Chapter Twenty-Five – The Sleeping Arrangement
At dinner that night, everyone looks exhausted. I stayed in my room after Martha left and missed the rest of training so I didn’t know what they had done. Rose and Charlie moan about sore muscles and even Will looks tired.
Martha drags out conversations with everyone while we eat, however I’m too distracted to really care what she’s talking about. I notice she tries several times to engage Will in conversation, however he barely gives more than one word answers. It makes me wonder how their discussion the other night had gone. I imagine it might have been heavily one sided.
After we’ve finished eating, Martha steals Charlie to have their one-on-one discussion. It reminds me of our earlier conversation where Martha mentioned Charlie’s girlfriend. Will they be talking about her now? Why hasn’t he mentioned her to me yet? Is it weird for him that I slept in his bed last night? What was she like? How long did they date for? Does he feel as lost as I am?
I sit down on the couch, rubbing my head. Since talking with Martha, my brain has been a constant buzz of thinking and overthinking. I’m getting sick of it.
Rose sits down next to me and leans in close as Will leaves to go to bed early.
“Do you remember if there was a computer in that room you had your physical in?” Rose whispers so we aren’t overheard.
“I don’t think there was.”
“Damn. Will told me your plan and I think it’s our best bet if we could find a freaking computer.”
“We need to get out of these rooms. I asked Martha if we could go outside, but she said no.”
“That’s because she’s a bitch. She had the nerve to tell me that I was a spoilt little rich girl who needs to learn how to think of other people, rather than just putting myself first.”
“She really said that?” Martha seems to be trying to hold a calm and caring façade. I can’t imagine her saying those words while trying to maintain that.
“I pissed her off, I think. She sort of snapped at me.”
“Do you think you should be pissing her off? Drew said we shouldn’t make them think anything is strange.”
“It would be strange if we just all jump when they tell us to, Zoe. They’re expecting some rebelling,” she points out.
“That’s true.” I hadn’t thought of it like that.
“I hate this place. I miss home so much.” I watch a single tear fall down Rose’s face and I reach out to take her hand to offer her comfort like Charlie has done for me so much lately.
“I know. I feel the same.”
“I can’t stay here much longer. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe here. We have to get out, and soon.”
“You’re not sleeping?”
She shakes her head. “Not a wink.”
“Wow, let me be the first to say you’re looking pretty great for someone getting no sleep,” I say, hoping to cheer her up.
“Thanks.” Rose rolls her eyes, though she does smile. “Well, I don’t know that I’ll have much choice tonight, I’m exhausted.”
“Why don’t you get an early night. You need to sleep. You have to be alert when we break out of here. Tomorrow we can talk properly about getting out of this place.”
Rose nods and leaves to go to bed. I feel exhausted myself. Yesterday all I had done is sleep and today, I’ve wanted to do the same, but fought it. I don’t have time to slip into some deep depression. I can do whatever I need to do once we’re all out of here.
I see Martha come back from the hallway sans Charlie. She smiles at me and wishes me a goodnight before leaving through the exit by the pool table.
I wait a few minutes for Charlie to emerge, but he doesn’t. I walk down the hallway to our rooms and find his door closed. Perhaps he has already gone to bed? I don’t feel comfortable enough to knock on the door so I go into my own room and get ready for bed. My forehead is a bit swollen and a bruise is starting to form. I kept forgetting to put the icepack on it most of today so I can’t really be annoyed that it’s swollen. It’s my own fault. Showered and teeth brushed, I walk back out into the lounge since Charlie’s door is still closed and lie down over the couch. It’s not the most comfortable and I feel cold without a blanket, but it beats sleeping on the floor.
I close my eyes and feel like it takes forever to start to drift away. I’m dreaming of Drew, distraught and alone, mourning for Dana. I try to reach out for him, but he can’t hear me. When I try to touch him, my hand goes right through him. My heart breaks seeing him so upset. The scene changes then to Joel holding a gun and pointing it directly at me. His eyes are closed and when he pulls the trigger, the shot rings off loudly. Dana is suddenly in front of me and I watch in horror as the bullet throws her body back violently. I try to wake her up, but she never opens her eyes and blood surrounds me.
“Zoe?” Hands shake me awake and I jolt up from the couch, almost falling off. “Zoe, it’s okay. You’re safe.”
I’m breathing heavily and my body shakes. Visions of my dream filter through my mind and I hold back tears, trying to get the images out of my head.
“Just breathe.” Charlie takes hold of both of my hands and he squeezes them hard, bringing me back to the present.
“Charlie?”
“It’s me. You were having a nightmare. You’re safe now.”
I nod, taking in the dark surroundings of the lounge area. The digital clock on the wall tells me I have only been asleep for an hour.
“Why are you out here anyway?” he asks, his hands still holding mine, sending warmth up my arms and over my body.
“I can’t sleep in my room.” I thought he would have remembered that.
“I know that. I thought we had a deal?”
I frown at him. “Your door was shut.”
“It wasn’t shut to you. Come on, you feel freezing.”
“Charlie.” I pull back on his hand to stop him from moving away.
“Yes?”
“Martha mentioned you lost your girlfriend when there was an attempt on your life,” I say it quickly before I chicken out on asking him.
“Girlfriend? Not quite. I was on a first date,” he explains.
I frown again in confusion. Why did Martha tell me he had a girlfriend? “And she died?”
“Yeah, that woman poisoned the wrong food. She died a couple hours after eating dinner.”
“I’m sorry.” I hear the sadness in his voice. I’d probably see it in his face, too, if it weren’t so dark in here.
“It’s not your fault. Truth is, I feel pretty guilty that she died because she was with me. If I had never asked her out, then she’d be alive right now.”
“I know what you mean.” If I had been honest with Dana, she would be alive now, too.
“I’m sad that an innocent girl was murdered and for no reason, but I know focusing on that right now won’t help us get out of here.”
“So you didn’t have feelings for her?” I know Martha had been insinuating Charlie has been transferring feelings he had for her onto me, so I keep pushing to be sure of what the actual situation is.
“It was a first date, she was nice and friendly. I didn’t really get much of a chance to know her. Why did Martha tell you this?”
“She wants us to cool our relationship. I get the feeling she might have been trying to break us up, so to speak. I mean obviously we’re not, you know, but they think we are.” I whisper the last part.
“I wonder why she doesn’t want us together.”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. I have no idea really.
“Come on, I’m tired.” I allow Charlie to help me up this time and we walk back to his room.
We both climb into his bed and I wonder how this worked yesterday. The bed is definitely not big enough for both of us.
Eventually we find places we’re both comfortable in and I face away from him, close to the edge. My nightmare is still fresh in my mind and I’m afraid to go back to sleep just yet.
“So did Martha
have much else to say to you?” Charlie asks.
“Just that there is zero chance of us being allowed outside of this place.”
“Maybe when the weather clears up they’ll let us go outside.”
“I want to be in the rain. I love rain and snow.”
“I wouldn’t say no to some fresh air. Everything is just so closed up in here.”
“When I was at school Dana and I would spend our entire lunch break out in the cold and rain. It would drive our teachers mad when we came back soaked. Dana would get so many colds, but I never did. That used to annoy her so much.” I smile, remembering the look on her face whenever she was sick and found out I wasn’t.
“You should keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Remembering the good times. When Mom died I was so angry. I caused such chaos with the electricity in the area. Every night I was going to sleep and thinking about how sad I was she was gone, remembering seeing her lifeless body as Dad tried to revive her. Then Dad wanted to move houses and I got worse. I thought if we moved away, then I would lose all the memories I had of her. He told me one night that before I went to sleep I should try to think of something really happy, a moment I had with her that made me smile. So I did. Every night for years I would go to sleep remembering something happy; sometimes it’s just remembering her smile. I kept her with me and soon the sad memories faded and I only kept the happy ones. You should think about the happy times with your friend.”
I don’t know what to say and now my tears are like a tap I can’t turn off. He’s right. I do have an abundance of happy memories of Dana. I should be trying to remember them instead of thinking about the worst night of my life.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.” Charlie reaches out and finds my hand under the covers.
“I miss her so much.”
Charlie squeezes my hand tighter and I close my eyes, thinking about the first memory that comes to mind of Dana.
It’s of the first sleepover we ever had. We’d stayed up as late as we could and ate so much candy we both had stomach aches. We made a secret hideout with her sheets and we hid in there making plans for the future. We thought up code names for our classmates and tried to come up with pranks we could pull on each of them, including our teacher at the time. We never did get around to doing any of them, though. I remembered making up a ghost story together and then scaring ourselves with it even though we had only just made it up. We ended up waking Dana’s Mom because we were too scared to go back under our secret hideout in case a monster was hiding in there.
I feel myself calm a bit and decide to try to think of another happy memory.
Taken By Surprise Page 52