by Sara Wolf
“Please,” Sophia sobs. “Please. I want Tallie back. Please, just give me Tallie back. Just let me out of here. I want to see her. I want to see her!”
One of the nurses starts toward the door. I pull back around the corner. As much as the curiosity is burning me up inside, I can’t hang around much longer, or I’ll be in deeper shit than an elephant keeper at a circus. I take the stairs to the kids’ ward without looking back.
Sophia has tumors. I know that much. She’d never been like that with me—not that harsh or angry. I feel like I’ve seen something I wasn’t supposed to—something private and embarrassing. She’d definitely feel awful if she knew I saw it, so I can’t bring it up with her. Sophia’s endured a lot from me—from my nonstop talking to my terrible jokes and thorny defensiveness. I’ve made mistakes in front of her, and she’s never mentioned them again. The least I can do is forget what I saw, too.
The commotion Sophia made was the perfect cover—the guard isn’t even at the door. The sleeping room is lined with beds, stickers, and colorful sponge art pressed onto each headboard. Toys and books are stacked on the ground, and the gently beeping monitors glow in the darkness.
James is the first to notice I’ve come in. He sits up and whispers groggily, “Isis? Is that you?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Hey.”
He points at my chest, his bald head shining in the faint lights of the monitor. “Why are you jiggling?”
“I’ve always been this stacked.”
James rolls his eyes. I laugh and shove a Jell-O cup at him. He rips the top off and then slurps it down in one gulp. I inch over to Mira’s bed and carefully place her Jell-O cup on her bald forehead. She sleepily opens her eyes and groans.
“Isisssss. It’s cold.”
“Hurry up and eat it, then.”
They eagerly stuff sugar down their throats, and I clear mine, trying to find the words to say good-bye.
“Listen,” I say. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving?” Mira sniffs.
“Yeah. I got better.” I smile. “Just like you will.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. You will, and don’t you dare let me catch you saying you won’t.”
“Will you come back to see us?”
“Is the sky mildly blue? Duh, I will!” I give her a noogie. “Also, toys. I’m gonna bring some cool new ones for your birthday, and James’s birthday, and Martin Luther King’s birthday, and my own birthday, because frankly these dinky little hand-me-downs do not suit Your Highness.”
Mira grins. A light flashes out in the hall and I duck behind her bed.
“The guard!” I exclaim. “Shit. Take mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms.”
“Shiitake,” James echoes. I bop his head.
“Hey! That’s a bad word.”
“But it’s a mushroom! Nothing’s wrong with mushrooms!”
“Haven’t you played Mario? Everything is wrong with mushrooms.”
“He’s coming this way to check,” Mira hisses at me. The guard’s so close I can hear the jangling of his keys.
“Okay, everyone calm down. Don’t panic. OhmygodwhatamIdoingwithmylife. Don’t panic!”
“We’re not!” they insist together.
“Right! Okay!” I breathe out my nose and charge toward the window. I always have a harder time climbing down than up, but it’s the only place in the room to hide; every piece of furniture in here is kid-sized and too small. I open the window and leap over, clinging by my fingertips on the sill. My Converse scrabble on the cement of the wall, the cold winter air nipping at my butt, which hangs fourteen feet above certain death, or at the very least a broken kneecap. The door to the ward creaks open into utter silence. The grubs are good at pretending to be asleep.
“Who left the window open?” I hear the guard murmur. My heart rockets into my throat. He strides over and I pray to whatever god is listening that he won’t see my fingers. I must be praying right for once! He doesn’t see my fingers at all! He just kindly closes the window and shoves them off the sill instead. My hands jump to the ledge on the outside, but it’s so tiny and slippery, and I fight, my hands aching—
All I can think about is how to fall elegantly so my dead body doesn’t look stupid, because I’ve seen a million crime shows and honestly existentialist panic is no reason to not try, in your last moments, to contort your body as you fall so you strike a dramatic pose. It’s your last pose ever! You have a moral obligation to make it fabulous! Or at the very least not-disgusting.
I could pose like Beyoncé, but one thing is still for certain.
I’m going to die.
Which is a whole lot of very not good.
My last fingers slip off the ledge. And then there’s weight all at once on my wrist as someone grabs it. Whiplash rocks my body and hard cement collides with my belly, scrapes my elbows. I look up into icy blue eyes shaded by wild tawny hair.
“Y-You!” I sputter.
Jack pulls me back up through the window, Mira and James on either side of him, wide-eyed and ecstatic.
“You almost died,” Mira whispers shakily.
“You were all like ‘WHOA’ and the guard was all like ‘BYE’ and Jack came in and was like ‘GRAB’!” James shrieks.
Jack straightens. I stand up on shaky legs and contemplate life and the refreshing fact that I still have a life to contemplate at all. Jack freezes when our eyes meet and then turns on his heel abruptly. I run and put myself between him and the door. He stares at me and I stare at him, some unsaid pressure bearing down on my lungs. Adrenaline sears my veins, and a twisted pain tears through my chest. I can’t look away. He’s not even that good-looking. He just looks so…sad? And that sadness is condensed in an arrow that he’s shot right into me with his dumb antarctic eyes.
“How—”
“I was walking behind you in the hall. I followed you. I have a knack for knowing when you’re about to do something stupid,” Jack answers in clipped tones.
“Why—”
“Sophia. I came to the hospital for her. Now move.”
Jack tries to maneuver around me, but I stop him at each turn.
“I’ve had years of practice being fat. We are good at blocking things. Also, floating in salt water.”
“Let me through.”
The smell of mint and honey floats toward me, that same disconcerting smell of him I found in my memories earlier today.
“See, I think I should not let you through, since you are a really bad boyfriend, and logic dictates a bad thing should not be near a good thing, so essentially, Sophia doesn’t need you around.”
He scoffs. “You have no idea what you’re talking abo—”
“You kissed me,” I say. “Sophia told me you kissed me. And I remembered it. A bit. And even if you saved me, and Mom, and pulled me up from the ledge or whatever, I can’t forgive you for hurting Sophia like that. I can’t forgive you for kissing someone you didn’t like. That probably hurt me, too. You’ve hurt a lot of people, haven’t you?”
Mira and James watch us, our words like ping-pong balls their heads inevitably follow. Jack is expressionless, wordless, like a recently wiped chalkboard. I can’t read him. But tiny wisps of incredulousness give way to shock, and then his face sets in an icy mask of irritation.
“Get out of my way,” he repeats, a deadly quality in his voice.
“No. See, I’m a good dragon. Does your small-yet-somehow-still-functioning brain know what a dragon is?”
“Scaly!” James chirps.
“Breathes fire!” Mira adds.
“I’m the dragon,” I say. “And Sophia is the princess. And it’s my job to guard her from the likes of you.”
Jack raises a brow. “Likes of me?”
“A bad prince. The kind that ruins princesses forever.”
The ice-blue splinters of his eyes darken, shading over. His eyes are easier to read than his face, but not by much. Is it anger? Guilt? Frustration? No. I
t’s none of those. It’s helplessness.
“You’re too late. I’ve already ruined her forever,” he says, and he pushes past me with such force I don’t have time to brace. He’s long gone when Mira decides to speak up.
“They call him sometimes. Naomi does. When Sophia gets really mad.”
“What do you mean?”
James shuffles, staring at his feet. “Sometimes…sometimes she gets weird. And mad. And when we ask about it, Naomi says it’s someone else yelling, not Sophia. But it’s her voice. And then they call Jack, and he always comes no matter what time it is and she calms down and gets quiet again.”
“How long has this been going on for?”
“A couple years, I think,” Mira says. “Since James came here. She used to be so nice to us all the time. I mean, she still is. But sometimes…sometimes she gets weird. So she stopped visiting us. And Jack started visiting her more. I think she feels guilty.”
“I think they both feel guilty.” James scoffs. “They both got the same faces my dad does when he visits me.”
I watch Jack’s figure grow smaller down the hall.
She remembers.
Isis Blake remembers me.
The world doesn’t move for me. It stopped that night in middle school. It trembled when Isis first punched me and grew to a quake with every day I fought the war against her. And then it went still for weeks. For weeks that felt longer than years.
Today the world shakes, and it shakes with her name and her set, determined face as she looked me in the eyes and told me I was a bad prince. Today it shakes because she might think I’m terrible (You are terrible. Your hands are bloody and you are terrible.), but she remembers me. A small fragment of the old Isis—the one who recognized me and despised me months ago—shone through in her eyes. She hates me. But she remembers me.
She remembers a kiss (which kiss which kiss which kiss the fake one from the beginning or the true one in Avery’s house?).
Today my world shakes. Not hard. But it moves under my feet and reminds me that yes—yes. The world can still move. I’m really still alive. I am not ice. I am not a freak or a monster. I am not something people are afraid of or avoid. I am human and I have done bad things, but the world shakes and I am human. I am not untouchable. I can be shaken.
By Isis Blake.
As I walk into the hospital room more familiar to me than home, Naomi walks out of it, her hair frazzled and her nurse scrubs wrinkled. A scratch mark mars her arm from elbow to wrist. It isn’t deep, but it’s red and angry and very noticeable.
“That bad?” I ask.
Naomi shakes her head. “I have no idea why she… She hasn’t done this for an entire month, and now—”
“Something must have triggered her,” I say, and try to push past her into the room. “Let me talk to her.”
“She’s sleeping. Trisha administered a tranq.”
The elation from knowing Isis remembers me drains away. A dark fury starts to broil over me, but Naomi backtracks.
“Jack, listen. Listen to me. It was the only thing we could do. She was threatening to hurt herself with a pair of scissors.”
“How did she get—” My own anger chokes me off. “Why did you let her have those?”
“I didn’t! You know me better than that, for Christ’s sake! I don’t know where she got them or how, but she had them and all we could do was stop her before she could do any real harm to herself.”
Dread replaces the anger, layering over it like a sickening cake. I can barely open my mouth to speak, but the words somehow escape.
“She must have been triggered. She’s gotten so much better. You know she wouldn’t do this unless someone said something that upset her.”
Naomi waves a tired hand toward the sleeping Sophia tucked under the white covers too perfectly. Too peacefully.
“You’re welcome to talk to her when she wakes up.”
I instantly spot the fine wrinkles under her eyes, the weary bags that all nurses get sometime in their long and stress-ridden careers. She’s so tired. She’s been Sophia’s best nurse, the only one she really likes and trusts.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “For being so caustic.”
Naomi’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. “Excuse me? What was that strange word I just heard?”
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
I push into the room and close the door behind me. I watch Naomi leave through the frosted glass of the room’s divider, her smirk evident even through the translucence.
The room is dim and quiet, save for the beeping of the monitors that staccato out her vital signs in too-cheery chirps. Every bouquet I’ve given her this year is still in the room—wilted and browning and not enticing in the slightest. But she keeps them all. She keeps each vase full of water and all the vases in chronological order. The room smells like molding flowers and antiseptic.
It’s then the guilt hits me like a steel maul to my chest. I haven’t visited for two weeks. There’s a two-week gap she’s carefully left in the line of flowers, two empty vases waiting for me to bring them the blooms they need to serve their purpose.
I let my guilt at not being able to save Isis override my duty to Sophia. And that’s unforgivable.
How can I be so excited about a girl remembering a kiss when the girl who needs me is suffering?
Selfish bastard.
I sit on the end of her bed gingerly. The white blankets fold like snow under my weight, and contour gently around her outline. She’s so much thinner than I remember. Her every bone sticks out like a bird’s—frail and hollow-looking. Her cheekbones are sharp and evident. There’s no trace of the rosy bloom I’d gotten so used to seeing growing up. That went away after that night long ago.
“I really am a bad prince,” I mutter.
I smooth hair away from her forehead. She mumbles softly and rolls over.
“Tallie…”
My fists clench in the sheets, and the molten spike of feverish regret bakes my insides, starting in my heart, working its way to my lungs and stomach and everything in between.
Tallie.
Our Tallie.
You’ve hurt a lot of people, haven’t you?
Chapter Five
3 Years, 26 Weeks, 0 Days
Dr. Fenwall is Santa. If Santa went on a SlimFast diet and wore corduroy pants every day of his life and used terms like “endometrial tissue.”
“Now, Isis, if you could just lie back…”
I slump on the CAT scan bed and huff. “I’ve done this before, doc! I’ve done lie-backs every freaking day since I’ve been here! At least seventy billion lie-backs!”
Fenwall’s eyes crinkle and his white mustache curls with his smile. “You should be a little used to it.”
“You never get used to being slotted into a giant doughnut’s vagina.” I motion at the CAT machine. It beeps excitedly. I plot its demise.
“Well, this is your last time doing it. Come on now, lie back.”
I shout “UGH” and flop back and bang my head.
“And be careful, will you? We spent a lot of hours sewing that cranium back together,” Fenwall chides. He presses a button and the CAT bed slides in, a tunnel engulfing me in dimness.
“You okay in there?” he asks.
“Everything’s cramped and smells like cotton balls.”
“Perfectly fine, then. Start it up, Cleo!”
A woman at the control panel in the next room waves through the window and the machine starts to whir. I hear Fenwall leave, and then it’s just me and Big Bertha. And her vagina.
“How’s…how’s the weather up there in…robot land?” I try.
The machine gurgles.
“Good. That’s good. And the kids?”
Big Bertha bleeps enthusiastically and a blue light blinds me.
“Ahh!” I shield my eyes. “Th-They must be going through teenage rebellion!”
The machine blips sadly and the light goes out.
“It�
�s okay,” I assure her. “When they’re in their twenties they’ll think you’re smart and worth listening to again.”
“Tilt your head to the left, Isis,” Fenwall’s intercom blasts in my ear.
“Rude! I’m having a discussion here!”
“Are you talking to inanimate objects again? Mernich would love to hear about that.” I can hear his grin.
“No! No, I’m not talking to anything! Nothing at all! Just…myself! Which is basically nothing. Nothing special. Except my butt. My butt is definitely something hells special—”
“Left, Isis.” Fenwall doesn’t take my shit. In a friendly grandpa-y way. I tilt my head and Bertha beeps once, twice, and there’s a pause. The regular white lights come back on and the bed slides out slowly.
“Phew!” I leap up and shake off the claustrophobia. I hate small spaces.
Fenwall comes in. “Feeling all right?” he asks.
“Well, I need to spend five therapeutic years on the open plains of Mongolia, but other than that I’m good.”
“Fantastic. Your results will be done in just a second. Let’s go get your mother.”
I follow him out to the hall. It feels so good to walk around in my real clothes, not a hospital gown anymore. And the absence of a stinky bandage turban clinging to my head is a mild plus. I practice shaking my hair out like a majestic lion but almost hit an intern and stop. They have enough problems without strands of fabulous hair in their eyes. Mom’s waiting in the lobby. She smiles and gets up and hugs me.
“So? What are the results?”
Fenwall looks at the papers in his hands. “Everything looks fine. The hemorrhaged tissue has cleared up remarkably well.”
“What about this?” I point at the scar just to the side of my hairline and above my forehead. “The hair isn’t growing back. I’ll never get married!”
“The scar will shrink and fade, but that will take time. Years,” Fenwall says.
Mom pats my head. “It’s not too big, sweetie. Unless someone is seven feet tall and can look straight down on your head, no one will ever see it.”
She’s right. What’s one more scar on a girl full of them already, inside and out?
“Do I get any meds?” I ask. Fenwall smiles.