by Megan Curd
“Did Riggs tell you what happened?”
“I got the gist. Care to tell me about it, or would you rather not?”
“Oh, I’ll talk about it.” I said grumpily. “Riggs threatened to not give my parents their rations this month if I didn’t turn his wine into fire.”
One of Xander’s eyebrows disappeared into his bangs. “And so you passed out?”
“After turning the wine into fire, yes.”
Both of his eyebrows rose. “You don’t control elements, you own them. You change them.”
“So it seems.”
I lay there in silence, looking at the tiles in the ceiling before I realized I wasn’t in Xander’s office. I sat up before Xander could push me back down.
His eyes were wide. “What’s wrong?”
“Where are we?”
“My real medical ward,” Xander said. “This is where I usually take care of students, but Jaxon took it upon himself to make my office a personal haunt, and now he brings you and Sari along as well.” His smile indicated he didn’t mind it.
“And now Legs,” I added.
“And now Legs,” Xander repeated. “Speaking of which, would you come visit him tonight? He’s been asking about you today.”
I smiled. It was good to know Legs was coherent again. “Sure. Would you mind if I brought Alice?”
Xander looked confused. “Alice?”
“My roommate,” I explained.
“Isn’t Sari your roommate?”
Before I could respond, Sari ran into the room, wide-eyed and winded. When she saw Xander sitting beside my bed, she halted.
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know you two were talking.”
Xander laughed and waved Sari’s embarrassment away. “Not to worry. We were just chatting.” He looked at me seriously. “How are you feeling?”
I shrugged, unsure how to answer the question. There were so many things running through my mind that I was far from fine, but medically speaking, I didn’t think I’d suffered anything life-threatening. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Well then, you’re free to leave.” He pointed a finger at Sari. “Make sure she doesn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time tonight. I think she has a minor concussion.”
Sari nodded weakly. She acted as though she’d seen a ghost. “I can manage that.”
Xander helped me off the pristine white sheets that covered the simple gurney. This place spared nothing; it was like being in a hospital.
I also noticed it looked like the same ward Riggs and I passed not hours ago. The thought that Mom might have been poked and prodded in one of these rooms made me nauseous, and I swayed on the spot.
Sari gripped my forearm and steadied me, her hands cold against my skin. “Let’s go. Thanks for taking care of her, Xander.”
Xander inclined his head and his broad smile set my heart at ease. “My pleasure. Try not to pass out again.”
I nodded and turned to go. “Avery,” he called out. “If you use your abilities too much — push yourself beyond your limits — it could kill you.”
Both Sari and I stood there silent at his dire warning. Xander’s gaze was filled with concern. “You want to continue to practice, of course. Practicing will build your abilities like a muscle, but going overboard won’t result in a strained ligament. It could end in death. Be mindful of your limits.”
What was I supposed to say to something so heavy? Thanks for that little informational nugget. Would have been great to know that before I started trying to push myself.
I swallowed, but it felt like cotton was in my throat. “I’ll be careful.”
Xander seemed mollified, because he shooed us out of the medical ward. “Go find some trouble, but don’t come back needing stitches, please!”
Sari pushed me out of the medical ward and into the blinding light of the corridor I’d walked with Riggs. When we were through another set of metal doors, she jerked me to a stop, pressed me against the wall, and grabbed my right arm. She turned it over to expose the crook of my elbow and let out a sigh of relief as she let my arm fall to my side.
“I thought…” she didn’t finish the sentence as she leaned against the wall beside me and slid down to rest on the polished tile.
My stomach roiled. I knew what she must have thought happened. I brushed my fingertips against my still smooth inner arm. “He didn’t track me.”
Sari’s head jerked up to look at me, her eyes wild with fright. “How’d you know?”
“My mom.”
She jumped back up and grabbed both my hands. “How did you know that? It took me all day to dig and unencrypt files that I should have never even know were in the system.” She stopped and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, I’m impressed with myself that I found them, and that’s saying something. I’m nosy as all get out and find everything. Everything,” she emphasized, “and these were so hidden, so locked away, that it makes Guantanamo Bay and Alacatraz look like little city jails.”
“What are you even talking about?”
“Guantanamo Bay? It was a prison for the worst criminals. Alcatraz, too.”
“What are prisons?”
Sari threw her arms up in exasperation. “You’re missing the point. Bad people were locked away, never to be heard from again in those places. Sound familiar? The files of those people were locked up. These files,” she jutted out the palm of her hand to display half sweated away ink pen scrawls, “should have been impossible to find.”
She paced back and forth like a caged animal and ran her hands through her hair. “Oh God, what am I going to do? What if Riggs finds out?”
I grabbed her shoulders and stopped her in mid-pace. “Finds out what?”
“Finds out I learned all his secrets. I mean, everyone has skeletons in their closets, but Riggs, damn, he’s got a whole Tyrannosaurus Rex in his. And Xander…well it’s like he popped out of nowhere before being here.” Sari looked over her shoulder. “Look, we need to go to dinner. Afterward I’ll explain everything.”
As we walked, I leaned into Sari. “Have you seen Alice today? Was she at lunch?”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her all day.” Sari frowned. “Do you think she’s okay? Does she usually skip lunch?”
I felt a creeping sense of unease. “No. In fact, she’s always on time.”
Sari scrunched her face in thought and she took a seat in one of the crevices at the fountain’s outer wall. “Go back to the room and check on her, then. I’ll tell Riggs you were tired if he asks.”
“Will you get in trouble?”
Sari laughed. “I ended up here because I was constantly getting into trouble. It wouldn’t be far-fetched for me to find myself in another predicament.”
“But I don’t want it to be because of me.”
“It won’t be. It’ll be because I’m taking care of my friends, and that’s all I have.”
I jolted at her words. I was her friend.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice thick. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“You got that right.”
“Get going. We don’t need Riggs showing up right now.” She hopped off her perch and started toward the commons, on the opposite side of the atrium.
I nodded and headed toward the dorms. In the waning daylight, the long shadows seemed more foreboding than usual. My mind raced a thousand miles an hour, and everything put me on edge.
A hand grasped my shoulder and I jumped with fright. “Jesus!”
“Nope, Jaxon. Although I can understand why you’d confuse the two of us.”
I clutched my chest and felt my heart threatening to pound its way out. Jaxon smiled, but it wasn’t his usual conceited visage. His cheeks were flushed and it gave him a much younger look. His head was turned downward, but his eyes held mine as he looked up.
“Can I borrow you?”
“I have people in line before you. I can pencil you in arou
nd midnight.”
Jaxon didn’t flinch. “Then midnight it is.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I never joke about midnight rendezvouses with fiery beauties.”
“You’re a torrent of sarcasm.”
“That’s vastly different than kidding. Kidding is frivolity, and I am not frivol. Is that even a word? If it isn’t, insert something else. Serious; brooding, perhaps?” He turned to the side and stroked his chin. “Does this look brooding to you? Wait, don’t look. You’re over your five minute ogling allotment.”
“You do know that sarcasm is the refuge for a shallow mind, right?”
“Depth is irrelevant when you can’t find the lake, my dear.”
I opened and closed my mouth, unable to think of a comeback. Jaxon always one-upped me. One day I’d come up with something. I’d start writing comebacks down to practice for when the occasion arose.
Because that’s not lame at all, I thought to myself.
After floundering for a retort, I remembered that I was supposed to be checking on Alice. I shook my head clear of the plague that was Jaxon. “I need to go.”
He leaned in and placed a stray hair behind my ear. His fingers lingered on my neck. “That’s fine. Be ready at midnight.”
I pulled away from his touch, but found myself yearning for it the moment it was gone. “And what do you want to do in the middle of the night?”
“Take advantage of your naivety and your virtue, of course.”
I felt my mouth drop.
He laughed and continued, his hands up in submission. “I want to talk, Avery. Talk. That’s all. Explain.”
“I don’t want or need your explanations.”
He leaned in, his soft lips tickling my ear. “All the same, you’re getting them. Midnight. You said it.”
I needed to get away from him before his intoxicating cologne made me forget all reason. I turned down the hall to my room, away from Jaxon and away from his frustrating ability to make me lose all train of thought. “Whatever, Jaxon. Go to dinner.”
He followed me. “You’re not?”
“Not hungry.”
“What a coincidence. I’m not either. Watching my figure and all. God knows I haven’t found a treadmill in this place yet.”
I huffed in annoyance. He was infuriatingly persistent. I rummaged in my pockets for the key to my room and swiped it through the scanner with more force than needed.
“That card didn’t do anything to you.”
“But you did, and I don’t think you’ll fit through the scanner.”
“I didn’t tell you about your parents for your safety.”
The reader beeped and the light turned green.
But instead of going in my room and slamming the door in his frustratingly good-looking face, I stood there and glared at Jaxon. “How is it any safer here if you withhold information?”
Jaxon reached around me and opened the door, then swept me up into his arms and crossed the threshold, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.
I knew I should have slammed the door in his face.
I wrestled out of his embrace and glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”
“My father’s been trying to figure that out since I arrived in this world.” He said it casually, but a tinge of anger laced his words. “Clue him in if you happen to stumble across the answer, will you?”
His self-deprecation made me uncomfortable. How could someone so arrogant be so insecure on the inside? Maybe the two went hand in hand. I headed to the bedroom without answering Jaxon’s question.
“Alice? You here?” I called out.
I neared the small hallway that linked our room with Sari’s.
Running water echoed from the shower, and I cracked the door to be heard over the waterfall. “Alice? You okay? Sari said she hadn’t seen you today.”
Still no response. Panic began to set in. It wasn’t like Alice to ignore me. I stepped into the bathroom to find the floor soaked with water, the carpet squelching under my feet as walked toward the shower.
Small rivulets zigzagged their way down the huge mirrors where steam once was. It reminded me of teardrops.
Water cascaded down the small ledge adorned with river rocks outside the shower. I slid the door open, afraid of what I’d find.
It was worse than I could have imagined.
Alice sat crunched up in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth. A white towel was plastered to her body, soaked from the showerhead pounding water down on her small frame. Her body convulsed with alternating sobs and hiccups.
I got into the shower on my hands and knees. Ice-cold water drenched me as I grabbed Alice by the shoulders and shook her. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?”
She cried with new fervor. The water streamed down her matted hair. What this morning was a beautiful chignon, was now a rat’s nest of bobby pins and a sodden bow. She looked up at me and I saw that her careful application of blue eyeliner was streaked, intermingled with the mascara that slid down her soft cheeks. The smeared makeup made her appear bruised and battered.
Her once beautiful brown eyes were bloodshot. I pushed myself away in bewilderment, my mouth half open.
She hiccupped. “This isn’t a game, is it? We’re trapped here.”
“What are you talking about?” I said through shivers that wracked my body. I wrapped my arms under her and tried to lift her. She refused to help. I shook her in an attempt to spur movement, but she didn’t stir at all; she simply sat there, her bloodshot eyes far away. “Alice!” I yelled, and she jumped. “What are you thinking, sitting in this cold water? Do you want to freeze to death?”
“It’d be better than being naïve,” she said so quietly that I almost missed it. “I’ve always been the one watching out for you, Avery. Then we get here and I ignore my own advice. We can’t trust anyone. I was stupid to think I could.”
My teeth chattered so hard that it was a battle for me to formulate a complete sentence. “What…are you…talking about?”
“They don’t need someone common here.” she said with sad eyes. “They don’t need me for anything more than research.”
“Research…?”
Then it hit me.
I tugged her arm from its protective grasp on her knees and looked at the crook of her elbow.
There it was.
The simple red light flashed under a layer of skin that had three small stitches.
I wrapped my arms around her. “It’s okay, I promise we’ll get that thing out. Riggs won’t hurt you.”
“Riggs won’t hurt me,” she repeated into my ear as the frigid water crashed down on my back. Her body shivered underneath my embrace. For all I knew, she may have been talking to herself as much as to me.
“Jaxon, can you get in here?” I called, my voice cracking.
I tried to lift Alice once more, and this time she swayed but carried her own weight. Jaxon stood in the doorway, his eyes wide. I motioned for him to come forward. He swept Alice into his arms as he had me.
He wiped Alice’s hair out of her face. “It’s okay, Alice, we’ll take care of you.”
He began to bark orders. “Get towels. Warm them up in the dryer and bring them to me. Get her some clothes. We need to get her body temperature up. Change her into something dry and we’ll work on getting her back to good.”
I nodded numbly. My feet sank in the shaggy wet carpet as I heard Jaxon plod out of the soaked bathroom with Alice. I grabbed four fluffy towels and ran to the dryer in the utility room by the kitchen.
While those tumbled on low, I hunted for a pair of pajama pants for both Alice and me, along with two simple cotton t-shirts. A pile of sweaters that Alice had tossed in the corner caught my eye, so I grabbed one of those as well, then went back to the dryer for the towels.
My arms full, I found that Jaxon had grabbed my massive down comforter and was holding Alice on the floor of our room, waiting for me. His strong
arms were wrapped around her; his biceps flexed as he held her tightly. He rocked her as she leaned against his chest. “It’s okay,” he whispered, “It’s going to be okay.”
When Jaxon looked my way, I gestured to the pile of clothes in my hand. Without needing an explanation, he untangled himself from the pink comforter. His soaked cashmere sweater clung to his chest. He whipped his dreadlocks back into the leather thong he always wore on his wrist as he walked over to me.
“She’s in shock. We need to get her to talk.”
“Should we take her to Xander?”
“I don’t know if we could get her there without being seen right now, and we don’t need anyone asking questions. She’s a mess.”
I nodded. He was right; she was still hiccupping and unable to speak coherently. Trying to get her through the atrium without being seen was too much to ask.
“Give me five minutes with her, okay?”
“You got it.”
I made my way to Alice. “Hey Sis, I’m here,” I said quietly as I began to extricate her from the comforter. Her convulsive shivers were subsiding, but her lips were still an unhealthy purple.
I worked quickly to put dry clothes on her. Alice’s limp limbs made it hard to maneuver the sleeves of her shirt, and putting on her pants was nearly impossible. I was tucking her under the sheets of her bed when Jaxon’s head peeked in the door once more. “Is she decent?”
I curled my arms around her after pulling the duvet over both of our shoulders. “Yeah, she’s good.”
When he entered, I was startled by his change in attire. He’d abandoned his sweater and wore a white sleeveless undershirt. A stray blonde dreadlock framed the left side of his angular face as he made his way to the foot of the bed. He hesitated before crawling up the opposite side. We sandwiched Alice between us, and as Jaxon’s toes found mine under the covers, I gave an involuntary start.
“Sorry,” he said apologetically, “that water was cold.”
I closed my eyes and tried to focus on Alice. How could we help her?
When I reopened them, Jaxon was staring at me.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said in a hushed tone.
I didn’t know if he was talking to Alice or me, but for once, I believed him.
