“Oh, shut up,” I said, pushing him aside. “Don’t be a dick. I’m in no mood.”
He stalked back to the couch, pushing aside the empty beer cans and open pizza box, half-f of partially chewed crusts and open tubs of marinara. Kyle picked up a video game controller and un-paused a monster-slaying game. As Lucy and I walked up the stairs we heard swords crashing and creatures moaning and groaning behind us.
The moans and groans made me shudder. Those game designers were on to something…maybe they knew something I didn’t. I moved more quickly.
Eli’s bedroom door was open, and he stood when he saw us coming. He’d been reading, stretched out on his bed among papers and textbooks. The rest of his room was spotless, though. Always spotless. Perfectly neat, perfectly studious, that was Eli. He never liked when I came in and left my stuff haphazard in the corner of his room. It drove him nuts, but I did it anyway, just because I could. I remembered the night of the fight, how my bag had lay in a heap with my clothes piled willy-nilly. I wondered where those clothes and that bag were now, and I realized they could be back at the morgue, where I never wanted to go again.
Eli’s voice pulled me back from my reminiscing. “Ladies,” he said. “I didn’t know to expect you as well, Luce. Come in, have a seat.”
Always well-mannered, too. Except for when he kicked me out of his apartment in the middle of a nighttime blizzard. But who was counting?
Lucy stared at Eli and looked around his room with narrowed eyes, and I was amused to realize he was Suspect Number One in her mind. I knew better; Eli couldn’t hurt a fly, and wouldn’t even if he could. He wasn’t always exciting or passionate, but he was sweet. I wished I’d never mentioned that stupid German boy to him. I wished I’d settled down and stayed with him forever. Then I wouldn’t be in the predicament in which I found myself. Then I’d be alive.
He reached out to give me a hug, but I sidestepped him and walked to the desk chair in the corner, sitting down. “We need to talk,” I said. “About the other night.”
“I know,” he said, eyeing Lucy’s suspicious face. “I’m sorry I let you walk home so late. So sorry. That was dangerous, and I should never have let you leave in the middle of a snowstorm. You have every right to be angry.”
“Something happened,” Lucy said, still glaring. “You should be more than sorry.”
Eli’s face paled. “What? What happened? Are you okay?” He rushed to me and knelt down. His face changed as his eyes scanned my glasses, my hat. My pasty white skin. I watched panic set in. “What’s that smell? Jo, what’s going on? Why are you still wearing your coat and glasses? Take off your glasses. I want to see your face.”
I looked at Lucy, who hovered over his shoulder, and she nodded. “Close the door?” I said to her, and she did.
I leaned closer to Eli. “Are you ready?”
He nodded. I took off my glasses.
Eli staggered back. “What the hell, Jo? Is this some kind of a sick joke?”
“It’s not a joke,” I said. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but we think I’m dead.”
I don’t think he heard me. He was too busy learning for himself what Lucy and I already knew.
From the safety of a few feet away, he leaned closer, staring. His eyes traced each curve of my face, at first with a clinical precision. He saw skin, still milky-white beneath our amateur makeup job. He saw my eyes, once blue but now leeched gray, the irises having bled out their color hours earlier. He saw the flap of skin I sewed back in place with careful little stitches that no amount of foundation or blush would hide.
Eli’s clinical precision melted. He stood, backing away, his face a mix of terror and disgust. His hand flew to cover his mouth, and he ran. Seconds later the sound of him retching in the bathroom echoed down the hall.
“Poor guy,” I said to Lucy. “He’s always had a sensitive stomach.”
“Yeah, and you’re starting to get more grotesque again,” Lucy said. “Maybe you should have prepared him better?”
“I’ll know for next time.”
“Are you planning many more of these reveals, Jo? Because if so, I want to start recording them with my phone. I’m sure we can make a great montage sequence of you making random people hurl.”
“You can show it at my funeral.”
Lucy looked away and closed her eyes. “Shut up,” she said.
For lack of anything better to do, I kicked the ground and pushed the desk chair in a circle, relishing the slight change in equilibrium as a chance to feel something physical. At least my brain still registered movement, if not heat or cold or touch. The room swam before my eyes while I spun and spun and spun.
From her seat on the floor, Lucy frowned. “Don’t talk like that. It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. “Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.” I spun again, and again, eyes wide open, watching the room fly past. When Eli appeared in the doorway as it whirled by, I tried to stop, but only succeeded in launching myself from the spinning chair. As I tumbled to the ground in a heap of arms and legs, I heard a snap.
“Jo!” said Lucy. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, though honestly I wasn’t sure. Lucy and Eli appeared on the floor beside me, pulling me up, disentangling me from myself. When all was said and done and I was once again on my feet, my right forearm dangled limp inside my thick black pea coat. It didn’t hurt, but it also didn’t seem right, the way it wiggled.
“Can one of you help me take this off?” I asked.
Eli peeled the coat carefully off my shoulders and set it on his bed. When he turned around and saw the crazy way my arm wriggled and dangled, his face turned green again.
“Really?” Lucy said to me. “You had to break your arm on top of everything else?”
I shrugged. “Sorry,” I said. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters!”
“I don’t think it does.”
I couldn’t meet Lucy’s eye.
“Jolene Hall, you’re starting to sound like a defeatist! I thought we came here to get some answers, and now I think you’re giving up.” Lucy took my cheeks in her hands and forced me to look up from the floor. “I’m not going to give up on you this easily, Jo, and I think it’s time you reevaluate how you’re looking at things.”
“Girls.” Eli’s voice was timid, quiet. Not at all like his usual self.
I ignored him. “It’s not like I have much to hope for at this point. Look at me! I’m falling apart! Do you really think they’ll be able to put me back together?”
“Yes! I have to believe that because I’m not about to start writing my best friend’s eulogy today!”
“Girls!”
This time Eli was louder. He stepped in between us, arms extended as though to keep us from attacking each other.
“What?” We spoke together, turning on him. His skin had turned from green to gray, but he was much more steady on his feet.
“I’m sorry to break this up,” he said, his voice growing stronger. “But would you two please knock this crap off and tell me what in God’s name is going on? Because really, Jo, you’re standing here, smelling like shit, looking like shit, with a broken arm, and telling me you’re dead. And to be honest, it’s starting to scare me. A
lot
. So would you fill me in? Please? I think I have a right to know.”
His eyes were wide and filled with tears that shocked me. I honestly hadn’t known he cared enough to cry. I’d certainly never seen it happen. My arms fell to my sides, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. A tear escaped his left eye and trailed down his cheek.
We faced each other, and I wanted to let him hold me, but he made no move to do so. From the corner of my eye I saw Lucy walk to his bookshelf and pick up a tattered paperback. She approached. “Here,” she said, holding it out. It was Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.
“I think this will explain it best.”
I knocked the book to the ground, where it lay, cover-side-up, a promise of terrible things to come. Eli sank to the floor beside it.
“That’s not funny, Luce,” I said, my voice shaking with rage.
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“I know.” My head hung low on my shoulders, barely held up by muscles that atrophied while we argued.
Eli looked at me, pleading. “Please,” he whispered. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
So we did, taking turns telling pieces of the story, from me getting hit on the head after leaving his apartment, to waking up in the morgue, to trying to trick Officer Strong into believing we were having a normal girl weekend in the dorms.
“Crap,” he said when we were done. His eyes were red and his hands shook, but he was still upright, just like Lucy had been. I was glad I had come, glad he hadn’t given up on me either. At least not yet. “But one thing I don’t understand is why didn’t you let him help you? Why’d you sic him back on me?”
Lucy sighed a sigh of someone so far put out that she couldn’t believe a person’s stupidity. I thought about reminding her that she’d asked a version of the same question earlier in the day, but I held my tongue for once. “Come
on
, think a sec,” she said, when I didn’t answer. “It’s obvious.”
“What’s obvious?”
“Look at her. She’s dea…I mean…sorry, Jo. You’re not dead. I didn’t mean it.”
“No problem, I’m getting used to it,” I said.
“Anyway, we want to find out who did this and get them to fix her. Whatever’s going on, it’s our first priority to make her well again. But she’s our only clue. And the cops would take her and use her and send her to the hospital, and we think that would kill her.”
Eli pulled himself to his feet and walked to his window to crack it open. “Sorry, I need fresh air. I need to think.” Lucy put her coat back on as a breeze blew in, knocking the papers around on Eli’s bed. He stared at the book that still lay beside me. “
Frankenstein.
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And I think you did the right thing, coming here. I think you’re right about what they’d do to you.”
His eyes filled again as he stared at me. “You’re still beautiful, you know? Still Jo. But so different now. So much whiter, more pale. Like porcelain. Or something. I don’t know, I’m sorry. My head’s all messed up right now.” Eli shook himself like a puppy after a bath, shaking out his troubling thoughts like so many droplets of water. He knelt beside me and pressed his forehead into his bed. “I’m so sorry, Jo. This is my fault.”
Eli cried for a few minutes, and I let him. There was really nothing I could do or say to make it easier on him. While it wasn’t Eli’s fault, not really, there was no way to convince him it wasn’t. He didn’t bash me on the head or cut me up or stitch me back together. But he did let me go out into the night to the person or people who did.
Lucy stood and left the room. Her eyes, too, were red with tears.
I rubbed his back with a hand thick and clumsy. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know this is hard.”
He finally lifted his head. “You’re sorry?
You’re
sorry? No.” He paused a moment. “I’m the one who’s going to be sorry the rest of my life. I made you leave the other night. Over a stupid, childish fight.”
“You didn’t make me,” I said. “I chose to go.”
“But still. I let you. This is all on me, kid. But I’ll do my best to fix things. To fix
you.
So tell me. What can I do to help?”
I smiled, and let him pull me to my feet. “Thanks, Eli,” I said. “I hoped you’d be willing to help. Lucy and I, well, we hope if we find the people who did this, that they can fix me. But we need time to find them. So maybe cover for me? As best you can? If people ask where I am or what I’m doing, you know, just say normal stuff. I’m studying, I’m at the dorm, you and I are hanging out later. You know?”
“Lie for you.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s fine. What else?”
I walked to the door and opened it. “Lucy, come back in!” I called.
She emerged from the bathroom, calm once again, a brave smile plastered across her face. “What’s up?” she said.
“Come in. Sit down. Eli’s on board to help us, and I think I have a plan to save me.”
Eli and Lucy took seats on the bed and I paced the floor before them as I laid out my plan.
Our first goal, in my mind, was to locate the place where I’d awoken. That seemed the logical primary step in finding the people who dismantled me and who could, in a logical progression of assumptions, put me back together. I thought we could start by running searches on mountain properties that could possibly house all that equipment and space. “I’m just sorry I ran,” I said. “I should’ve stayed and looked around. Why’d I run?”
“Oh, come
on.
What
else
were you supposed to do?” Lucy said, encouraging me. “Don’t beat yourself up. You woke up in the middle of a nightmare and you ran. It’s what I’d have done.”
“Right,” said Eli. “Me, too. So let’s not waste time second guessing right now, okay? Right now what we need is your plan. Like you said, we do a search. We know the area pretty well, right? Most places I know within walking distance are pretty small. Not many sprawling estates big enough for a secret lair.” He cracked up, and his laughter sounded nice. The mood was lightening, and I liked it. It made me feel less despondent. “I sound like I’m in a comic book, don’t I? Anyway, we can probably narrow down an area to search pretty quickly. Just look for the big houses.”