. The image of Amber’s computer, open and camera on, plays on repeat in my mind. Aren’t he and I in this together? Isn’t there finally someone on my side? Have I been wrong about him? About all this?
Despite having nothing to do but think, by the time the paralysis wears off late Saturday morning (the extra Dexid prolonging my frozen state), I’ve gotten nowhere. The only thing I’m sure of is that Wes went way over the line of acceptable boyfriend and human behavior last night, and the fight we’re going to have isn’t going to be pretty. He’ll have to start playing by my rules, or he’s out. And it’s high time I establish some rules for myself. Like not letting a boy seduce me into delinquency.
I’ve got no plans to see him until later tonight thanks to a prearranged mother-daughter shopping trip and a dinner date with Tessa, and I’m cool with that. A little space sounds like a good thing right about now. So I decide to turn my phone to silent.
The shopping trip ends up being exactly the comedown I need. It’s even fun in a totally normal-life kind of way. Because Mom’s so excited about the positive effect the Dexid has on my nighttime habits, she’s not only ready for some serious retail celebration but, for the first time in ages, our conversation doesn’t linger on sleep. (Save for her excitement that I slept until noon like a regular teenager. Little does she know.) We chat about clothing and movie stars, about college trips and boys. Though I’m not intentionally hiding Wes from her, I know that if I mention him now—specifically where we met—our fun-time, normal-girl’s day out will be toast.
By the time we get home, I’ve only got a few minutes to decide which newly purchased outfit to wear before Tessa picks me up for dinner. Meaning there’s no time to confront the multiple texts and calls from Wes that I’ve ignored. My day of normal has been really nice, and I like the idea of continuing it with fried food and my BFF.
It’s nearly eight o’clock when Tessa and I arrive at the Alp, a greasy Greek diner that’s everyone’s favorite. I’m looking forward to the same easy chitchat that Mom gifted me earlier in the day, but best friends are never as content as parents to keep it superficial.
“So, is Wes the man of your dreams or what?” Tessa asks over cheese fries.
I nearly choke on my soda. “What the…do you…I don’t even…” I stammer.
Tessa laughs. “Relax, Sarah. You’re not in trouble.” A deep thought passes over her face, turning the corners of her mouth down. “Are you?”
“No,” I say, laughing myself. But Tessa’s frown lingers. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… Listen, I totally don’t blame you.”
“Blame me for what?” I ask. The tickle of defensiveness straightens my spine.
“Well, not blame…” She searches for words that have been rehearsed.
“Tessa? What’s going on?”
She shifts in her seat and leans in. “Okay, I’m just going to lay it out there. You’re not acting like yourself, Sar. You’re preoccupied. You’re cutting class. This thing with Wes is new, and it’s yours, and with everything that’s been going on lately, I’m glad there’s something fun in your life.” She pauses, but only to catch her breath. “But you’ve gone from zero to sixty with this guy, and I don’t know if he’s really who you should be spending your time with. We already know he’s got a shady history at the other schools he’s gone to.”
“You don’t know the whole story,” I interject. “Wes has been through a lot. It’s not easy for him to let people in.” Even though I’ve got my own issues with my boyfriend, I don’t like anyone else trashing him.
“Maybe, but it’s not like he’s making much of an effort here either. I mean, he was crazy rude to Gigi on his first day.”
My mouth falls open. “Gigi? Who’d just slapped me?”
“Gigi, who he had never
met before,” she rebuffs. “I get defending someone’s honor, but at that point, he didn’t know either of you. You have to admit it was a little weird.”
“As I recall, you thought it was pretty awesome,” I say. “And yeah, I may have skipped a few classes, but seriously? I think I’m entitled. Do you have any idea what things have been like?”
“Not really, no,” she says coolly. “You’ve been too busy canoodling with lover boy to even DM me.”
Tessa crosses her arms and waits for my response. Part of me understands she’s telling me she feels shut out because she wants me to know that she’s here for me; that she only wants to be the friend and confidant she’s always been; that she’s even saying things about Wes that I’ve begun to realize on my own. So I should try to explain that, no matter his faults, Wes is the first and only person who actually gets me, and that’s the most comfort I’ve probably had since I was ten. I should tamp down my temper and react to what she’s saying. Instead, I embrace the way in which she says it and throw her words back in her face.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I haven’t been making you and your neediness my priority,” I say.
“My what now?” Tessa shoots back.
“And I’m sorry you’re just too above it all to get it,” I continue. “It must be tough being the one who never gets called out on anything. Or is it a little boring, always standing outside the center, never committing yourself fully enough to rock the boat?”
Tessa and I have been in very few fights during our decade-long friendship, but when they happen, they’re brutal. Neither one of us is good at backing down, and we know each other’s weaknesses better than anyone. I prepare for immediate escalation to epic battle, when a ceasefire is called by the little bell attached to the front door of the Alp, ringing to announce a new arrival.
Amber, surrounded by a clutch of football players and pom girls, enters the diner, laughing loudly and generally stinking up the joint. If they aren’t already drunk, they’re well on their way. The group takes over one of the larger tables at the back. Amber doesn’t acknowledge us as she passes, but for the first time since the slumber party, it doesn’t feel malicious. As the jocks clamber to sit next to her, I realize that she’s too caught up in being the center of attention to bother being a bitch.
Sleeper Page 13
