by Megan Hart
Citrus.
Oranges.
Dark.
Chapter 21
“No. No, no, no, no!” I stumbled forward two steps, my hands still covered in suds from the sink I’d left behind. “Oh, damn it, no.”
Darkness. I blinked rapidly, my eyes adjusting. The smell of oranges had faded, replaced by the faint hint of heat and chlorine and motor exhaust—familiar scents. I was back in the world my mind had created for me so I could be close to Johnny.
But I didn’t need this now. I had him for real. In my real life. Clenching my fists, I gritted my teeth and concentrated on going back.
Nothing.
I was standing in the side yard of Johnny’s town house. From the splashing and laughter I could hear from around the corner, there was a poolside party going on. Maybe they were filming another movie. I didn’t much care. I wanted out of here, back to consciousness. Back to my own time.
I let myself into the kitchen, expecting to find Johnny and coming across Ed instead. He was slumped at the kitchen table, a cigarette in one hand and an ashtray full of butts in front of him. Also, a bottle of vodka, almost empty. And next to that, a rolled cloth pouch with a syringe on it.
“Emm. Emma. Emmaline. Emm,” he said, not slurring, though his eyes looked red and bloodshot.
He stank, even from across the room. I winced. “Ed. Where is everyone?”
“Swimming. Skinny-dipping. Fucking.” His laugh chilled me. “Getting high. Where are they always? What are they always doing? You looking for Johnny, right? He’s waiting for you.”
“What do you mean, waiting for me?”
“Johnny says you’re coming.” Ed waved his cigarette and smoke wafted toward me. “Johnny says he’s waiting for you. You’ll show up. You always do. He’s a little drunk, a little high, but he’s not fucking. Why isn’t he fucking, Emm? Because he’s waiting for you.”
I frowned and hugged myself, though the kitchen was as sticky-hot as it had always been every other time my mind had brought me here. “Thanks for letting me know. Where is he? Upstairs?”
“He’s out by the pool. Paul is taking pictures of him. Naked,” Ed added with another chilling laugh that rose the hairs on the back of my neck. “Showing off his ass again. I told you, they’re drunk and high.”
“And not fucking. I get it.” I ran some cold water in the sink and scooped a handful, then splashed my face.
It looked like I was going to have to ride this out, that was all. I almost didn’t want to find Johnny here. Somewhere, my mother was talking to me about cleaning wipes. I couldn’t do what I’d always done in this place, not knowing she was waiting for me to answer her. Maybe even getting concerned, saying my name, shaking my shoulder. I couldn’t fuck Johnny in front of my mother, even if she wasn’t really there and I wasn’t really here.
“You wanna know what Johnny says about you, Emmaline?”
I looked at Ed. Now I noticed he had a pen and a leather-bound notebook in front of him. It hadn’t been there before. All these details, tiny details, making my brain fuzzy.
“What does he say?”
“He says you ain’t real. That you’re not a real girl, you’re made up. Maybe we’re all imagining you, I said, but he said not that. Just that you come from someplace else. Is that right, Emmaline? You come from some other place?”
“Yeah, Ed. I do,” I answered, tired. “And I’d like to go back to it.”
His laugh guttered into a wheeze, and he drew in another breath of smoke. “Good luck with that. Don’t we all want to go on to another place?”
The counter dug into my back as I leaned against it. From outside came the sound of more laughter. Quite the party going on. It sounded like fun. More fun than this bizarre and tilted conversation with a man who’d slit his wrists and eventually drown himself in that very pool.
“He says you’re from the future.”
“What?” This startled me into standing upright. “Johnny says that?”
“He says you told him.”
I blinked, then paced the linoleum floor. “That’s just crazy.”
“Yeah. That’s what Johnny says. Says he must be fucking crazy. That we all are. We should all end up in the fucking nuthouse, right? All of us. Johnny says you told him you made us all up. So lemme ask you something, Emmaline. If you made me up, why’d you make me such a fucking mess?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to that.” Was it a lie to say he was right? What happened when your hallucinations learned that’s what they were?
“Just tell me if it’s true, that’s all.” Ed took a long drink from the bottle and toyed for a moment with the syringe, but didn’t, thank God, use it. “I just want to know if I’m real. Or not real.”
“You are…real,” I said, hesitating. “I mean, you’re a real person, Ed. But this isn’t real. This is just in my head. This conversation isn’t real.”
“Tonight’s the night,” Ed said suddenly with a jerk of his chin toward the calendar.
“For what?”
“Making me real, I guess.” He nodded as though this made sense, which was more than it did for me. He drank again, finishing the final swallows while the bottle gurgled. “So, who do I blame for all this shit?”
“I don’t know. Me?” I spread my fingers. “You could blame me.”
He looked up at me with bleary eyes and a crooked smile. “I could, I guess. But I don’t think I will. You know I wrote a poem about you?”
I shuddered. “No. I didn’t know.”
“I did.” He pulled his notebook toward him, cleared his throat and read aloud.
She walks in night,
A beauty.
Single, tiny steps on bare toes, shoes left behind.
Puppet-master, girl-made-woman, she comes and goes.
She makes us, and she breaks us, too. Spinning her dreams,
She is what she becomes. She can be anything she wants to be.
Emmaline.
I was no more able to appreciate poetry than I could art, but that didn’t sound very good. It sounded sort of pretentious and self-important, the sort of poem Goth kids would read aloud to one another while they refreshed their eyeliner and discussed the layers of meaning. People would make blog posts about it, quoting, without knowing what it really meant.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said sourly.
“No?” Ed sounded surprised and looked it over, running his finger over the words. “You’re right. Doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”
Because he didn’t write it. My fugue brain did. And because I wasn’t a poet, the poem sucked. That was the truth of all of this. I was the puppet-master, pulling the strings. Making and breaking everything here. And I wanted to be done with making.
I wanted to break all of it.
So, I did.
Bright light. The sound of murmuring voices. I blinked, wincing, something soft beneath my head and something sharp stinging the back of my hand. A weight on the other, fingers held tight.
“Hey,” Johnny said softly from beside the bed. “You’re awake.”
“What?” I struggled to get up, the smell of hospital rushing in all around me. Choking.
The sting on my hand was an IV, and Johnny shushed me. I quieted at once, sinking back onto the pillows. I was still wearing what I’d had on at the dinner party, so at least I hadn’t been here long enough for them to strip me down and put a hospital gown on me. My throat was dry, and before I could ask, Johnny had a plastic cup of water for me, with a straw.
I sipped. “What happened? Where are my parents and everyone else?”
“Your mom and dad are probably in the waiting room. The others went home. Jen wanted to stay, but I convinced her boyfriend to take her home. I’ll call her, tell her you’re okay.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “Am I? I went dark, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, babe, you did.”
“How long this time?”
“It’s been about three hours. Your mo
m didn’t wait as long as I did the last time.” Johnny laughed, shaking his head. “You were only out for ten minutes before she had the ambulance on its way.”
“Oh, God.” I groaned and covered my eyes with the hand attached to the IV, which was a mistake because it pulled hard on the port and hurt. “Shit.”
“You just went blank,” Johnny said.
I looked at him through my fingers. “Just? That’s not comforting. Unless you mean it’s better than falling down, frothing at the mouth and pissing myself. Then, yeah, I guess it’s better.”
Tears clogged my voice, and Johnny stood to kiss me softly, even though I tried to turn my face. He kissed me, anyway, and smoothed my hair from my forehead. He kissed my mouth, then my cheek, and squeezed my hand.
“They’re going to run some tests on you. And you probably have to stay overnight.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
“Emm,” he said warningly.
“I’m not staying. You know there’s nothing they can do, Johnny. You know it.” There was no reason he should, really, since we’d barely ever discussed my problem in detail, but he nodded reluctantly. “But there goes my license. There goes…shit, everything!”
“Not everything,” Johnny said quietly. “Not me.”
I cried then. He sat and held my hand and handed me tissues. It didn’t last long—I didn’t have many tears left for situations like this. When it had passed, he kissed me again. I realized something.
“They let you in here with me? Not my mom or dad?”
“She said, your mom said, I should sit with you.”
I blinked tear-swollen eyes. “Get out of here. Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” Johnny grinned.
“She must really like you,” I whispered, and wept again.
It went on a little longer this time, and again he handed me tissues when the ones I was using grew sodden and fell apart. He gave me water, too, holding the cup for me, though I was anything but an invalid. And then he went to the bathroom and got me a damp cloth to wash my face.
They did, indeed, do tests that went on pretty late into the night. Drew lots of blood. Ordered a CAT scan, which couldn’t be done until the tech came in and which I refused, though the attending physician did his best to bully me into it. I had a lot of years of practice dealing with doctors and hospitals, and I wasn’t being a pain for the sake of being a jerk. I knew the tests would show nothing. They’d prescribe me some meds, maybe. Keep me longer. Bill my insurance for thousands of dollars, much of which I’d have to pay back since I’d been fortunate enough not to have yet met my deductible.
“I want to go home,” I told the doctor firmly. “Look at my records. This has happened before. It’ll probably happen again.”
I hated admitting that.
“And I have someone who can stay with me,” I added, indicating Johnny, who nodded. “I’m not driving. I’ll sign myself out against medical advice, if that’s what you want.”
The doctor, who looked tired and possibly not much older than me, rubbed at his eyes and the scruff of his beard. He sighed heavily. “Fine. Fine. I’ll get the discharge order ready.”
He pointed a finger at me. “But if you die, I’m going to kill you.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to laugh, but I did. “Fair enough.”
My parents met us in the lobby, my dad looking tired and my mom white-faced. I braced myself for the rush of scolding, her insistence she come home with me, or worse, go home with them. Instead, my mom only hugged me close. She let me go, and looked at Johnny.
“You take care of her,” my mother said.
“Yes, ma’am. I will.” Johnny put his arm around my shoulders.
But this wasn’t enough for me. I couldn’t, in fact, believe it. I followed my mom to their car, which was parked next to Johnny’s. My dad was already in the driver’s seat, and Johnny got into his car to warm it up, leaving us alone.
“Mom,” I said.
“Emmaline,” my mother said. “That man… Your Johnny…”
“I can’t believe you’re letting me go home with him,” I told her.
She hugged me hard. Tight. I hugged her, too.
“I have to,” she said into my ear, then took my face into her hands and held it still so she could search my gaze with her own.
“What?”
She shook her head and looked over her shoulder at Johnny in his car. She shook her head again, brow furrowed, then looked at me. She choked off a sob, shaking her head, trying to get control. Watching her force away the tears made it hard for me to resist my own, but I managed. My mom squeezed my face, then let me go.
“He’s a good man. And even though I’m worried sick about you, I’m sure you’d rather have him there than me. So…I’m letting him take you. But you call me tomorrow, first thing!” She shook her finger, then clung to me in another hug. “Oh, my precious girl, it is killing me, but…”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said quietly into her ear as we squeezed each other. “Thank you.”
“You call me,” she said, letting me go. “Tomorrow!”
“I will.”
She nodded and hugged me again, but didn’t linger. She got into the car next to my dad and shut the door. I could see them both talking, but not hear what they said. Johnny opened his car door, got out, walked around to the passenger side to open it for me.
“So chivalrous,” I said when he’d settled back in the driver’s seat.
He looked at me. “You sure you don’t want to stay?”
I shook my head. “They’re not going to do anything, and I feel fine. I just want to go home to my own bed. Get at least a couple hours of sleep. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can sleep in.”
Johnny leaned across the seat to kiss me. He stroked my hair. Then, in silence, we drove home. I looked out the window at icy streets, snowbanks. My breath fogged the glass. I fisted my hands in my lap, thinking of the fugue, of Johnny-then and Johnny-now. Wondering how all of this was going to work out. Hating the fact I had to depend on him, and hoping it wasn’t going to ruin everything that had just begun.
Chapter 22
At home, Johnny stayed with me while I showered. He didn’t say it was because he was worried I’d go dark in the shower and drown or something, but I knew that was why, and though we shared the water and the sponge, I didn’t even try to turn this into something erotic. When we dried off and I put on an entirely unsexy flannel nightgown, he tucked me into bed and got in beside me.
I turned on my side, away from him, staring into the darkness without being tired. Johnny’s breathing deepened. I felt the weight of him shift as he went boneless into sleep. And I blinked and blinked, the pattern of light coming through the window shifting. The temperature, too. The sheets underneath me.
When he rolled against my back, his hand going flat to my belly, I wanted to turn and face him. I wanted to know if this was Johnny-now or Johnny-then. If I was dreaming, or had gone dark, or if I was just so tired the bed had felt like it was shifting underneath me. But I didn’t turn to see him. I didn’t speak. And Johnny, whichever one he was, pressed up real against me. Whether it was the truth or a lie concocted by my brain, he was real.
I went back to work on Monday. Johnny dropped me off and tilted his face for a kiss in the parking lot. I gave it to him, but didn’t linger the way I had just a week before. I didn’t mean to be grouchy, I didn’t want to resist him, but depending on him this way was already wearing me thin in places that hadn’t been very thick to begin with.
I did my job with expertise and not enthusiasm. When he picked me up at the end of the day, I got in the car hoping no coworkers would see me. Of course I’d had to report what happened to Human Resources, not because I wanted anyone to know, but because if something happened on the job I had to let someone know what to do. I put on my seat belt without looking at him, and I stared out the window all the way home.
He took me to my house and came in with me, though when I h
ung up my coat he didn’t take off his. “Emm.”
I looked at him. “Yeah?”
“Do you want me to go? I can go home.”
“No. You can stay.”
Johnny gave me a look. “I thought maybe we’d have dinner out tonight. You want to go out to eat? I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
Normally, I’d have leaped at the offer, but I just shook my head. “I feel like staying in. Vegging out. Get caught up on TV or something.”
Johnny put his hands in his pockets. “You want me to go, you should just say so.”
“You can stay,” I repeated.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked, and I wanted to laugh at everyone who’d ever written or said that Johnny Dellasandro was a dim bulb. Just then he was very bright, so bright I couldn’t look at him.
“You can if you want to,” I told him, unable to make myself say more than that because I didn’t want to be a liar, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either.
“Nah. I’ll go home. Get caught up on my own stuff,” Johnny said.
He kissed me before he left. At least there was that. He held me close and hugged me until I hugged him back, though it took me a few seconds to bend. He kissed my temple and squeezed me. Then he left.
I watched him go.
I wasn’t angry at Johnny, and just then I was pretty furious with myself. I had what I wanted, finally, and I was pushing it away. But I couldn’t help it. Johnny wasn’t everything I wanted. I wanted a brain that worked, damn it. One that didn’t flip-flop me all around and make me no better than a child.
I did, indeed, veg and watch TV. Well, I flipped through the channels, unable to find any one program that could keep my attention. I texted Jen, who replied that she was hanging with Jared, and did I want to come over and hang with them?
I did not.
I went to bed alone and angry, nobody to blame but myself.