Heartless (23 page)

Others came and left as the sky around the hospital darkened completely. They faded into a time-lapsed blur, and as they did I thought about Lucy. Lucy, who was inside the hospital, possibly dying from exposure and hypothermia. Lucy, who stood by my side while I literally fell to pieces. Lucy. My best friend.

Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay. Don’t be dead. I can’t handle it if you’re dead. Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay, Lucy.
It was my mantra as I stared out into the night.

Please be okay, Lucy. Please be okay. Lucy. Please be okay, Lucy.

It felt like hours passed while I sat there in the darkening back seat of Officer Strong’s police car. With no watch on my wrist and no clock in the car, I had no way of knowing exactly what time it was. Out of nowhere, a dark body appeared outside my window. I jumped back from it, banging my head on the opposite side of the car as I tumbled to the floor.

“Officer Strong!” I said. “Finally! Is Lucy okay?”

But instead of Strong’s long, dark coat, I saw a different pair of dark pants and dark jacket backlit by the flashing lights of an ambulance. Someone crouched down and looked at me through the window. But it wasn’t Officer Strong.

From the OoA Files, dated February 15

Memorandum:

Subject 632G-J remains at large. Removal from her current location has proven impossible, thanks to the crowds of students always surrounding her.

However, during the search, a new subject has been identified and apprehended. Subject’s companion has too much knowledge and must be eliminated.

The search continues.

Hi Mom,

I think I need you and Dad to come.

I love you.

Your Jolene

Daddy and I are on our way. We’ll be there by tomorrow evening. Hang tight, and call me when you can talk. My heart’s in my throat. I’ll see you soon. Baby, I know you don’t have your own phone, but please, call me. As soon as you can. From any phone. I’ll answer. I’m waiting to hear from you.

Love you.

Mommy

I
shouted, as best as a frog-voice could shout, first in fear and then in anger.

“Eli, you scared the crap out of me!”

He stood outside the police car, one arm against the roof, staring through the window at me. His face was pinched in a furious scowl, one that my haggard face would have mirrored if it could have.
As if he’s the one who was abandoned, sent out to die, and then locked in the back of a police car like a criminal. As if he’s the one who was falling apart.

His anger only made mine snowball. I glared at him with my white-out eyes.

He yanked the door handle, jerked it open, and pulled me out.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

I tried to pull away. “Quit! You might pull my arm off! Asshole!”

“Asshole? Me?” he hissed. “I’m the asshole who went running off and almost got Lucy killed?
I’m
the asshole? Come on. Get out.”

Still I struggled. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m staying here, and waiting for Lucy!”

He spoke through a clenched jaw. “People are starting to stare, and attention is the last thing you need right now.” He was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “Besides, if you want to wait for Lucy, you’re going to be waiting a long time.”

My stomach dropped. I stopped fighting and followed him out of the car. “What do you mean? Do you know what’s going on with Lucy?” Eyes followed us as we left the emergency bay and walked toward the darkened parking lot.

“Quiet!” he said, his voice sharp as a tack. “You sound like a monster and look even worse. Keep your mouth shut until we’re in the car!”

I muttered one more “asshole” under my nonexistent breath, but followed in silence, dragging my bum ankle through the snow like a zombie-girl, until we reached his car. Even in the dark, I saw Eli shake his head in annoyance at me more than once. Fury radiated off of him like steam from a street after a storm on a hot summer day.

Eli opened the door for me, a gentleman even in moments of duress, and I half-fell into the car, pulling my bad leg in behind me. He closed my door and climbed into the driver’s seat.

Finally safe in the solitude of a locked car, I felt like I could speak again. “Please, Eli! Tell me, I need to know. Have you heard from Lucy?”

Eli stared out the windshield and cracked open his window as he pulled out of the parking space, the tires slipping on black ice before finding traction and moving in the right direction. I reached over and touched his arm. “Please. Talk to me.”

He jerked away from my touch and cracked his head on his window. He cursed, loudly. But when he spoke again a moment later, his voice was low and in control. “Don’t. Touch. Me. Don’t ever touch me again.”

A memory flashed—Eli pulling off my shirt, kissing the tender spot just above my clavicle, as if he’d never be able to stop—and I almost cried out at its intensity. My hand fell silently to the center console of the car. I felt like I’d been slapped. “Please,” I said in a voice barely audible. “Please. Just tell me what you know about Lucy. I won’t touch you again. I promise.”

Eli pulled the car into a spot in the far corner of the parking lot. He turned it off, but still wouldn’t look at me as he spoke. “Lucy’s going to live, but she’s really sick, Jo.” He was quiet and measured.

“Does she have hypothermia? Is she okay?”

“No,” he snapped. “No, Jo. She has
arsenic
poisoning.
Arsenic!
Like it’s a hundred years ago, and someone tried to poison her. But no one
tried
to poison her, Jo. Someone just did.”

“Who?” I was confused. It had been a long day, and I never cared for riddles. “Just tell me!”

“
You
did, Jo! Who the hell else could it have been? You! You’re filled with all that chemical crap. She’s been breathing it in for forty-eight hours. And it’s poisoning her. By trying to help you, she got sick. And then, oh, should we even
mention
again you two moron twins going out to try to find the bad guys on your own. You’re
both
lucky you’re still alive, or at least as alive as you are. What the hell were you two thinking?”

Crap
, I thought. I needed comfort, support in this evil time, so I reached for his hand.

Of course he jerked it away again. “Stop trying to touch me! What, do you want to kill me, too?”

Shaking my head, I sagged against the passenger’s side door. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

And I was.

I
t was our third date, Eli’s and mine. He made me dinner at his apartment and then we headed out to see a late movie. It was already past dark and the night had turned cold fast. I reached forward and turned up the heater. Eli caught my hand.

“No, don’t,” he said, pulling my hand onto his thigh, wrapping his fingers around mine.

I yanked it away. I was
cold.
“Why not?” I said, teasing. “Too cheap to pay for heat?”

The car wound down a twisting, turning mountain lane, passing under occasional streetlights that let off hazy, foggy circles of light. As we passed through one, Eli glanced at me, then pulled the car to the side of the road with a jerk. The streetlight shone down on the car, filtering in through the windshield like the dying embers of a fire.

He reached across the car and took my cheeks in his hands. They were warm, and remarkably soft and gentle. He brushed a stray lock of hair from my lashes. “It’s just…” he said, and then he looked away. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed, or confused. Maybe he was both.

“What?” I said. My own voice was quiet, subdued. Soft. “What’s wrong?”

He turned back to me, a sheepish grin on his face, his cheek dimpling slightly. “It’s just that you’re so pretty when you’re cold. Your cheeks get so pink. It makes me want to hold you close to me forever, you know?”

I slid across the car, pulling myself over the center console until I was seated partially on his lap, the steering wheel pressing deep into my hip. I leaned forward and kissed the smile from his lips, wrapping my hands around his neck. His mouth opened, and his tongue found mine. His hands wandered beneath my coat in search of warm, supple flesh. They found it, and he pulled me closer.

I
caught sight of my reflection in the window as Eli drove us back to the dorm, each of us sticking to our separate sides of the front seat.

Saying I looked ill would have been the understatement of the century. My eyes sank so far into my cheeks they looked like hollows in my face. The flap on my cheek, which I’d so carefully sewn the day before, was no longer attached and fluttered in the breeze that blew in through the open windows. Much of my nose was gone, leaving a hole in the center of my face, and what little remained was mottled black and gray. My lips were also gray, and when I opened my mouth, I saw receding gums and massive, chalky teeth.
Skeletal
teeth.

I was a monster. Uglier and more terrifying than ever before.

No wonder Eli couldn’t bear for me to touch him.

I pulled off a glove, and as I did a fingernail dropped to the floor. Eli shuddered. “You’re
not
leaving that in here. Pick it up. Throw it out the window.”

There was nothing I could do but comply. He deserved more than detached fingernails on the floor of his car. We drove the rest of the way to the dorm in silence.

When we pulled up to Calvin Hall, Eli gave me a critical glance. “Well, we can’t take you past the front desk looking like that, that’s for sure. Don’t want another death by heart attack on our consciences. I’ll have to slip you in the fire door.”

“Won’t you set off the alarm?”

“Nope. We used to sneak beer in all the time that way freshman year. There’s a trick to the latch.” For the first time, I saw a shadow of a smile cross his lips, but he quashed it before it could grow.

“Are you coming up?”

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

We wrapped my head in a scarf, my ski mask long since disappeared, and pulled a hoodie up over it. Eli kept a hand on my back as he pushed me through the open fire door and into the elevator, which was good since I was starting to feel my battery run low. Any help in propulsion was appreciated.

The elevator was empty, and I said a silent thank-you to whatever god was watching out for me. Eli covered his mouth with his sleeve, a cheap barrier against my stench and chemical emissions. I tried not to feel bad about it. It was better that he protect himself. I didn’t want
him
being sick on my conscience, either.

As we walked down the hall, I noticed my door stood open. “That’s weird,” I said, but it was also lucky. I didn’t have my keys with me anymore; they were back in Lucy’s Honda on Primrose Path. A place to which I never wanted to return.

“Since when do you leave your door open?” Eli said.

“Um, I don’t know that I did.”