by Sara Wolf
“Ahem.”
I look up. Sophia stands there. Wren goes white down to his roots and pulls out of my headlock all in a split second.
“S-Sophia,” he stammers.
“Wren.” She smiles. “It’s good to see you. Tallie misses you. So do I. But Tallie misses you the most.”
Wren’s white face gets green-tinged as he struggles to speak.
“I’ve been…busy.”
“Too busy for Tallie and me?” Sophia cocks her head. “Busy for four whole years? Jack and Avery visit her, but you don’t anymore.”
The tension in here is hells thick and no attention is on me, so obviously I have to rectify this situation by asking annoying questions.
“Who’s Tallie?”
Wren won’t look at me or Sophia, his eyes riveted on the floor instead. Sophia just keeps smiling.
“A good friend of ours. Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I barged in. I’ll come back later.”
When she’s gone, Wren releases the breath he’d been holding.
“I thought you two were talking while you were here?” I ask. “Why are you so shaken up?”
“If you can call it ‘talking,’” Wren whispers. “She just stares at me from across the room, or the hall, and smiles. We don’t actually talk. That was the first time in…years.”
“Is Tallie someone important?”
Wren knits his lips shut, and I know I won’t be able to wheedle it out of him.
“Ah, look, never mind. It’s cool. You got some secrets, I got some secrets. Our secrets should get married and have babies.”
Wren looks shocked.
“Platonically,” I add. “Entirely platonic baby-making.”
“Is that…a thing?”
“Everything is technically a thing!”
I turn and hop into my bed, smoothing the covers to feign a modicum of decency like a proper lady would. Wren looks like he’s having some internal battle. His mouth’s all screwed up and his shoulders are shaking.
“Hey? Are you okay?”
“I told you before. I had the camera,” he blurts.
“Camera?”
“Avery gave me the camera that night in middle school. She wanted the whole thing on tape.”
The thing. I remember it vaguely, but the second he says it in his own words it comes flooding back—Jack, with a baseball bat. Middle school. Avery, Wren, and Sophia were all there. Two? Three men? Avery said she hired those men to get back at Sophia, because she was jealous.
“Avery bullied me. No. Back then I let myself be bullied.” Wren spits the sentence. “We hid in the bushes. It was up by the lake—Lake Galonagah. The nature preserve. Avery’s parents had a cabin up there. She invited us all to a party and then lured Jack and Sophia to the woods, where the men were waiting.”
My heart beats in my ears. Wren clenches his fist.
“I got it all on the tape, Isis. It was horrible. I should’ve stopped—I should’ve put it down and saved Sophia. But I didn’t. I was a coward. I was frozen. All I could do was stare at that screen, and as long as I stared at it, I could pretend it wasn’t happening, that it was a movie instead of real life.”
He gives a shuddering gasp. I leap out of bed and put my arms around him.
“Hey, hey, shhhh. It’s all right.”
“It’s not.” Wren chokes. “It’s not all right. Jack saved her. I couldn’t do anything, but he saved her.”
I pet circles on his back. “What about the men? What happened to them?”
Wren looks up, eyes red on the edges. The fear takes over again. Reality seeps in—I can see it in the way his expression fixes itself. He rearranges his face, his body, so that he’s standing straight and tall.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice much firmer. “It’s been a rough day. I need to get home. Try to do some of that math work, okay? Text me if you have questions.”
“Wren, I—”
“Don’t, Isis. I’m still… You’re recovering. And I’m recovering. Just—just don’t. Not right now.”
I take a step back. “All right. Get home before it’s dark, okay? And don’t forget to eat something.”
He smiles. “I won’t.”
I watch him pull out of the hospital parking lot from my window. After a half hour, I text him: EAT SOMETHING YOU MASSIVE DOOF. He responds with an emoji of a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s not nearly enough, but it’ll do for now.
Mom comes to visit after dinner. I’m picking at rehydrated saltwater crocodile slash Frankenstein’s butt jerky slash chicken, so when she holds up a bag of fast food, I run into her arms, imagining roses all around us.
“I love you,” I say. “Truly, my love for you has never been larger than in this moment. Except that moment you pushed me out into the world screaming and covered in goo.”
She laughs. Her trench coat is still chilly from the air outside, and her hands are cold. I rub them with mine to make them warm. She sits at my bedside, and we quietly eat french fries and burgers, enjoying each other’s silence. The hard stuff doesn’t get talked about until we’ve had a good laugh or two. Some normalcy has to be put between the darkness and us. That’s how you get enough strength to face it. And by now we’re experts at scrounging around for the strength to move forward together.
I wave the yellow slip Mernich gave me. Mom’s eyes go wide, and she dabs the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
“How did you get that?”
“Blackmailed a few congressmen. Bribed some drug lords. The usual.”
“Isis!”
“I got it from Mernich, how else?” I laugh. “You need to sign off on it and give it to the front desk. And like, I guess they’ll do one last CAT scan of my head or whatever, and take the bandages off.”
“I wouldn’t let you come home unless they did,” Mom says sternly. “I’ll give it to them when I leave tonight. I’m surprised—Mernich said you wouldn’t be ready for another week.”
“I managed to win her over with my svelte charm and palaces full of money and boys. Mostly boys.”
Mom barely hears me, her focus all on the slip. She looks up and grins. “Are you ready to go home?”
I can practically see the relief on her face. The bills always stick out of her purse when she comes to visit. I’d taken a peek at some when she went to the bathroom—the amount of money is ridiculous. Now she won’t have to worry about it as much, though. Praise the J-man.
“Are you kidding? I’m ready to belly-flop into the driveway of home! I’m ready to smear my soulful existence all over the roof of home. I’m ready to corporeally merge into the walls of home. I’m ready to graft the windows of home onto the skin of my butt.”
Mom tactfully ignores my superlative theatrics and nibbles a pickle. But I know the look in her eyes. She’s nervous.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“The trial.” She swallows. “Leo’s trial is this Friday.”
“You told me.” I nod. “I’ll be there with you, okay? If I could just testify, if your lawyer would just let me testify—”
“You remember what she said.” Mom shakes her head. “Even if you did, the defense would argue your head injury and rule it as inadmissible.”
I snort and down soda. “What about Jack?”
Mom looks startled. “Jack? What about him?”
“Is he testifying?”
“I’m not sure. You’ve never mentioned him before. Why now?”
“I remember him. My session with Mernich made me remember him.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic!” Mom smiles.
“Why didn’t you tell me I’d forgotten him?”
“Honey, I’d been meaning to. But Mernich advised me not to. She wanted you to come to the realization on your own. She said it’d be healthier.”
“It’s not healthier, it’s just more fricking confusing!”
“I wanted to tell you so badly,” Mom says. “Believe me. But I was so scared for you. I did everything the doctors told me to
, so nothing would go wrong. I didn’t want to take the chance I’d mess up your healing process.”
When I don’t say anything, Mom sighs.
“He’s a nice boy, you know—”
“I don’t know what he is, Mom.”
My voice is sharper than I meant it. Mom flinches. I eat a fry and exhale.
“Sorry. Today has been so weird.”
She gets up and kisses my head. “I know, sweetie. Try to get some rest. That bag on the table has your clothes in it—”
“Real clothes!” I crow, eyeing the lumpy bag. One of my Converse shoelaces sticks out over the bag, and I’ve never been happier to see a shoelace before in my life.
“So don’t forget. You’ll be out by tomorrow, and at home, where I can take care of you. Oh God, Isis. I’m so glad you’re coming home.”
“Me too, Mom.”
Mom leaves, and Naomi comes in for her final night check a few hours later. I pick at the last stubby french fry and let the mindless cartoons on the TV start to lull me to sleepland.
“I heard you’re leaving,” Naomi says.
“Yeah.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “No cartwheels? No screaming?” She crosses the room and feels my forehead. “Are you feeling all right?”
I lean back. “Everyone lied to me.”
“Yeah? Why’d they do that?”
“You did, too.”
“I most certainly did not!” Naomi looks offended.
“You could’ve told me I had amnesia.”
“That psychology stuff is up to Dr. Fenwall and Dr. Mernich. They told me about it, but I wasn’t allowed to tell you. They are my bosses, after all. I could get fired if I did.”
“Oh.” I frown. “Sorry.”
Naomi sits on the bed and crumples my hamburger trash into her palm.
“Why do you think everyone else kept it from you?” she asks quietly.
“Because they wanna see me squirm.”
“Nonsense. They wanted to protect you. They wanted to see you get better.”
“Even Sophia knew.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised; that girl knows everything. Sometimes it’s like she can see right through people.” Naomi shivers slightly, but the room isn’t cold. “Now, promise me you won’t sneak into the kids’ ward tonight, all right?”
“But…I gotta say good-bye to them.”
“I’ll take you in the morning to say good-bye. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Be specific.”
I huff. “I promise I won’t scale the wall and pull myself up over a precarious windowsill ledge into the kids’ ward.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
She readjusts my IV and taps the monitor. After a quick check of my chart, she closes my blinds and turns the light off.
“Good night, Isis.”
“’Night.”
The hospital bed is comfortable enough, but too much comfort nags at you after a while. Makes you feel useless and lumpy. But I’m leaving. Tomorrow is the last day I’m here. The real world is out there waiting for me. My real memories are out there, waiting for me.
Chapter Three
Isis’s front porch is as rundown as ever.
The wind chime clinks pathetically in the night air. The lights are on, warm squares of golden light fighting off the darkness. I pull my keys from the ignition and grab the still-warm lasagna from the backseat. Mrs. Blake’s decorated the front door with a Christmas wreath and a string of white lights. I smooth my hair and knock twice. The mottled glass on either side of the door has been repaired since that bastard broke it, but seeing it still makes my throat twist.
Mrs. Blake answers in a sweater and yoga pants. She looks happier and more clear-eyed than my previous visits.
“Jack!” She opens the door. “Come in, quick! You must be freezing.”
I step into the warmth of the hall, and she takes my coat and fusses over the lasagna.
“Did you make this yourself? It smells lovely. It must’ve been time-consuming!”
“Not extremely difficult. Just some meat and sauce.”
“Nonsense. I can’t make a good lasagna to save my life. Thank you so much.”
“Eat it while it’s still warm.”
She laughs. “I will. Let’s sit in the kitchen. Do you want a piece?”
I ignore the gnawing in my stomach. “I already ate.”
“Well, have some juice at least. Or do you want soda? I could make you some hot eggnog!”
“Water would be fine.”
She makes a tsk noise that sounds so familiar. Isis does the same thing, in the same tone, when she’s disappointed in something. Mrs. Blake fills a glass, slides it to me, and dishes herself a portion of the lasagna. We sit at the table and I watch her eat. Her wrists are thinner than I remember last time.
“Have you been eating?” I ask softly. Mrs. Blake shrugs.
“Oh, you know. Things at the museum are so hectic lately. I don’t cook as much as I should.”
“You forget.”
She smiles sheepishly. “Yes. Isis is so good about that—she always packs me lunches and puts them in the car so I won’t forget them in the morning.”
Her eyes light up as she takes another bite.
“You really are a wonderful cook, Jack. This is amazing. Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“No, no. You didn’t have to do this at all. The visits, the food, all of it. I’m…I’m very grateful. You’ve helped us so much.”
I clench my fist under the table. “I haven’t helped at all.”
“Without you—” Mrs. Blake inhales, like what she’s about to say requires more air, more life force. “Without you, Leo would have—”
“I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t save Isis in time,” I snap. “She got hurt because I wasn’t fast enough. I failed.”
The last two words ring in the near-empty, dim kitchen.
“I failed,” I say, stronger this time. “And she forgot me because of my failure.”
“She didn’t— Jack, no. That’s not it at all.”
Yes. It is. It’s my punishment. And I’ll take it. It has been a long time coming, after all.
I stand and go into the hall, pulling on my coat. Mrs. Blake nervously follows.
“I didn’t mean— I’m sorry. You don’t have to leave,” she says.
“I have work.”
She doesn’t know what work. She just knows I have to leave. And she knows it’s an excuse as much as I do.
“All right then. Drive safely.”
Before I get a foot out the door, Mrs. Blake grabs my coat sleeve. I turn my head over my shoulder, and she murmurs softly, sympathy glowing from her eyes with near-uncomfortable warmth.
“You’re always welcome in this house, Jack.”
I’m quiet. Mrs. Blake reaches up and hugs me. I quell the urge to push her away. Her arms are gentle. For a moment, she feels like my own mother. I’m the first to step away. I always am.
“I should go,” I say. She nods.
“Will you be there? At the trial?”
“I’ll try. I don’t know if they’ll let me in the courthouse. I’ll ask my mother’s lawyer.”
Mrs. Blake watches me go from her doorway. There’s no fear in her eyes—not anymore. Not like the fear I saw that day. She didn’t try to stop me or the bat. She let it happen. Maybe she feels guilty she let me beat Leo nearly to death. It’s useless to tell her she couldn’t have stopped me anyway. The thing in me—the thing that’s lusted for blood and anguish and justice since that night in middle school—could not have been stopped. It had been starved for too long, and the bars of its ice cage melted too thin by an idiotic, annoying girl.
It will not happen again.
I get in the car, start it, and pull away from the curb.
The beast will not come out again. I will restrain it next time. That’s what I’ve told myself since that night in middle school. I prom
ised it would never happen. But it did. And I couldn’t control it. I’d nearly beaten a man to death because of it.
He deserved it.
I was as terrified as he was.
I shake my head and merge onto the highway. The beast will have to wait. The fear will have to wait.
Blanche Morailles, on the other hand, cannot be kept waiting.
Few women on this earth are as intimidating as Blanche Morailles. She’s a frightening combination of chilly poise, svelte cheekbones, and a wickedly sharp smile. It gives her a disarming presence, always cloaked in dramatic, floor-sweeping velvet coats. No one knows her real age—countless beauticians she no doubt pays by the bucket keep her looking younger than she really is. Blanche is the daughter of a French ambassador. She isn’t cheap enough to resort to Botox, so the fine lines around her eyes tell the story of a woman in her late forties. Perhaps fifty-two. But that’s pushing it.
I spot her perfect dark-haired coif over a dozen typical heads of Ohio dishwater blond, and weave around the tables. De l’Ange is a prestigious restaurant, and the one I used to work in before it was bought out and taken over by a new staff and crew.
I slide into the seat opposite Blanche. She sips ice water and twists her amethyst ring around her finger, raising one eyebrow to indicate she acknowledges my presence.
“Feels familiar, doesn’t it?” she asks, her voice rich and strong, with the barest French accent.
“The opposite,” I correct. “I’m an alien in this place now.”
“You’ve only been away a year. Less than that.”
“A year and one month.”
She sips her water again, pauses as if thinking, calculating, and then she nods. “So it has. I should’ve known better than to test your memory.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Blanche smiles. For all her upkeep on her face, she’s rarely touched her teeth—they remain slightly crooked.
“It means I know you’re far smarter than the average man, Jack. And the above-average man. In fact, you are smarter than most men. This is a compliment, I assure you. Almost every man I’ve met is an idiot in some way. But not you.”
“Does my intelligence concern you?” I ask. The waiter offers me bread, but I refuse it.
