Bitter Angel (10 page)

Hours went by with strange faces hovering, X-raying my ankle, and probing my injuries in a room with curtains for walls. They lathered me in salves and bundled me practically head-to-toe in thick bandages. They asked questions my numb state only allowed minimal answers to as I slipped in and out of consciousness.

I had no idea what time it was when I heard a familiar female voice come to me in the darkened room where they had docked me for the night. I only knew that it was real, not a trick of my imagination, because I had been fighting real sleep the entire time. I also knew right away that something was up from the muted sound of her shoes. The nurse that’d been checking on me all night wore shoes with squeaky rubber soles.

Light from the hallway washed over my blinking eyes, and I felt a warm hand on my shoulder, one of the only parts of me not bandaged.

“They found your friends, honey. We just brought ‘em in. Just off Harrison Road. Good memory. Caught the guys too.”

There was a pause. My brain struggled with my body, begging it to pull itself from this chemically and physically induced drowsy state, but they had me too drugged with pain meds for my ankle. I’d turned down all sleep meds for this very reason, but my body was still defying me. I could barely wiggle the finger the pulse ox was pinching.

Then she added, “The girls are gonna be fine.”

I could tell she wanted to say more by the way her fingers tightened, and I sensed it would be along the lines of,
as fine as one can be
. Meaning, they’d be fine physically, eventually. But mentally? Emotionally? They hadn’t had the benefit of being completely conscious and able to fight like me. God only knew what’d been done to them.

But, they’re alive,
I told myself. That’s all I had to think about right now. My eyes closed in relief. I wanted to cry, but I was too doped up.

“You did good, honey,” she whispered, letting go of my arm to stroke my tangled hair. “Real good.”

I moaned out the faintest, “Thank you,” from parched lips.

The pressure of her hands went away, and the hallway light was there and gone, abandoning me to a blanket of loneliness. I was only awake for about three more seconds until I finally succumbed to sleep.

I did it. I won.
That was my last thought.

Saturday morning

As I begin to wake, I keep my eyes safely closed, listening first for the beeps of machinery that tell me I’m in the hospital. I have
to be in the hospital because I remember everything.

I remember going out with my friends, and I remember staying behind with Jay. I remember the danger, still feel the pain. I remember the feel of Jay’s naked chest against my back as we fell asleep and the sadness in his eyes when he begged me to consider transferring schools. Somehow, I lived last night twice, and it’s all clicking together in swift and terrifying pieces.

When I went out with the girls, Nilah and Heather survived. Then in my dreams, I so vividly recall their deaths. This can only mean one thing—Alpha was lying. He was never going to drop them off safely and hope that Heather lived. Or maybe he was and without me there, something even worse had gone awry. I don’t know.

I can’t think about this anymore.
I need
to know
.

I hear no beeps, but that means nothing really. Maybe the nurse took me off the monitors at some point during the night when I was too groggy to notice. I feel the warmth of the sun on my face. My heart is beating triple time as the anticipation taunts me. I clench whatever is underneath my fingers and feel something dreadfully familiar—my cotton comforter.

I tell myself I’m imagining it. Maybe the hospital blankets feel like my comforter. Sucking in a shaky breath, I give my eyes one more moment of blissful darkness.

I’m scared. Shit, I’m scared.
I know how weird this situation is, but the only thing more certain than my fear is the confidence that what happened to me last night was real.

Without further torture, my eyelids burst apart. One tiny second explodes into fragments as I absorb my surroundings in slow motion. I see my dorm room’s stamped ceiling, Heather’s
Wicked
poster on the wall, and Nilah’s multicolored purses hanging on hooks by the door.

I see it all—everything I hoped I wouldn’t, yet it’s all there.

In some random desperation, I practically smack the side of my face. No cut. My cheek is perfectly smooth, untouched.

My stomach plunges to the floor as I stumble from my bed. I make a weird noise deep in my throat that reminds me of vomiting, and I think that maybe I will vomit. My hands catch at my throat. I stagger backward until I hit the wall where I crumple to the floor in a heap. I’m choking on air and can’t catch my breath.

I killed them. I killed them. I killed them…
My mind replays the message like it’s on auto-repeat. Then I’m screaming it out loud, “I killed them! I killed them! I killed them!” I scream it until I see a blurry figure leap toward me and try to pry my hands away from my throat.

“It’s okay, baby! Calm down. Calm down.”

Jay’s words do nothing for me. Nothing can calm me down. I grab fistfuls of his T-shirt and shake him as I cry. It’s a deep, wracking sob that comes from the core of my body, the core of who I am as a person. I cry it all out because it doesn’t matter anymore if it’s gone, if my tears melt me into a puddle on the floor. I can never be the same, knowing what I know, having done what I did.

I stayed behind. I killed them.

I wasn’t conscious of this when I chose it, but this will still relentlessly haunt me to my end. Others might not blame me for this, but I will. I chose. Me. And I chose selfishly.

I feel air under me as I’m lifted off the floor and held tight in Jay’s arms. He rocks me back and forth, and I weep and stare at nothing.

I continue babbling in a low voice over and over, “I killed them.”

He has no idea and I can’t explain. He tries to shush me as he strokes my hair, but I can’t silence myself.

Suddenly, I hear a noise and a strange shuffle. Through my tear-stung eyes, I see keys and a white paper bag fall to the floor.

“What the hell happened?”

Nilah.
Impossible.

“I don’t know.” Jay’s voice is frantic and helpless. “She was like this when I woke up. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She keeps saying she killed something. Or someone. I don’t know.”

Then I see Nilah’s face.
What a beautiful face,
I think.
Is she an angel?

She takes my hands. “Lil? Lillie Doll? Look at me, babe. What’s wrong?”

Lillie Doll…

She hasn’t called me that since freshman year in high school when she was obsessed with Jean Harlow during a 1930s kick. She abandoned it only when she realized that the full metamorphosis of the character meant dying her hair blonde. Nilah was far too vain to change her hair. Harlow was history, and I went back to plain ol’ Lil.

I look at her with a trance-like stare, telling myself she can’t be real.
She’s dead.
I saw her face in my dreams. I saw her coffin.

Reaching out, I touch my fingertips to her cheek.

She captures them, holding them there. “Tell me what’s wrong, Lil. We can’t help until you tell us what it is.”

“Is Heather an angel, too?” I whisper, mesmerized.

Nilah looks at me like I’m nuts, which I kind of am because I’m seeing dead people.

“Lil, Heather’s in class. You know she has her seven-thirty on Fridays.”

Friday?

I say it aloud in the smallest voice. “Friday?”

Nilah shakes her head, annoyed. “Of course it’s Friday. It’s my birthday, and you’re not allowed to be crazy on my birthday.”

I blink a few times. “Friday?”

“
Yes
. It’s Friday,” she confirms.

I look up at Jay, finally seeing him for the first time. He’s in a T-shirt. Friday night he went to bed shirtless.

“What are you doing here?” I finally ask him, my voice cracking.

His forehead is creased with worry. He swallows. “I wanted to come early and surprise you, but I got in late last night. You were sound asleep, so I just crawled in with you. I’m sorry.”

He has nothing to apologize for. I don’t know what has just transpired, and I’m now starting to doubt myself completely.

I make a feeble attempt to stand. Jay has to help me. I take tentative steps to my desk where I see a pile of unanswered quiz questions waiting to be filled in. My books and spiral notebooks are piled neatly, ready to be taken to class, and my enormous calendar sits underneath it all. Peeking out from the bottom corner of my European history book are the squares for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday for this week is crossed off. Friday isn’t.

Today is Friday.

“No,” I barely whisper as my knees buckle.

Jay catches me under the arms, helping me to the edge of the bed. I begin crying again because I don’t know how this could’ve happened. I don’t know how I could’ve gotten so lucky.

It only strikes me now that my ankle is not broken, and I stretch it in every direction to prove to myself that it’s fine. My cheek is not cut, my ankle is not broken, and my skin is not scraped or bruised. I’m fine…on the outside.

Jay sits on one side of me with Nilah on the other. They each have an arm around me, trying to reassure me, but I can tell neither really knows what to say.

“I’m okay,” I tell them with a face full of tears. “I am, really. I just had…”

What did I have exactly? A very vivid dream? A hallucination of some sort? An acid trip?
I truly have no idea.

I go with the dream scenario. “… a
really
bad dream.” I don’t sound very convincing, but they seem to buy it.

“Okay, babe,” Nilah tells me. “It’ll be okay. Just let it go. Today’s supposed to be a fun day, remember?”

Of course I remember. I’ll never forget Nilah’s twentieth birthday for as long as I live. “Sure.” I nod. Jay is still rubbing my back. “Just let me…I need a moment.”

Feet still shaky, I shuffle into the bathroom, turn on the cold water, and brace myself against the sink for a few seconds.
It was just a dream.
It had to be. What other explanation do I have? The proof is on the calendar and on the faces of my friend and boyfriend.
It was a dream.

With that decided, I cup my hands and throw a handful of water at my face. It’s cool and crisp, and I feel revived, awake.
It was a dream.
I blow out a breath and grab the hand towel from the bar by the mirror. I pat my face dry and take a good look.

Then all the color drains from my skin. My dream explanation whooshes right out of me in a swift exhale when I realize what it is I’ve just woken up in.

Trigger’s designer T-shirt.