Heartless (4 page)

L
ucy and I met on the first day of freshman orientation.

One of the benefits of attending a pricey and prestigious liberal arts school in the mountains of New Hampshire was that parents could pay extra to get their precious children into single rooms. As in, dorm rooms that weren’t shared with random roommates from random other parts of the country. Lucy was the daughter of the United States ambassador to a small, newly formed country in the Middle East that was presenting itself to the world as modern, secular, and safe. With her mother in such an important role, trying to preserve peace and help a fledgling nation, Lucy’s parents, like mine, had seen fit to get her a private room.

Even the private rooms shared bathrooms, though, and we shared a tiny one, sandwiched between our two generously sized bedrooms. It had a toilet, a standup shower made of what looked like cement, and two small sinks. But at least we didn’t share it, and a set of communal showers, with the dozens of other girls on our floor.

And that was our meeting place. The bathroom. I’d just walked in to set up my toiletries on a small metal shelf, moments after my mother’s dramatic exit from my room, and was taking my first breaths of freedom. I’ll admit now, too, that I was also a little sad, and maybe even a little sniffly from our goodbye. Suddenly Lucy bounced in, all six feet of her, gawky and energetic and redheaded and freckled and gorgeous.

“HI I’M LUCY YOU MUST BE JOLENE!” she said, opening her arms to hug me, her voice super-sized and enthusiastic. “ARE YOU LIKE THE WHITE STRIPES VERSION OR THE DOLLY PARTON VERSION OF THE SONG?”

“I DON’T KNOW BUT YOU CAN CALL ME JO!” I answered back, shocked to find myself returning her hug, and her excitement, enveloped by her height and wingspan. Something about her enthusiasm was infectious. Around Lucy, I would learn in the coming months, nothing could ever be wrong for long.

L
ucy was exactly who I needed to see after my long trek through the snowy mountains. Besides, I didn’t have my room key, and since I was naked and purse-less beneath the parka, going through her room was the only way I could get into mine.

I trudged up the two flights of stairs to our floor, not sure what I’d say to Lucy when she opened her door. It was as quiet in the dorm as it had been outside, which was unexpected on a Thursday morning. Normally, people were running out for class, or at least breakfast. But the hallway and stairwell were empty. The only signs of life were the quiet echoes of girls giggling filtering out from the one communal bathroom on my floor.

In the dull metal elevator doors I caught the first glimpse I’d had of myself. Even in the hazy stainless steel, I could see: I looked like I’d lost a fight with a mountain lion, but somehow lived to tell the tale. Pale, messy, completely disheveled.
Lucy’s not going to let me past her. I’ve got some explaining to do for sure.

My steps slowed as I approached her door. I stumbled, my legs unsteady all of a sudden, crashing into another girl’s door. It cracked open, and the room’s occupant peeked out. I saw an eye, and the eye saw me. It widened, and I curled my lip into a sneer, hoping to scare her into staying inside. It worked. The girl gasped, and the door clicked shut again. I stumbled on down the hall.

On her dry-erase board, Lucy had scrawled a typical Lucy-ish message. “Studying. Please disturb.” I stifled a grin, then paused, taking a deep breath to gather the confidence to face what I figured was going to be a stressful situation. Then I remembered the whole “I don’t have to breathe” thing was one of the major reasons I was having a crisis in the first place. So I didn’t bother with a second deep breath. It wasn’t doing anything for me anyway.

I knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked harder.

This time I heard some movement, some shuffling within the room, so I knew she was in there. I knocked even harder.

From behind the door, Lucy groaned. “Come
on
,” she said, in a voice so muffled I could practically see her head buried under her fluffy, ragged comforter. “It’s too early. Leave me alone. Please.” Always polite, in her own, special way. That was Lucy.

I banged on the door, still afraid to trust my voice.

“Please please
please
go away, I said.” She was grumbling, whining, but at least she sounded more conscious.

I moaned. I couldn’t help it. It slipped out. But then I tried out my voice again. “Luce!” I said. “Lucy! It’s me!” I didn’t sound like me, that was for sure, but it was enough.

The door jerked open. “Jo? Is that you? Jo, what the
hell
! Where have you been? We’ve been worried
sick
about you! Come in, come
in
! What are you doing? Whose coat is that? Eli’s been by seventeen times looking for you, he’s so worried. I didn’t call your mom, but I almost did. Where the
hell
have you been?” A mile a minute, that was Lucy. Finally she stepped aside to give me room to pass. “Ugh, you smell like
ass
!”

I looked at my friend as I stepped into her room. She was still muffled, wrapped up in her favorite blanket, with big, fuzzy pajama pants peeking out the bottom. From the way she squinted, it was obvious she didn’t have her contacts in. She was blind as a bat without them.

No wonder she let me in. I didn’t think it would be this easy to get inside.

“Get your glasses,” I said. “Please.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?” she said as she shuffled back toward her nightstand, where her black-rimmed glasses sat on top of a philosophy textbook.

“Put them on.”

She did.

“Now look at me.”

She did. Her eyes flew open, her mouth dropped wide, and she stared.
Stared.
“Jo? What’s going on? What’s wrong with you?” Her voice rattled like tree branches in a wind storm. She stepped back, closer to the wall.

“Luce,” I said, my voice gravelly and
wrong
. “Luce, I think I’m dead. Can you help me?” I reached for her. I wanted to be held, to be told everything would be okay. I stepped closer, arms still outstretched.

Lucy’s mouth opened wider as if to scream, but no sound came out. She stumbled away until the backs of her knees struck her bed frame. Her legs gave out and she wobbled dangerously. I reached a hand out to catch her and the parka slipped from my shoulders, revealing all of me.

Lucy fainted. Naked again, I caught her and lowered her gently to the bed.

I should have expected that,
I thought as I headed to the bathroom. After catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I realized I’d faint too, if faced with a walking corpse.

From the OoA files, dated February 8:

Memorandum re: sequence of events during the escape of Subject 632G-J

1400 h: Agent DG leaves laboratory. Four (4) subjects accounted for on main floor. All comatose. Brain waves minimal. All hooked up and charging.

1500 h: Agent DG returns to lab from scouting mission with two (2) new subjects in van. Three (3) subjects remain accounted for. All comatose. Brain waves minimal. All hooked up and charging. However, Subject

632G-J missing. Pieces of electrical cording remain attached to socket. Internal fluids puddled on table and on ground. Front door closed. No other sign of struggle.

15:03 h: Agent DG raises alarm. All agents report to lab. Search begins, agents fan out in the mountains. However, cold temperatures and sustained winds render tracking near impossible. All tracks hidden by additional snow drifts.

15:45: HQ notified of missing subject.

16:30: Search called off in mountains on account of darkness. To recommence at 0700 the following morning.

18:00: Agents notified. Failure to return Subject 632G-J is not an option. Project security is of utmost priority. All agents must report to HQ for further instruction and/or punishment no later than 19:30.

19:45: Agent DG eliminated.

M
y image in the bathroom mirror stopped me cold.

Dead
, I thought.
I’m definitely dead.

I certainly looked it. My skin was pale and chalky, eyes hollow and dark. White lips curled downward beneath a bloodless gash on my cheek, which hung open to reveal dry, dehydrated flesh. My hair was filthy, tangled with leaves and branches and hanging down in thick, matted ropes.

But that stuff? That was a piece of cake compared to the lower majority of me.

Below my neck, I was a science experiment gone wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, I closed my eyes and reopened them five times, hoping against hope that maybe I’d see something different the next time I checked. Something better.

It didn’t get better.

From my neck to my pelvis stretched a long, ragged incision, held together by rusted silver staples. The skin puckered and tore around each staple, so some holes gaped wide. Tiny metal bumps poked out at regular intervals on either side of the incision, as if the Tin Man’s nipples had been transplanted onto my tattered body.

The skin on my legs and feet was scratched and torn, no doubt from my trek through the forest. Like the cut on my face, though, all the lacerations were bloodless. Empty.

I stood at the full-length mirror for a long time, forcing myself to take it all in. My body shook, but my heart neither raced nor even beat.

Maybe I’d never appreciated my body enough in my lifetime. Maybe my tummy always bulged too much over the top of bathing suit bottoms. Maybe my breasts had never been big enough, my abs never tight enough. But it had never, not ever in my lifetime, been painful to look at myself in a mirror. Until that moment. Suddenly the sight of my body in the full-length mirror burned. It hurt. I could have been stabbed a thousand times in those moments, it hurt so bad. I stood frozen in a state of voyeuristic horror; I couldn’t look away, could only stare in paralyzed, shocked silence.

Moments passed. Breathless, silent moments. Finally, I shook my head in an attempt to force myself away, but something else caught my eye. A black something danced behind me as I moved. I reached around to find it. In the center of the small of my back, my hand touched cold, brittle plastic and thick, sticky goo. I jerked it away. My hand came forward covered in a green and viscous substance.
Gross
.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream, to cry, to wail, to have some kind of normal physical reaction to the sight of something so terrible as my own mutilated body, but nothing came.

I turned from the mirror and stared at the toilet.
Come on
, I told myself.
Puke! Do it. You know you should! This is disgusting.
But my stomach didn’t spasm. Didn’t roil. Didn’t clench or spin or do any of the things I wanted it to do.
Screw you, stomach.

I pulled myself back to the mirror, stepping so close to it my nose touched the glass.
Come on,
I thought.
Cry! Just a single tear. You can do it!

No tears appeared. Just a whole lot more nothing.

All I could do, it seemed, was shake my head, letting it hang heavy on my neck. My shoulders slumped. My knees buckled. But those were the things I could control, and they only did it because I could move them. My auto-responses, any sort of fight-or-flight adrenaline reaction, were shut down. I’d never in my life been so entirely, utterly empty.

I left the bathroom and sat on the shaggy rug in the center of my bedroom floor.

What’s my next step? Should I run some more? Away from here? Away from that terrible reflection that can’t possibly be me, but somehow is?

That didn’t feel right. Neither did hauling myself to a hospital. I couldn’t bear the idea of an ER doctor, fresh out of med school, probably not all that much older than Eli, pulling a drab blue curtain closed behind him, and then running back out through it at the first sight of my battered incision. No. I wouldn’t come out of a hospital alive.

Should I wake up Lucy? Go to Eli’s?

Eli and I were still in a fight. I didn’t want to scare Lucy further.