I stared at him, stunned. A new, treatable diagnosis more satisfying? Did he really think my dad and I were that dumb? That we just went with synesthesia because ADHD seemed too hard to deal with? Rusty starbursts began to glow in my vision. I imagined my eyes—dark, deep-set, intense—filling with those starbursts. I imagined my untidy straight brown hair floating on them, my angular features sharpening to rusty points as I became a starburst myself—my anger as visible to the counselor as it was to me. “You know,” I said, gathering my things, “you can shove your ADHD test up your ass. Flunk me if you have to. Won’t be the first time. I’ll live.” And I stormed out.
I half expected him to call Dad, and for Dad to read me the riot act for throwing away a chance to get help so that I could graduate. But he must not have. He must not have told anyone.
And I sure as hell wasn’t telling anyone. I was an excellent secret keeper. They should hire me for the goddamned CIA. The colors were still there. Just nobody but me knew it.
When does anyone use chemistry in real life, anyway? Or math? Or Western Civ? You know what they should teach in school? How not to become a bitter, mistrustful ball of numb when life shits all over you. How to survive your mother’s murder and never get any answers and still somehow come out the other end a useful human being. How to keep people at arm’s distance so you don’t lose your mind when they leave you, because no matter what they say, they always, always, always will, no matter what. That would be a useful class.
I dragged on my cigarette, pulling hard down to the filter, and used my thumb to flick it onto the rocks below with the others. It landed with a little fireworks show of sparks. Like a celebration. Congratulations, Nikki, you are officially a chain-smoking, nonstudying, academic-probation, failing freak show. Let’s throw a party for your bad self! Pow!
I turned my face upward and slowly and ceremoniously exhaled, making my lips into a tight O to send a funnel of smoke into the sky, then reached into my pocket to pull out a new cigarette. Screw my promises to go in and cram. I wasn’t going to get any chem done anyway.
But just as I reached into my pocket, I felt the familiar buzz of my phone against the side of my hand. I groaned. It was probably Jones again.
Jones was my ex. Newly ex, actually, and I didn’t have the energy to talk to him. I’d been avoiding him at school ever since we broke up. Or rather, since I broke up with him. I could see rotting brown pulsing onto the cinder-barf school walls before he even rounded the corner to my locker or the lunchroom or the gym. The same decaying brown that made me cry when I was in kindergarten just made me hide now. Every time I saw Jones coming I doubled back, ducked into a restroom, rushed away. School was bad enough without enduring some schmaltzy romance novel scene in the hallway, starring heartbroken Jones and the cold bitch who broke his heart.
We’d been dating for months, and I was into him, I really was. He thought I was beautiful, even though I thought I was too skinny and plain. Overlookable. He had an excellent body, a killer smile, and an eager attitude that made him super easy to manipulate. Violet was the color I associated with lust, and I felt like a lit-up violet Christmas tree every time I came near him. Like a neon bar sign: Nikki Kill on Tap Here! Jones and I had so much passion I sometimes felt my very skin would light up when he touched me. And that passion didn’t go away after I broke it off with him. I still wanted Jones. I just didn’t want the same thing he wanted.
He ruined it all by falling in love, an adorable puppy trailing after his master. I knew it was getting bad when I started seeing color change around him—violet to pink to magenta. His heart practically beat out of his chest every time we were together. Fantastic.
I liked Jones. But I didn’t love him. After seeing what happened to my parents, I didn’t believe in it. Love, too young, spelled disaster, and I didn’t want any part of it.
Jones had taken to calling me three or four times a day, begging for another chance, telling me how devoted he was, pleading to make things right between us. He had no idea that professing his love was exactly the wrong way to make things right. I’d taken to silencing his calls.
But I was four cigarettes in and feeling generous, so I pulled out my phone without even bothering to look who it was.
“Hello?”
There was nothing. Scratch that, there was something that sounded like rough footsteps in the distance, and some tight breathing.
“Hello?” I asked again. Irritated. If this was Jones’s new method of trying to get me back, it was lame as hell. The heavy-breathing stalker method, Jones? Really?
“Hey,” a voice said. It was quiet, the pitch high, like a girl’s voice, or maybe a child’s. “Listen, I . . .”
I heard something else, then. A man’s voice in the distance, saying something that I couldn’t quite make out.
“What? Hello?” I asked again.
The breathing got faster, more urgent.
“Nikki,” the voice said, and while it was still unclear if it was a girl or a child, something about it itched with familiarity in the back of my mind.
The man in the background spoke again, and this time it was clear. “Put the phone down.” And then the connection cut off.
I looked at the screen. The numbers were all their standard “correct” colors—two was green, nine was yellow, three was purple—but it wasn’t a color order I recognized, and I was really good at recognizing and remembering color patterns. It wasn’t Jones’s number. I had no idea whose it was.
I held the phone in my free hand, waiting for it to ring again, but it never did. I lit a cigarette, the weirdness of the phone call dulling any real enjoyment I would have gotten out of it. I eventually flung it to the ground with the other butts, the night air now feeling cold and as if I didn’t belong in it.
“Weird new tactic, Jones,” I said softly. Even I didn’t believe myself, though. He had a younger sister, one who might have been talked into giving the old ex a call, but subtlety wasn’t exactly Jones’s strength. He would’ve called back. He would have capitalized on such a chilling mystery by offering to come over and hold me until I calmed down or some other soppy bullshit like that. Jones was pathetic, but he wasn’t this pathetic.
Who had it been, then? She’d said my name. It was hard to pretend it had just been a wrong number when the person said your name.
I pulled myself back into my room and tried to concentrate on chem, ignoring the rainbow of letters and numbers as they swirled around the page, wishing for a memory miracle. The doctor once told me he read about a patient who could remember every meal he’d eaten for the past nine years. I could totally believe it. I remembered strange, random things that normal people wouldn’t, the colors associated with a date or an address or God-knew-what sticking tight to my brain, and I was great at memorizing things like phone numbers. Yet I couldn’t seem to remember the other name for antimony to save my life, or whether magnesium or gallium was liquid at room temperature. Synesthesia was funny that way—always either a distraction or a tool, and only it could decide which it wanted to be at any given time, it seemed.
I accidentally pushed too hard with my pencil and broke the lead. Growling, I tossed it onto the desk. God, I hated homework.
I went downstairs and found Dad in the living room, cleaning out his camera bag. He glanced up.
“Done with homework already?”
I flopped onto the couch and propped my feet on the coffee table. “Sure, why not?” I said. “Pointless anyway.”
“Ah, must be working on chem,” he said, vigorously wiping off a lens with a cloth.
“What else?” I said. “Just distracted, I guess.” I sat up. “Hey, the house phone hasn’t rung or anything, has it?”
His brow furrowed. “No. Why?”
“No reason,” I said. “I thought I heard it is all.” I definitely hadn’t heard it, but figured it was worth a shot. “I got a weird call on my cell.”
He put down the lens and picked up another. “Weird? How so?”
“They still make prank calls these days?”
Come to think of it, not really. In fact, I had never gotten one before in my life. Caller ID made prank calling too difficult. Or maybe people just didn’t get that bored anymore. But that only served to make the phone call even weirder. “I guess so,” I said.
“Well, no wonder you’re distracted,” Dad said. “Want to help?”
“Sure.” I scooted down onto the floor next to him and began pulling camera supplies out of his bag, sorting and cleaning them, the whole time Dad grilling me about my grades and how I was going to make sure I would graduate. A topic that he never stopped talking about, and one that always wore me out.
When we finished, I checked the clock. It had been an hour. If ever there was a time for a smoke break, it was now. I headed back upstairs, shut my computer, and started for my cigarettes, but was interrupted by the buzz of my phone again.
I grabbed the phone and fumbled it, catching it at the last minute between my arm and stomach. It was the same number as before—I still didn’t recognize it, but whoever it was, they were way desperate, a realization that made orange start creeping over the numbers, blotting out their correct colors. I recovered the phone, gripped it tightly, and hit the answer button, half expecting to feel the heat of that orange against my cheek.
“Hello?”
“Uh, yes, is this Nikki?” a woman’s voice on the other end said, and then went on before I could even answer. “I’m trying to reach Nikki. It’s an emergency.” Definitely not the same childlike voice that had called earlier.
“This is Nikki,” I said. “Can I help y—”
“You must come quickly,” the voice said. “She’s in terrible shape, barely hanging on.”
“What? Come where? Who is this?”
The woman on the other end took a frustrated breath. “This is Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center calling,” she said. “You need to come right away. She might not make it through the night.”
“Who?” I asked. There was no “she” in my life. The only real “she” who had ever been in my life was my mother, and she had died long ago. “She who?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” the voice said. “We’ve brought a girl in. An anonymous caller found her, but he was gone before the ambulance got there. You’re the only contact number in her phone. She has no ID, no nothing.”
I paused, pulled the phone away from my ear, and studied the numbers again. “I don’t . . .” I don’t have any friends, I wanted to finish, but that sounded too pathetic to divulge, even to a stranger. I didn’t have any. Not real friends. Not in this fucked-up town full of plastic dolls and expensive wannabe whores. I had my stock of social media “friends,” and my sparring “friends” at the dojang, and maybe even some of Jones’s idiot bro-gang “friends,” but anyone I’d actually hang out with? Anyone who would have me, and only me, in their phone contacts list? Never. “I think this is a mistake.”
“Would you be willing to at least come and see if you can identify the girl? We really need to get ahold of the family.”
“It’s that bad? She’s, like, not conscious?”
“Yes,” the nurse answered. “And I can’t stress enough that you need to hurry. Please, Miss . . .”
“Kill,” I supplied for her. “I’m Nikki Kill.”
She cleared her throat, the way so many people do when they hear my last name. “Please, Miss Kill. She may not have much time.”
“And this isn’t a prank.”
“Absolutely not. This is the hospital calling. I’ve—”
“Because if it is, and you’re just messing with me, you are some kind of sick jerk,” I interrupted.
There was a pause, and then the nurse’s voice came back, sounding very serious. “I can assure you, what has happened to this young lady is no joking matter. You’ll see when you get here. If you’re going to come, you should do so soon.”
I stared out the window, considering my options. “Okay, I’ll be there,” I said reluctantly.
This was too weird. It couldn’t be a mistake—the nurse knew my name—but it sure as shit could be a joke. I mostly flew under the radar at school, but maybe Jones had finally gotten angry about the breakup and had turned some of his bro-gang and bro-gang sympathizers against me. Was Jones capable of that? I didn’t think so. Jones was much more the follow-you-around-begging type.
Out of habit, I pulled out another cigarette, but just as I held the lighter up to it, I froze. I couldn’t ignore what I knew. The orange. Something in the caller’s voice had made me feel orange. My cynical side told me this was a setup. But the orange in my head told me this was a true emergency.
And I was just curious enough to find out what kind of emergency we were talking about.
2
IT WAS AFTER midnight, but the TV was still droning downstairs, so I knew Dad hadn’t gone to bed yet. I would have to sneak out. Not that I was too worried about it. I’d been an expert at sneaking out of my house since middle school. It wasn’t too hard to sneak out on a guy who pretty much didn’t notice what I did on a daily basis anyway.
I crept down the stairs as softly as I could, prepared to make up something if he should catch me and grill me about where I was going on a school night.
I have to borrow chem notes from a friend, I practiced in my head. I left something in my car. No big deal. I’ll be right back. Or how about this one: Dude, I’m eighteen, I can leave whenever I want.
No, that would probably just open up some sort of “conversation” that I definitely didn’t want to get dragged into. When Dad wanted to “have a one-on-one conversation,” things got pretty agonizing pretty fast. Also, I didn’t like to hide things from him. Dad was mostly a cool guy who’d been dealt a really raw deal in this life. And we had a pretty easy system going. He didn’t mess around in my business, and I didn’t give him reason to want to.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and peered around the corner into the living room. Dad’s leather recliner was empty. I could see light spilling from his study onto the wood hallway floor, could hear his fingers tapping on the computer inside the study. I grabbed my jacket and slipped through the front door, turning the doorknob so it wouldn’t click behind me. He’d have no idea I’d ever left.
I got into my car, put it in neutral, and coasted down the hill before starting it, then took off toward the hospital.
Driving had always been a challenge for me. If there was ever a time I was surrounded by letters and numbers, it was while driving. I’d learned to ignore most of it but still got distracted by the occasional house number or name on a mailbox. But tonight I had no time for distraction. And even if I did, I was already preoccupied enough by thoughts of what I would find at the hospital. Would the mystery girl already be dead?
I sped through the night, talking to myself. “Okay, Nikki, this is weird. But you’ve done weird before, right? Your life’s default setting is weird, so you’ve got this.” What was I talking about—this was weirder than weird. The woman on the phone hadn’t even told me what had happened to this so-called dying patient. Was it a car crash? An accident at home? Was she mangled, missing body parts, burned, bloody? She might not live through the night—that definitely sounded bloody. Dear God, could I even do bloody? I remembered bloody. Bloody was terrifying. Bloody was life-altering.
My phone buzzed, and thinking it might be the hospital again, I quickly hit the Bluetooth button on my steering wheel.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, Nik.” Jones. Cripes.
“Listen, Jones, now’s not a great time.”
“I just want to talk,” he said.
I let out a deep, calming breath. It didn’t work. I was still irritated. “We’ve talked. And talked and talked. There really isn’t anything else to say.”
“You in the car?” He sounded like he’d been drinking. A little aggressive, a little slurred. “Shit,
Nikki, are you on a date? The body’s not even cold yet and you’re already with somebody else? What the fuck?”
A shiver went down my spine. The body’s not even cold yet. I hoped that wasn’t a harbinger of what I would find at the hospital.
I bit down on my annoyance. Part of me wanted to tell him, Yes, we’re on a date. We plan to park in your driveway and screw our brains out to that stupid Say Anything song you were always making me listen to, and then we’re going to fall in love and get married and have tons of babies and maybe we’ll name one Jones just so you can be even more pathetic than you already are. Will that make you stop calling me?
“Relax, I’m not on a date,” I said instead.
“You’re in the car. I can hear it.”
I sighed, flipped on my turn signal. I could see the hospital in the distance. “Yes, I’m in the car, but I’m alone. Can’t we do this later? At school tomorrow?” When I can see you coming and run away from you?
There was a noise, almost like choking, which turned into a drunken sob, and I nearly groaned out loud. “I thought you loved me, Nik. What happened?”
“I don’t have time to talk about this right now, Jones. Go home and sober up. And I never told you I loved you.”
“But I love you.”
“I know. You’ve told me. And I’ve got to go.”
Before he could respond, I hit the end call button on my steering wheel. If the phone rang again—and it probably would, if Jones was being true to form—I would just ignore it, no matter who might be on the other end.
Soon I was turning into UCLA Medical, scanning for a parking space in front of the emergency room.
The lobby was mostly empty, except for a couple sitting in a corner, the woman holding her head in her hands, the man rubbing a wet washcloth on the back of her neck. ERs always made me think of neon green—pain. I held my breath while I walked by just in case it was contagious pain.
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