by Portia Moore
Them
Portia Moore
Contents
Prologue
1. Kam
Chapter 2
3. Alana
Chapter 4
5. Alana
Chapter 6
7. Alana
8. Kam
9. Alana
10. Kam
11. Alana
12. Kam
13. Alana
14. Kam
15. Alana
16. Kam
17. Kam
18. Kam
Let’s Connect!
Afterword
Also by Portia Moore
Prologue
Eight Years Before
Alana
There’s a new doctor.
Another savior that’s supposed to fix her.
Save us.
She thought Dr. Gavin would “fix” her. That he would know the magic treatment to make the crazy go away, and for her to become normal. The kind of girl someone might want to adopt, even though we’re fifteen already.
She can be so stupid sometimes. No one wants teenagers, especially teenagers with our problem, or who are the problem, but she’s hopeful like she always is. She believes in the best of people. She believed the best in Dr. Gavin and I can’t really blame her for that. He was the closest to finding out about me, for not writing her off as an attention-seeking psychopath. But just like anyone who’s ever seemed to give a damn, it turns out he didn’t. He’s abandoned her, just like everyone else has.
Everyone except for me. I’ll never abandon her. I’m always right here, waiting for the right time.
She’s still sad he’s gone and it irritates the hell out of me. She thought he was her friend, that he would be there for her.
I want to slap her and tell her that she has no friends. It’s just us, and it always will be.
Our new doctor is Dr. Johnson. He’s younger than Dr. Gavin—maybe in his thirties. He’s handsome in a nerdy sort of way. His gaze slides over our body from head to toe and back up again. He smiles at us and of course Megan smiles back—she’s way too fucking friendly. She thinks his smile is genuine, hoping he can help her too. Her hope is always her downfall, but her downfall is my doorway.
She sits down, smoothing her hands over her blue jeans that are a size too big, held up by a cheap belt. Her clothes, like everyone else’s in the home where we come from, are donated. Her t-shirt is a sickly pink with a rainbow graphic. We both hate it, but there were only a few in the latest haul that fit.
I tune out a little as she talks to the doc. It’s the usual drivel about how lonely she is, how she wants the blackouts to stop so that a family might adopt her, so that she doesn’t have to stay at the group home. About how she’s afraid to like anyone, because who knows if they’re related to her. The same old shit.
There was a time I wanted her to know about me, when I wanted to help her. But she just wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to know about me then and she doesn’t now. It’d just make things hard for her, and Megan doesn’t deal with hard. I do. So I stopped giving a shit and realize I like it better that she doesn’t know I’m here. And one day maybe she won’t be…maybe she’ll just die drowning in a pool of her own desperation of normalcy.
“Megan, you know it’s normal for you to have crushes now. Even on older men. It’s natural, at this point in your life. You might even start to have special feelings, desires to…do things with them that you might not entirely understand. It’s important for you to know that you can talk to me about those desires, if you start to feel them. Regardless of who you feel them for. Does that make sense?” His eyes crawl over us and rest on the V-neck of our t-shirt. He’s not even subtle about it.
But Megan is too dumb to understand what he’s doing.
She’s become more uncomfortable every visit, though. And each visit Dr. Johnson gets creepier and creepier. It starts with him hugging her when she gets here, and then him coming to sit next to her on the sofa when she starts to cry, rubbing her shoulders until she stops sniffling. As the sessions progress, he talks less and less about Megan’s problems, and more and more about his own, telling her how he stays late hours because he wants to help the girls—not only Megan, but the others who see him—because they appreciate him. At home it’s just nagging, just his wife telling him how he works too much, but she can’t see that he has a purpose, a calling. And it’s to help girls like Megan.
Like us.
I hate him more with each visit.
“Tony is so hot. I wonder how much money he has,” swoons Justina, one of the girls we live with in the two small rooms we share with four other girls.
“He’s a doctor. He has to have a lot,” adds Marissa, one of the other girls who annoys me.
“He’s so nice, and I can’t believe what a bitch his wife is,” Justina says while applying the stolen lip gloss she swiped from Bath & Body Works last week.
“He is nice but I don’t know. Sometimes things feel kind of weird,” Megan mutters and Justina and Marissa’s gaze snaps to us. It’s rare that Megan talks to them and I know it’s really bothering her that she’s blurted it out to these two stupid bitches.
“Weird like what?!” Justina asks accusingly. I want to slap the shit out of her. Megan’s already regretting what she’s said but she can’t take it back now.
“I don’t know. He sort of is really touchy and it’s not really appropriate that he talks so much about his life right?” she says quietly with a shrug. Marissa laughs contemptuously.
“You’re such a selfish bitch. He talks to us for hours at a time, so why shouldn’t he talk about his home life?”
“It’s just, Dr. Gavin didn’t. Not how he does about his wife and…”
Before Megan can continue they’re leaning down in her face, and I’m ready to pounce. I just need her to let go.
“Get over yourself! What do you think, he wants to fuck you?” Justina bellows, her pink cheeks resembling her fiery red hair.
“You’d be lucky if he did. He’d probably buy you some nice shit,” Marissa snarls.
Megan doesn’t let me out, she just goes back in her shell. And soon they’re back to pretending she doesn’t exist.
No one will protect Megan but me. I wanted to do something about those stupid girls, the ones who steal lip gloss from the drugstore and put it on before their sessions with the doctor, who make sure to wear shirts that are just a little too tight. But I couldn’t, for some reason. Dr. Gavin told Megan one time that she could ease her headaches by rubbing her temples until they recede. She did that when I tried to get out and take care of those snotty girls for her.
So I bide my time and wait until Megan really needs me. Until she can’t help herself anymore, and I’ll have to take care of her.
Of us both.
We’ve always had morning sessions, but for some reason it’s different this time. Our session is at 8:30 in the evening. Megan goes to sit in the big comfy chair, sinking down into it and brushing hair out of her eyes. She used to wear her hair in a ponytail, but now she lets it hang around her face, and uses it to hide behind.
“It’s nice to see you, Megan,” he says happily. He’s wearing cologne tonight. It smells like he’s bathed in it, and I want to gag. It smells cheap, like a man we passed in the aisle of a gas station once.
“Is this going to be my regular time now?” Megan asks, shifting uncomfortably. “Did someone ask you to change the schedule?”
“I changed the schedule, Megan. I wanted us to have more privacy, more time to talk.” He emphasizes the last word and stands up, walking around the desk to stand next to the big chair, leaning back against the edge of the desk. “After all, I don’t want you to feel rushed because you know I have o
ther patients waiting. I want us to have all the time in the world.”
Megan shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “O-okay.”
“We’re going to try a new exercise tonight. Stand up…go on, stand up please, Megan. Stand up and close your eyes.”
She’s hesitating. She can even feel something is off. But Megan wants to please him. She wants to be cured. So she does what he asks and stands up, moving away from the chair a little, and closes her eyes.
“Alright, now.” The doctor reaches out and touches her back; she’s letting go now.
Dr. Johnson moves closer so that he’s touching her, his body against her back. He slides the hand that was there around to her stomach, rubbing in small circles. He groans a little, and Megan flinches.
“No…no, stand still,” he says. “This is very important.”
Megan’s resistance to me is slipping away. She reaches out to massage her temple, but the doctor takes her wrist and firmly pushes it back down to her side.
“Be still, Megan.”
His hand is on her ribcage now. I can hear her thoughts: What do I do? What is he doing? I can feel…is that what I think it is!? Is that…oh God, I know what this is. What do I do? Do I scream? Will anyone believe me if I scream? What if no one is here? He’ll be angry…
If I just stand here, it’ll be over quick.
Oh, hell no! I shove my way forward past her thoughts, her fears forcing my way to the forefront.
She can’t protect herself anymore. It’s time for me to do it for her.
My whole body goes stiff under Doctor Johnson’s hand, now just below my breast. “Get your hands off of me!” I snap.
I feel him go stiff too. My voice has changed. The inflection of it is different. It’s deeper, less worried. It’s demanding. In charge.
“Megan, listen, we need to move forward with your treatment plan. This will help you relax.” His hand goes up to my breast and I reach up and slap it away, lurching forward. I turn to face him.
His forehead is dripping with sweat. He’s aroused. He’s disgusting, and I let my face convey that to him as I stare at him. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Just do what I say and everything will be fine.”
He advances towards me, his eyes narrowing. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Megan. But I’m your doctor, and you need to listen to me…”
I don’t move away fast enough. He grabs my elbow and muscles me towards the side of the desk, pushing me over the side of it. He reaches around for the button of my jeans as I wiggle in his grasp, pushing an entire stack of papers off of the table as he lays an arm over my back, trying to hold me down.
“If you would just be still, we could get this part of the night over with…”
“I’M NOT MEGAN,” I shout, my voice filling the small room. He jerks back, and that’s my opening.
Megan doesn’t know how to protect us, but I do. There’s a letter opener on the side of Dr. Johnson’s desk, sharp as a knife. It’s one of the fancy ones, and it’ll do just fine.
I snatch it up, whirl, and spring at him like a cat with her claws out. He stumbles backwards as I slice at him with the letter opener.
“You like to rape defenseless, underage girls, right? Well, let’s see if you can do it without your dick,” I hiss as I leap at him.
“Rape? I’m not a rapist! I want to help you. This will be good for you,” he says, almost as if he believes what he’s saying.
“I said, I’m not fucking Megan,” I repeat, and kick him squarely in the balls.
He groans, a sound like all the air has gone out of him, and leans forward. I take my opportunity, leaping at him and slicing at his chest again with the letter opener. He loses his balance and falls backwards onto the floor, and I crouch on top of him, the letter opener to his throat.
“I’m not going to let you do this to anyone else,” I whisper, but as I press the blade against his throat I can feel myself losing my grasp on Megan. My fingers are starting to tremble on the handle of the letter opener. My vision is swimming, until she’s back. I’m in the background again. Now it’s Megan crouching on top of Dr. Johnson, her hand shaking in fear as she looks down where his shirt is shredded on one side, blood leaking from a shallow cut on his chest. Dr. Johnson is staring up at her with wide, terrified eyes, and Megan squeaks with fear as she scrambles backwards off of him, dropping the weapon.
“I did it for the both of us!” I shout at her, but she barely hears me. She’s shaking in fear on the floor, quivering like a little mouse, and Dr. Johnson is ringing a bell on his desk rapidly while he presses tissues to his chest.
A woman with blonde hair wrapped up in a huge bun and clothes suited to a fifty-year-old mom comes rushing in, takes one look at Dr. Johnson, and gives Megan an awful look. She stalks towards Megan, grabs her by the elbow, and hauls her up off of the floor. “I’m calling the police, you little delinquent,” she snarls at Megan, and I hear Dr. Johnson protesting, but the woman is already dragging Megan out into the waiting room.
The wait afterwards is pure torture. I want to finish what I started, but Megan is fully in control now, even if she is a quivering ball of nerves. Dr. Johnson manages to convince his receptionist that he doesn’t want to call the police or press charges. The woman who runs the group home where we live comes, and the three of them talk in a small, huddled circle. I can only catch snippets of the conversation.
Very disturbed…
Not safe around the other girls…
Out of nowhere…
Danger to herself and others…
Unprovoked…
I hear them talking about a “special foster home” and “homeschooling,” and “online classes.” That’s fine, I hate the other girls at the home anyway, and the teachers at the high school treat Megan like trash, just like everyone else.
Megan is crying now.
I want to tell her that it will be alright. That it doesn’t matter if everyone else hates us.
I’ll take care of us. Just as soon as I can find my way out again.
1
Kam
The diner I meet Katie and Blue at is one of my favorites. It’s two streets over from the college campus, and packed nearly twenty-four hours a day. Depending on what time you go, you’ll find a different crowd there. I should know because I’ve been there pretty much every time of the day and night, at some point or another. It’s one kind of place at night when the stoners and drunk college kids are out, and a completely different one in the afternoon, when the frats and sorority girls get together to have lunches and eye each other from their respective booths.
Right now, at ten o’clock in the morning, it’s pretty chill. There’s a handful of faculty members scattered throughout, a few students studying, a couple of groups of friends. My own particular group of friends—that is to say, my sister and her boyfriend—are already seated at a booth by the window, menus in hand. There’s a cup of black coffee in front of Blue, and an orange juice in front of Katie.
“Hey Kam,” Katie says cheerfully as I sit down. “How is big brother?”
I shrug. “Alright. Can I have an orange juice?” I ask the waitress when she comes around.
“Sure thing, honey. You all know what you want to eat yet?”
“Maybe come back in a minute,” Blue says. “And can I get another cup of coffee?”
“Sure thing.” The waitress leaves and Blue grins at me. “You look a little hungover there, champ. Late night out?”
“I guess you could say that.” It hadn’t been; I’d stayed in and watched old sports movies until I’d fallen asleep, but I’ll let Blue think I’d been out drinking.
“Fuck anybody hot?”
“Blue!” Katie elbows him, glaring.
“What?” Blue asks defensively. “You want him to get over Blaire as much as I do.”
“Do we have to talk about her?” I look at them both pleadingly. Blair was my ex of three years—beautiful, loud, outgoing…and completely cra
zy. I knew from the outside looking in that I shouldn’t be as torn up about the breakup as I was—but I’d thought we had something. And who knows, maybe we had. But it didn’t matter, since she wants to see if she can have something better with other guys.
“When you can talk about her, you’ll know you’re over her,” Blue says definitively. “And since you still don’t want to talk about her, we’ve gotta get you over her. Think of it as exposure therapy. And you know what they say…”
“I don’t want to know what they say.”
“Best way to get over someone is to get on top of someone else.”
“Blue!” Katie exclaims, elbowing him again.
“That’s my name,” he returns cheerfully.
I don’t even know what to say to that. If you know any takers, send them my way? The kind of girls Blue attracts usually aren’t my type. To be honest, I’m amazed he’s with my sister. Since I’ve known him, I’ve seen two types in his orbit—punk rock girls with plenty of metal in their skin and lots of tattoos, and bohemian Stevie Nicks wannabes with wide-brimmed felt hats, long skirts, and fine-line tattoos that say something like breathe. Katie fits neither of those descriptions, but whatever they see in each other, I’m glad. They’re good together.
“Look, I have a friend…” Blue starts to say, and Katie glares at him, promptly shutting him up.
“Kam,” she says gently, “Blair was, to put it kindly, a royal bitch. But you have to do this at your own pace. I do think it’s time to put yourself out there a little though. It’s been three months. Maybe go to a mixer or something. Today’s the first day of class. There’ll be plenty of new people for you to meet. Make a friend. Who knows where that might lead?”
