Deadly Little Games

by Laurie Faria Stolarz

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “You should call them,” he says, ignoring my question. “You should get them down here right away.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  The medic nods toward a bench and tells me to settle down.

  “Not until I know if my boyfriend is going to be all right,” I insist.

  “Look,” he says, softening slightly. “Your boyfriend was stabbed. He’s in critical condition.”

  At the same moment, it dawns on me. The knife sculpture—and how I carved Ben’s initials into the blade.

  I rush to his room and turn the knob. But the medic holds me back as I kick, scream, and finally fall down at his feet.

  “You don’t understand!” I wail. “This is my fault. I should’ve known this would happen.”

  Before I can help it, I feel hands all over me as I’m dragged someplace else, still fighting, still kicking and screaming, and still begging for them to let me see Ben.

  None of them listens, and it isn’t long before the walls begin to crumble and fall around me, before everything goes black.

  I WAKE UP AND SEE my parents first. They’re sitting at my bedside. Mom wipes my forehead with a damp towel, and Dad asks if I want a drink of water. Layers of whiteness surround me: the walls, the ceiling, the blankets that cover me. “Where am I?” I whisper.

  “Just relax,” Mom says, tucking me in. “You’re at the hospital. You passed out and you’ve been resting.”

  “Adam called us,” Dad explains before I can ask. “He told us about what happened.”

  I sit up, noticing that I’m still in the same clothes. There are bandages around my arm and on my neck, and it’s light outside the window. “Where’s Ben?”

  “Just relax,” Mom insists, propping my pillow.

  “It was my fault,” I tell them. “I sculpted it. I should have known.”

  “You sculpted what?” she asks. Her face is a giant question mark.

  I shake my head. It’s too much to explain. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A little over an hour,” Dad says.

  “And how’s Ben? Can I see him?”

  Mom avoids the question by rearranging some stuff on my tray.

  “Tell me,” I insist, sitting up further. Every inch of me feels bruised. “How is he?”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Dad says. “He’s still in critical condition.”

  “Meaning he’s not conscious?”

  “Not yet,” he says, squeezing my hand.

  I look at my mom, but she gets up and stands away from the bed so I can’t see her face.

  “I need to see him,” I plead.

  “You can’t see him,” Dad says. “Only family members are allowed in right now. His aunt is with him. His parents are on their way.”

  “What you need is to come home,” Mom says, regaining her composure. She turns to face me again.

  “No,” I say, refusing to leave. “I need to be here for him. I need to be here when he wakes up.”

  A moment later, there’s a knock on the door. A nurse comes in with Kimmie and Wes. Kimmie comes over and wraps her arms around me. Apparently, Adam called her, too.

  “It’ll be okay,” she tells me.

  I want to believe her. But if Ben doesn’t wake up, nothing will ever be okay again.

  My parents continue to insist that I come home. The nurse tells me that I should get some rest, too. “You’ve been through a lot,” the nurse says.

  “No,” I whisper, still refusing to leave. “I’m not going anywhere without Ben.”

  “We’ll stay with her,” Kimmie tells my parents. “We’ll make sure she has something to eat—”

  “And doesn’t take down any more hospital staff,” Wes jokes.

  While they continue to discuss what to do with me, I get up, splash some water on my face, and promise my parents that I’ll call them later.

  “I’ll stay, too,” Dad says. He gives Mom the keys and tells her to go home and get some rest. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she looks as if she hasn’t slept in days.

  It takes some convincing, but Mom finally agrees, especially when Dad promises to text her with hourly updates.

  While he paces the length of the corridor, I head out to the bench by Ben’s room to wait. Later, Dad offers me something cold to drink. Kimmie urges me to try eating a sandwich she’s brought from the cafeteria. Wes gets me a blanket. They give me magazines to read.

  But all I want to do is sit here and wait until Ben comes to.

  At one point, a police officer shows up and asks me a battery of questions about what happened with Piper.

  Soon after, Adam comes to check on things, to offer more help, and to inquire about Ben.

  And then I wait some more.

  About two hours later, with Dad snoozing on the bench beside us, Ben’s aunt finally comes out of Ben’s room.

  “How’s he doing?” I ask, standing up.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t have a good feeling.”

  “Why?” I ask. Tears fill my eyes again. “Can I see him?”

  Ben’s aunt agrees to this and lets me inside the room.

  He’s hooked up to all kinds of machines that are keeping him alive. A monitor beeps to the rhythm of his heartbeat. I sit by his bed and pull the covers over him. In doing so, I accidentally brush against his thigh.

  And that’s when I feel it.

  That same electrical sensation I got the first time I touched the spot—in my room, when I begged him to stay the night. The feeling radiates up my spine and gnaws at my nerves. It’s like something’s there, marked on his leg.

  I run my fingers over the spot—through the blanket—almost tempted to have a look. I close my eyes, trying to sense things the way he does—to get a mental picture from merely touching the area. But I can’t. And I don’t.

  Still, I have to know if I’m right.

  I peer over my shoulder toward the door, checking to see that no one’s looking in. And then I roll the covers down.

  Ben’s wearing a hospital gown. With trembling fingers, I pull up the hem and see it right away: the image of a chameleon, tattooed on his upper thigh. It’s about four inches long, with green and yellow stripes.

  And its tail curls into the letter C.

  I feel my face furrow, wondering when he got the tattoo, and why he never told me. It wasn’t so long ago that I told him the story of my name—how my mother named me after a chameleon, because chameleons have keen survival instincts.

  “You’ll survive this as well,” I whisper.

  I roll the covers back up over him and take his hand, noticing how well our palms fit together and thinking back to just after the last time he saved me—when he took my hand and told me that we’d always be together.

  I lower my head to his chest and continue to squeeze his palm. Tears fall onto the bedsheets, dampening the fabric just above his heart. “I’m so sorry,” I tell him, over and over again.

  A few moments later, there’s a twitching sensation inside my hand. Ben’s finger glides over my thumb. “Sorry for what?” he breathes. His voice is raspy and weak.

  I lift my head to check his face. His eyelids flutter. The monitor starts beeping faster. And his lips struggle to move.

  “Don’t try to talk,” I tell him, searching for the nurse’s call buzzer.

  “Please,” he whispers, his eyes almost fully open now. “Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t,” I promise, gripping his hand even harder.

  IT WASN’T LONG before Ben was moved into recovery. The police came in to talk to him, ordering me out of the room, even when I begged them to let me stay.

  Eventually, I was ordered to leave the hospital altogether. Ben’s nurses told me that I needed to go home and get some rest if my own wounds were going to heal.

  To my surprise, Ben agreed.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him.

  He nodded and looked away, as if, the stronger and more conscious he got, the mo
re he was able to remember.

  It’s been a full week since that happened. Ben is home now. But he hasn’t been returning my calls.

  I’ve been trying not to dwell on it, to give him the space that he needs, and to catch up on some much-needed rest. But now I feel ready to tie up some of the loose ends.

  First on my agenda: I draft a letter to my aunt, telling her that I know she isn’t crazy, that I have a feeling I know exactly what she’s going through, and that somehow I’ll see to it that she gets out of that hospital and into the hands of people who can really help her—people who know about extrasensory powers.

  Like the one I obviously have.

  I seal the envelope, wishing I’d been able to decipher the knife sculpture I did—that I’d stopped and questioned the fact that I’d carved Ben’s initials into the blade. Maybe then I could’ve warned him. Maybe then he could’ve avoided any impending dangerous situations.

  Though I know deep down that wouldn’t have mattered to him; he would’ve come to save me anyway. Which is one of the things I love most about him.

  I take the letter to the mailbox at the end of my street, feeling a giant sense of relief as I feed it through the slot. Back in the house, Mom emerges from the family room, having finished her morning meditation. She’s still in her pajamas; there are tiny Buddha figures patterned across the flannel fabric.

  “We need to talk,” I say, before she can even utter a “good morning.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re ready.” She sits down at the kitchen island. “Your father and I wanted to give you some time to process everything.”

  “Well, thanks,” I say, taking a seat across from her.

  “So, I think we should talk about trust,” she begins. “I want you to feel that you can trust your dad and me, no matter what. Even if you don’t think we’ll agree with you. I speak for the both of us when I say that we’re proud of you for wanting to help out a friend, but you have to admit, you were in way over your head.”

  “I do admit it,” I say, nodding as she tells me that I should’ve told them what was going on, that it was wrong of me not to go to the police, and that there are trained professionals at Adam’s school whose job it is to deal with this type of thing.

  “We’re on the same team,” she reminds me.

  “I know. And I do trust you and Dad.”

  “Really?” Her eyes narrow. “Because I feel like we’ve been through this before.”

  “I know,” I repeat. “I just thought that I could handle it all.” As stupid as that might sound.

  “Look, I don’t want to lecture you,” she continues. “I just want you to feel like you can come to me about things.”

  “And you need to do the same.”

  Mom gets up to fill the kettle with water for tea. “You’re obviously talking about Aunt Alexia.”

  “I think she should come and stay with us for a while.” I raise my voice over the running faucet. “It’s not like we don’t have a spare bedroom.”

  She turns off the water and shoots me a curious look. “You’ve obviously been talking to Dad about this.”

  “Dad?” I ask.

  “It’s just that he suggested the same.” She reaches for her bottle of pills, but doesn’t open it.

  “Seriously?” I ask, completely taken aback, especially since Aunt Alexia’s drama has been at the root of some of their problems.

  Instead of pursuing the conversation, Mom starts prattling about the merits of green tea versus red and white, then confesses that she doesn’t want to make a rash decision about Aunt Alexia’s therapy. “I just worry that it might be too difficult with her here. I wouldn’t want her to have another outburst like the one at the hospital.”

  “I don’t think she will,” I say, fairly confident that, if Alexia were given the appropriate channels to discuss her touch power—treating it as a gift rather than a curse—things would start to improve. “I’m just surprised that it was Dad’s idea.”

  “Your dad said it might be good for you.” She pours us a couple of mugs of tea. “I didn’t really understand it myself, but he’s convinced that you two are kindred spirits of some sort…with your art and with how intense you both can be.”

  I force a smile, to mask my shock, wondering if Dad’s suggestion was truly sincere. Or if he might know a whole lot more than he’s actually letting on.

  Back in my room, I reach for my cell phone, anxious to call Kimmie. She’s been an amazing friend during this whole ordeal, calling to check on me daily and dropping by with non-raw-food goodness in the form of chicken soup and salty french fries.

  She picks up on the first ring and tells me that she and Wes are on their way over. Not five minutes later, they’re at my front door.

  “I hope you don’t mind that we’re crashing,” Wes says. “I’m trying to escape a hunting expedition. No joke. Dad thinks I’ll be more of a man if I can blow a rabbit’s head off. And my response? ‘Sorry, Dad, but as tempting as it is to obliterate Peter Cottontail first thing on a Sunday morning, I promised Camelia I’d swing by her house, because she’s been begging to abuse my body for weeks.’”

  “And speaking of being delusional,” Kimmie segues, “did I mention that my plan to reunite my parents was totally dumb?” She leads us into my bedroom and then closes the door behind her. “They could smell the setup before their water glasses were even filled.”

  “How’s that?” I ask, taking a seat on my bed.

  “The violinist I arranged to serenade them at the table might have been a tip-off,” she begins. “Either that, or the wrist corsage I ordered for my mom. I handpicked the begonias and had the florist deliver it right to the table.”

  “Don’t forget about the oyster appetizer you preordered for the occasion,” Wes adds.

  “Because, you know what they say about oysters, right?” An evil grin breaks out across her face. “I know, I know.” She sighs, before I can even say anything. “I may have gone a little overboard, but what can I say? I’m a dorkus extremus. Hence my outfit du jour.” She’s wearing a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, a pair of clunky black glasses (with the requisite amount of tape on the bridge), and a cone-shaped dunce cap.

  “Yes, but you’re a dorkus extremus with a nice set of begonias,” Wes teases.

  Kimmie shrugs and sits beside me on the bed, resting her head against my shoulder. The point of her dunce cap extends behind my neck. “Anyway, they had a huge talk with me last night, telling me that they’re both actually happier on their own, and that I need to start getting used to that idea.”

  “And so, what do you think?” I ask, glad to finally be able to reciprocate her friendship.

  “I don’t know. I mean, what does happy have to do with anything? We’re talking about their responsibility as parents here.”

  “And do you honestly feel like they were better parents before all this?”

  Kimmie lifts her head, as if a lightbulb just went on somewhere inside it—as if it were pretty darned clear what the correct answer is.

  “So what about your dating drama?” She bumps Wes’s knee with the toe of her saddle shoe, obviously darting my question. “Are you and Tiffany Bunkin history?”

  “Ancient,” he says. “I mean, she’s cute and sweet and thoughtful and all that…. I guess it’s just really hard to explain.”

  “And what’s the story with Ben?” Kimmie asks me. “Or is that subject still taboo?”

  “Not taboo, just mysterious.”

  “Like, the whole key issue?” Wes asks. “What was up with that? How was Piper able to get into Adam’s apartment all those times?”

  “The police had the same question.”

  “And?”

  “And she had her own key. She was around his place so often that she swiped Adam’s spare set—the set formerly used by his ex-roommate. She made a copy for herself and then returned the keys before Adam ever knew they were gone.”

  “Well, the good thing is that Ben saved you,” he says.
“I mean, he obviously still really cares about you.”

  “I know,” I say, confident that he does, but still not sure that’s enough.

  “So, what’s going to happen to Piper?” Kimmie asks.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  After the arrest, Piper’s parents came forward, surprisingly unfazed by all she’d done. Apparently, she’s been in therapy since she was a kid, but, as she told Adam and me, no one was able to help her. That was the one honest thing she said. The rest were lies, including all the stories she supposedly told Adam and her therapist about being abused by her dad as a kid.

  “Will Adam press charges?” Wes asks.

  “I doubt it,” I say, remembering how Piper’s parents offered to pay for any mental and/or physical damage any of us incurred as a result of their daughter’s “disillusion.” But, like Adam, I’m not looking for any monetary compensation. “I just want to get my life back on track,” I tell them. I brush my fingers over my mouth, reminded of Adam’s kiss. And then I gaze into the center of my palm, still able to feel Ben’s grip on my hand.

  I SPEND THE NEXT SEVERAL days going through the motions at school, but, like Ben, I avoid the social scene at all costs. He’s back at school as well, but we haven’t really been talking much, just giving each other polite nods in passing.

  I’ve been spending most of my free time at Knead, delving into my pottery and finally taking Spencer’s advice about using my emotion as a springboard to great work.

  “Think of your suffering as a gift,” he reminds me. “What I wouldn’t give to have a girlfriend cheat on me with an ex-best friend, only to wind up as an almost-victim in a mass suicide. Inspiration like that doesn’t come around like candy.”

  “Not funny,” I tell him, knowing he’s not being insensitive; he’s just trying to make me laugh.

  I dip my sponge into a bin of water, thinking about how Adam’s been trying to cheer me up as well. Like Kimmie, he’s been calling me on a regular basis and cracking his usual corny jokes. He even made me a crossword puzzle that said, IT’S GONNA BE A BRIGHT, SUNSHINY DAY and drew a cartoon version of Johnny Nash on the envelope.