by Emma Scott
Rita gave an arched smile. “It’s not up to Delia anymore now, is it? I’ll ask Thea what she wants.” Her eyebrow waggled. “And if she says she wants you…?”
Jesus, Rita.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, my skin heating. “I can take her. But only if you square it with Delia too.”
“Right,” Alonzo said, chuckling. “Jim didn’t rescind his bullshit resignation just so Delia Hughes could fire his ass. Am I right or am I right?”
I glared at him, but he only laughed harder. “You can’t blame me for giving you a hard time,” he said, standing up. “I’m too relieved you’re still here.”
I kept my expression blank, so he couldn’t see how deeply his words sank. Thea wasn’t the only reason I was staying at Blue Ridge, though the way she looked at me yesterday… Christ, I nearly kissed her. Because she looked as if she were waiting for me to. Wanting me to.
I shut the locker door.
I stayed because I wanted a conversation with her that lasted longer than five minutes. And I stayed because if I left, I’d lose Alonzo and Rita and Joaquin too. Too many hits I couldn’t take.
This is bad, I thought, heading to the dining room to help Mr. Webb with breakfast. I need to be able to walk away at any time. Keep my head down. Do my job…
But somewhere over the last few weeks, keeping my head down and doing my job was no longer enough.
Around one o’clock, Rita grabbed me in the hallway outside the dining room. “Thea’s ready for her walk. She asked for you specifically.”
I swallowed my heart that was apparently trying to climb out of my chest. “She did?”
Rita nodded. “Like I said, she has free will now. Delia threw a fit, but she had to go back to Richmond at least until tomorrow afternoon.” She inclined her head toward the dining room. “Thea’s in there, finishing lunch. Heads-up, she’s having a rough day.”
That’s all I needed to hear. I went inside. Thea sat a table by herself, in beige pants and a plain white T-shirt. Remnants of lunch in front of her. Her eyes were puffy and red, but a smile found its way to her lips when I approached.
“Hi,” she said, her voice raw from crying. “How long has it been?”
I froze, and the blood drained from my face.
Oh fuck. Oh no.
Thea laughed tiredly. “Oh my God, Jimmy, I’m kidding. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” She folded her arms on the table and hid her face in them. “Bad joke. I’m so sorry.” She peeked up. “Do you forgive me?”
“No,” I deadpanned, before relief burst out of me on a laugh, and I slumped into the chair opposite her. “It’s not funny. Why am I laughing?”
“Because I make jokes at the worst times. Now you’re going to discover all my worst qualities. Lucky you.” She smiled wanly, and then the dark cloud of her grief thickened the air between us.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said quietly.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I am too. Didn’t stop me from wolfing down a huge lunch.”
“You probably needed it.”
“Coming back from the dead is hungry work.” Her eyes spilled over and she covered her face with her hands. “See? I keep making dumb jokes.”
“You deal how you deal,” I said. “It’s a lot to take.”
“How do you deal? Do you have a dark sense of humor?”
“Me? No, I have no sense of humor whatsoever.”
She laughed a little. “Oh good. I get to discover your worst qualities, too.”
I kept my expression blank as my heart filled with possibilities. Thea was free and she wanted to get to know me. We had longer than five minutes. We had time to explore who we were…
Together?
Doris sneered. Aren’t we full of ourselves today?
Thea pushed her tray away with a little shove. “I need some air.”
I got to my feet and offered my arm.
“Thank you, Jimmy.”
We left the dining room and stepped outside into the humid air. She turned her face up to the bright sun the same way she had on every other walk we’d taken. Because she’d always been herself. Even then.
“Everything is so real,” she said. “Like I’ve had blurry vision and now I can see.” She inhaled deeply. “We’ve done this walk a few times, haven’t we?”
“Yeah, we have.”
“Were we friends?” she asked. “I think so. You’re the only one who treated me like I was still here.”
“Because you were.”
Her small hand tightened on my arm and she buried her face in my shoulder for a second, a little nuzzle.
We came to a bench and sat next to each other. Insects buzzed in the tall grasses and the wisps of clouds streaked the perfect blue sky. I could see the delicate curve of her neck, disappearing down into the collar of her shirt. It was perfect, too.
“How did you know that I was there?” she asked. “Even the doctors thought I was a lost cause.”
I shrugged.
“Don’t shrug,” she said. “Your thoughts aren’t inconsequential.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I said that before, didn’t I? Wow, déjà vu on steroids.”
“You said it to me the first time we met,” I said. “We were in the foyer, looking at a painting of a bunch of fruit.”
“A bunch of fruit,” Thea said with a laugh. “I remember. Was that when you knew I was still here?”
“Lots of things added up. You were like a bright light in a dark room,” I said slowly. “It didn’t seem possible you were only as deep as a few minutes. Then I saw your word chains and I knew I was right.”
“My dad used to say I could light up any room.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Did you know they were gone?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t tell me. No one told me. And I kept asking and asking…”
“We were ordered n-n-not to.”
Shit.
She frowned, studying me. “Are you cold?”
“I have a stutter. It comes out when I’m stressed. Or pissed off.”
Recognition lit up the sky blue of her eyes. “That’s right. I remember.”
I stiffened. The Thea of Five Minutes didn’t mind the stutter. But the Thea of Real Life…?
You don’t know her at all, Doris said. Introduce her to your worst quality…
“Are you stressed now?” Thea asked.
“A little. Thinking about everything you’re trying to process. Paranoid I’ll say the wrong thing. Or that I won’t be able to say anything that’s worth hearing.”
Thea pondered this, then nodded. “Holy crap, I’m tired.” She threaded her arm into mine and rested her head on my shoulder. “Anyway, big deal, you have a stutter. I have brain damage.”
“Show off.”
She slid her cheek along my sleeve to peer up at me. “You’re just jealous. My pity parties are way more epic than yours.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Mine has a DJ that plays nothing but ‘Everybody Hurts’ on repeat.”
“Mine has brownies,” she said, “…with nuts in them.”
I chuckled. “You win.”
“I don’t care if you have a stutter, just don’t go ever go quiet on me, Jimmy.”
“I’ll try not to, Miss Hughes.”
Thea bolted up, eyes wide. “Oh my God, James—what’s your middle name?”
“Michael.”
“Oh my God, James Michael Whelan, call me Thea or I’ll kill you.”
I laughed. “It’s against the rules.”
Thea settled back against my shoulder. “Fuck the rules.”
I grinned over her head. And fuck you too, Doris. I gave my ex-foster mother the mental middle finger. She’s exactly who I knew she’d be.
“You can call me Thea because I know you,” Thea said. “We know each other. We’re friends, remember?”
“I remember.”
She was right. We knew each other. She knew me better than anyone, because she knew how to let me be myself. She
didn’t have to fear me going silent; I had a voice with her. Humor. The stutter was an afterthought.
We sat for a few long minutes, and then Thea’s slender body began to shake with sobs.
“It comes in waves,” she said. “Dr. Chen said to just let it flow when it does. Otherwise, it gets scarier and scarier to face all at once.”
It was against the rules, but I put my arm around her and held her tight to my chest. She burrowed into me. Fit perfectly against me. Her tears dampened my shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a mess.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I never liked this uniform anyway.”
She laughed around a sob. “You’ve held me like this before too. When I was scared and crying that night. You were the one who stopped him.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said, hunching tighter. “I can’t deal with him right now. But this feels good. You’re a good hugger, Jimmy.”
“I try.”
She took a deep, steadying inhale. “What about you? I can’t remember that we ever talked much about you on our walks.”
“Not for lack of trying. You ask a lot of questions.”
Her laugh was a little stronger this time, but she stayed curled against me.
“For real,” she said. “What about you? Do you have family near here?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“Don’t know.”
“How do you not know?”
I shrugged. “I never knew them. I’ve been a foster kid forever. My mother gave me up. The state told me she was a teenager and she told them my name. That’s all I know.”
“Then you were adopted?”
“No. Just bounced around between foster families.”
Thea sat up and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. Even splotchy red from crying, she was beautiful.
“For eighteen years?”
I nodded. “None of the families stuck. Some were bad. Real bad. The last especially.”
“And then…?”
“I aged out,” I said. “The stutter made finding work hard, but I got a job as an orderly in Richmond. Then that place shut down, and I got the job here.”
And then I met you, Thea Hughes.
Thea frowned, pondering all of this, then settled back against me. “So… where do you live?”
“I rent a place in Boones Mill. It’s about fifteen minutes from here.”
“Alone? Or do you have a roommate?” I felt her stiffen as if bracing herself. “Or… a girlfriend?”
“No girlfriend. I live alone.”
Thea melted against me. I held her tighter.
“Do you have a dog?” she asked. “A goldfish?”
“No pets allowed.”
She craned her neck up to look at me, her lips inches from mine. “But Jimmy…?”
I shifted under her questioning gaze. “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I don’t need much, either.”
Thea frowned. “What about love?”
I frowned back. “What about it?”
“There had to have been someone. When you were a little boy…?”
“Grandpa Jack. My last foster mother’s dad. He was good to me. He died but… we had some good times.”
Thea stared, and I realized the entirety of my life’s story had taken minutes to tell.
Five minutes. I’ve been living a five-minute life.
“I don’t need pity, Thea,” I said, turning away from her incredulous look. “It is what it is.”
Her hand touched my fingers, her soft skin warm in the warmer air, and then slid into mine—palm to palm—and our fingers laced together. Thea settled back against my chest, curving into me again because she belonged there and we both knew it.
“I don’t feel sorry for you, Jimmy,” she said. “I feel sorry for all the people who had a chance to really know you but didn’t. They blew it. They fucked up. I’m proud of myself that I’m not like them.”
I stared over her head. No one had ever said anything like that to me. Her words sank some place deep in me that rarely saw the light of day.
Her dad was right. She can light up even the darkest of rooms.
Chapter 21
Thea
I opened my eyes and waited for the first grief of the day to whack me. It came but was somewhat gentler than yesterday. I felt okay. No new revelations awaited me, at least. I had to keep going, carry on, and officially start my new life as a real person.
This room, though…
So drab and boring. The morning light’s gold brilliance only highlighted how craptastically plain this joint was. I sat up and pushed the covers off, yawned, and stretched.
Rita knocked and came in with my morning dose of Hazarin and a glass of water. The doctors said if I didn’t take this pill every single day I’d sink back into oblivion.
“Here you are,” she said. On her palm was a horse pill, half black, half gray.
“Looks like poison,” I said. “Hazarin. Like hazard. Keep out. But hey, if it keeps me here, they can call it Shitterall, for all I care.”
Rita laughed and I popped the pill in my mouth, washed it down with the water.
“I’ll be back in a bit to take you to breakfast.”
“I’m sure I can find my way down.”
She smiled. “Probably. But let’s take it slow, okay?”
“Thanks, Rita.”
I used the bathroom, washed my hands, and stared at the note taped to the mirror.
Hairbrush is in the first drawer.
I tore it down, and the mirror was clear, showing my entire reflection. A twenty-three-year-old woman with tousled blond hair and blue eyes puffy from crying. I searched my face for signs of the two years I’d lost. Grief for my parents was making it difficult to tell. I bent and splashed cold water on my face.
When I came up, my T-shirt had dropped a little to reveal a scar, low on my neck. I stripped out of the shirt and inspected myself. The scar ran horizontally the entire length of my right collarbone. Another scar ran down the outside of my right forearm. White seams, half an inch thick, with hash marks from stitches.
“Jesus.”
Now that I could see those scars, another, thinner one at my hairline jumped out at me. Another small hook over my left eyebrow.
I stripped out of my pajamas completely and stood naked in front of the mirror. My breasts looked the same—B cups with small nipples—but I’d gained a few pounds in the hips and stomach. A six-inch scar ran along the right side of my abdomen.
I kept going down, rediscovering my own body.
There was no sign of Dr. Milton’s procedure—they’d gone in through my nose, gag—but for a bandage, small and square-shaped on the back of my left hip bone where they’d done a bone marrow extraction. I had another old scar running from hip to knee, on the outside of my right thigh.
“God.”
They’d told me in the hospital I’d broken bones and had internal injuries from the car accident, but I couldn’t remember any of that pain or the recovery. The one benefit of the amnesia.
My vanity took a hit, staring at my scarred body, but I squashed it. Mom and Dad hadn’t survived at all. I’d wear these scars proudly as a tribute to them. Daily reminders that I had to live this life that had been spared in the accident that took two amazing people out of this world and into the next.
I wiped my eyes and went naked through my little room, tearing down the dozens of notes, schedules, and reminders taped all over to give me some sense of orientation when Rita wasn’t around, I guessed.
TV is here.
The TV, a small flat screen, lived behind cabinet doors. I’d spent hours and hours watching The Office—a show I obsessively binged even before the accident. No doubt I had every line of every episode memorized. But as much as I adored that show, the thought of other people living their lives while I sat in this room watching a screen made me itchy.
I’ve lost so
much time.
I tore the note off the TV cabinet, wadded it up with the others, and chucked them in the trash, then opened the closet to get dressed.
“Jeeeee-sus,” I said under my breath. “Fifty Shades of Beige.”
I picked out the least “mom-jeans” pair I could find and a white T-shirt with horizontal pinstripes of maroon every two inches, in the dresser. It was the most interesting garment I currently owned.
“Honestly, Delia. Would a print have killed me?”
I brushed my hair in the bathroom mirror, then searched for signs of makeup. Perfume. Jewelry. Anything remotely girly.
Nada.
A knock on my door and Rita peeked her head in. “Miss Hughes? You decent?”
“Not you too, Rita,” I said, sitting gingerly on the bed. “You’re as bad as Jimmy. Call me Thea.”
“The doctors are here. And your sister texted that she’s on her way.”
“Speaking of texts,” I said. “Do I still have a phone? Though they’ve probably made, like, a zillion new models since I’ve been gone.”
“It’s locked away in a safe in the back office with your wallet and other personal items,” Rita said. “I can check for you after breakfast.”
“Thank you, Rita. For everything.”
“My pleasure, Miss Hughes. Thea.” She leaned over and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m so happy for you. And if it’s not too much for me to say, I think your mom and dad are happy for you too.”
Tears stung my eyes. “I think so too.”
Dr. Chen and Dr. Milton, along with their mini-army of interns, crowded into my room for the morning grilling. They took my blood pressure, checked my breathing and asked a bunch of questions about what I could and couldn’t remember.
“Memories from before the accident feel normal,” I said. “Everything after is still kind of hazy. Dreamlike.”
“In what way?” Dr. Milton asked. The interns’ pens readied.
The itchy feeling came back. I suddenly wanted to run a marathon or paint a hundred paintings. I could breathe again. I was getting my true self back.
And my true self decided the doctors all looked far too serious.
I squinted my eyes. “I’m seeing something. A vision…”
Chen and Milton exchanged glances. The interns scribbled furiously.
