Authors: Denise Mathew
A cough worked its way through her chest, up her trachea until it finally burst from her lips into an explosion of air. Her body went rigid then relaxed. She involuntarily sat up straight. When her eyes popped open she locked on Derrick. He was still naked from the waist up. Kaila grazed his torso with her eyes, studying the lean muscles of his chest, hairless like the rest of him. Once again she was reminded that he was locked in a space between teenage boy and man. Derrick’s height wasn’t the problem; he was tall enough for certain. It was something else that was difficult to pinpoint, something that Norm had that Derrick didn’t.
When Kaila pulled her gaze from his chest to Derrick’s face she noticed that his expression was frantic and harangued, as if the weight of the world rested on his narrow shoulders.
“Are you okay?”
Pauline pushed Derrick aside like a stray dog in her path. He didn’t put up a fight, shifting to allow her ample space. Pauline’s face was a riot of anxiety as her hands reached for Kaila’s face. Instead of making contact, she caught herself at the last moment, hovering her cupped palms an inch from Kaila’s skin.
Kaila took a moment to collect her thoughts, check her being. She still had no idea what had happened, how Trillian had managed to take her over. But more than how, was why she had been left feeling destroyed and weak after the experience.
“What happened to me?” Kaila said, wiggling her butt back on her bed until her spine hit the chipped paint on the sidewall.
Pauline and Derrick were frozen in place like two mannequins. Whatever heat Kaila had witnessed between the two had cooled significantly. There was stiffness in their stance; an unsaid need to be apart as though all that had happened between them had been an absolute mistake. And seeing how rapidly they had shifted their view was more than a touch intriguing to Kaila. This change in Pauline and Derrick’s behavior, from overheated to icy cool, felt even more important than discovering what had brought on, what could only be termed, the complete possession of her by Trillian.
“I think you had some kind of seizure,” Derrick said.
Interest had replaced his original anxiety. Kaila wondered what had put those emotions there.
“How would you know what it was?” Pauline asked, irritation clear in her tone. To Kaila’s trained ear, her roommate was more than ready to wash her hands clean of Derrick. Kaila didn’t share her opinion. Now more than ever she wanted to hear exactly what Derrick did know.
“A seizure, but I’ve never had a seizure before…”
Kaila’s voice trailed off as she searched for another reason for why her body would have acted in that way. She wasn’t opposed to Derrick’s line of thought, but his vague explanation didn’t seem to be based in truth, fact, or science, and was merely musings. Supposition was always unacceptable, so now she rapidly absorbed and dismissed Derrick’s theory. There was only one justifiable excuse for what had happened, for some reason Trillian had taken complete control.
“It wasn’t a seizure it was…”
Kaila’s voice trailed off when she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to talk about Trillian. There was no questioning that most residents who cared, and those who didn’t, mostly knew about Trillian. Even so, Kaila wasn’t in the business of discussing Trillian or her actions since the less that was said about the matter the better. After dealing with too many eager doctors wanting to fix her, fix Trillian, she had learned that denial was so much better than acknowledging the truth.
“Were your meds adjusted lately?” Derrick queried.
Kaila mulled over his words. She had never cared about what pills she swallowed or if changes were made. It was another allowance she made in her routine since she knew she had absolutely no control over this aspect in her life. Trying to remember each colored tablet, the numbers marked on them, or how she felt in response to said medications, was near impossible to track since changes were always imminent. Still, this time she did remember something.
“They did change my pills in the White Room.”
Derrick nodded as though pleased by her admission.
“I just hope it doesn’t happen again,” Pauline chimed in, “because if it does, I’m not going to waste time listening to anyone telling me to stay put, that whole shit was fucking freaky Kaila. I can’t deal with that again…”
She trailed off.
“If you had of gotten the staff there’s no telling what they would have done with her,” Derrick said reasonably.
Kaila tilted her head to the side, confused. She remembered that they had mentioned that she was not breathing.
“Did I die?” she asked plainly.
Pauline and Derrick who had been locked in a mutual glare brought Kaila back in their sights.
Derrick shook his head definitely. “No…or at least I don’t think you did. I figure I panicked a little and probably couldn’t find your pulse because I was too freaked out…”
“That doesn’t explain why she stopped breathing,” Pauline countered.
She placed her hands on her slim hips, now concealed in black jeans that hugged her thighs as if someone had painted them on her.
“I’m not exactly sure if I didn’t panic there too,” Derrick said, running a hand through the longer lengths of his dark locks.
“Then why did you give her mouth to mouth?” Pauline said, glaring at him.
His response was merely a shrug. He slipped on a yellow graphic tee with a green raised symbol of infinity on the front.
“Better to be safe than…whatever, it doesn’t really matter much does it. She’s okay and that’s all I care about.”
“What does the infinity symbol mean to you?” Kaila said, completely derailing the conversation between Derrick and Pauline.
Derrick dragged his gaze away from Pauline. Despite her irritation with him his extended stare seemed to indicate that he was still very much into her. Kaila wondered if he had seen her scar and whether it mattered to him.
“That everything is infinite, and that nothing that is created can really be destroyed, it just changes form but continues to exist,” he said simply.
Kaila nodded, slightly surprised that he and Trillian were so close in their opinion. Kaila agreed with Derrick, but still believed that there was more to it than his simple explanation, because how could something so ancient and meaningful be summed up so succinctly. There had to be more to it, of that she was sure. And because Kaila’s thoughts never worked in a linear fashion, she moved on to the next subject that was weighing heavy in her mind.
“Why were you and Pauline together like that? Pauline is supposed to be in love with Janelle.”
Derrick opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything Pauline piped in.
“I made a mistake. If I had been thinking I would never have even looked at…” Her voice faltered then she went quiet. She cast her eyes to the floor as if ashamed. Her body bowed down like a tree with a thick coating of snow on its branches, adding credence to the sentiment.
Derrick’s face didn’t reveal his feelings, despite Pauline’s harsh words.
“Yeah, whatever, I’m out of here.”
He limped to the door of the room, his walking cast made a soft tapping sound as he moved. He paused and stared at Pauline for a beat; she remained focused on the floor. When his eyes met Kaila’s she caught the briefest glimpse of sadness in their depths, but as soon as she had seen it, it was gone and so was he.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Pauline said, landing with a bounce on the thin mattress of her bed. Kaila noticed that the bed was still rumpled from the recent activity, a testament that Pauline and Derrick’s encounter had really happened. Pauline shook her head, sighed hugely then trapped her bottom lip between her perfectly straight teeth.
“I can’t believe I was actually about to fuck him,” she said, releasing an exaggerated groan. When Pauline snapped her head up suddenly Kaila realized that her roommate’s eyes were filled with tears. In this position her hair had shifted, once again showcasing her scar. Kaila understood Derrick’s interest in Pauline, because even with the scar marring half of her face, she was breathtakingly beautiful. She was however at a loss for how he had somehow managed to finagle her roommate into a position where the two were destined to consummate a relationship that should never have existed.
“You saved my ass Kaila. If you hadn’t interrupted I might have…and then Janelle and…” She shook her head violently, willing the thoughts away.
“What’s wrong with me? Why do I sabotage anything that’s good in my life, I mean it’s cra…”
“Crazy,” Kaila finished. “That’s exactly what we are, right?”
Pauline nodded. “There’s a crazy in all of us Kaila, some people are just better at hiding it than others.”
She pushed back against the wall, mirroring Kaila’s position. The two stared at each other in silence.
“I think they lock us away in here and call us crazy because we know too much,” Kaila said breaking the quiet.
Pauline nodded introspectively. “You might be on to something there,” she said with a lopsided grin, then shrugged.
“Well I better go see Janelle, see if I can salvage our relationship.”
Pauline lurched to her feet, her tears forgotten; a reticent expression clouded her face.
“Why can’t you keep it a secret?” Kaila asked.
As far as she knew Derrick and Pauline’s almost sex wasn’t public knowledge, not yet at least.
“You know this place, word travels, besides I have to come clean, if I don’t I know it will make me a little loopy. I may not have a lot of scruples especially not based on my most recent screw up, but I’ve never been much of a liar. Though half the time I really wish it was one of my talents.”
Pauline tossed her hair to the side with a flip of her head then drew in a long breath.
“I care too much about Janelle not to be up front about what happened, but I have
you
to thank for it being a whole lot less of a fuck up than it could have been.”
Before Kaila had realized what was happening, Pauline swept in and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. Her roommate was out of the door before Kaila could react to the touch; oddly, the spiders that were always waiting to invade didn’t seem to care much in this instance.
CHAPTER 11
Janelle shot up from her seat, tears blurring her tiny eyes. She spun toward the door, raced across the cafeteria and almost toppled Kaila as she rushed by and out. Kaila watched Janelle’s bulky frame until she disappeared around a corner. All she could think was that it was never good when these kinds of predictions came true. From the look on Pauline’s face, who was still sitting in a chair at a table, she was as distraught as Janelle was. She buried her face in her hands; her hair fell forward into a puddle on the smooth surface in front of her.
Kaila moved to the tray stacks, grasping a bright orange plastic tray in her hand. Tuesday was lasagna day, and if she was lucky there might still be some garlic bread available. She closed her eyes for a moment, testing her prediction skills. Though she knew her odds in this situation were around fifty-fifty, give or take, she still decided to give it a shot. Using all available predicting tools she had at her disposal, she swept her gaze across the cafeteria. The room that seated at least one hundred at a time, but usually was only half-filled most days, was as expected, half-full. Based on previous data she had collected of the roughly fifty people in the cafeteria, only half of them liked garlic bread. She also knew that the cafeteria always made one hundred and twenty slices of garlic toast, and based on the number of patients that she knew…
“Hey.”
Derrick appeared out of nowhere, completely throwing off her calculations. She was angry at his interruption, but a bit of warmth worked through her because his insistence on being noticed by her once again reminded her a little of Norm. The next flash that entered her mind was of him and Pauline rolling around on the bed half-dressed, her original irritation quickly resurfaced.
“Leave me alone,” she snapped, bringing her thoughts back to the garlic bread.
She shifted her focus away from Derrick, staring through and around him, as if he were a pane of glass.
“You don’t have to be so pissy, I just wanted to see if you were okay, you were really fucked up before,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. Kaila didn’t usually hit people who weren’t Norm, but she was beginning to think that Derrick might be an exception.
“I said leave me alone,” she repeated, a razor edge of menace colored her voice.
“Screw that,” Derrick said, crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child. Kaila felt, more than willed, her right hand form into a tight fist; all the tendons in her forearm were immediately taut and ready. She predicted that it would only take one quick crack to his nose and Derrick would be finished. Unlike Norm, there was no iron in Derrick, he was a man-boy. No matter how old he got, she knew he would always be in the middle, somewhere between an adult and a teen.
“Come on Kaila.”
Kaila hadn’t noticed that Pauline had left her place at her table and was standing directly beside her. Pauline’s voice had been enough to diffuse Kaila. She allowed her hands to go slack at her sides.
Kaila glowered at Derrick, an act that would have incited fear in most but didn’t seem to affect him at all. He stood his ground, unmoving. The way he was so steadfast in his stance made Kaila wonder if he too could predict the future, if he had determined that there was no threat at all and that he would walk away from their interaction unscathed. This thought interested her enough that her garlic bread musings were lost completely.