Everyone's Favorite Girl (2 page)

"What's the last thing you remember?" Flora asked.

Good question.  I could tell by the look on her face she knew the answer before I did.

Kicking a hole in the wall, with Clifton lying dead behind me and Judy sobbing.  That was the last thing I remembered.

"Last night," I said.

Flora curled her brow.  "Be specific.  Describe what happened last night."

"You remember, right?  They almost killed you.  I killed Brian."

She was shaking her head.  "Melissa, that was three weeks ago."  She explained further, "The drug they're using on you is causing memory loss.  The good news is it seems to taper off a little each day, and you start to remember things.  The bad news is every time you're almost back to normal, they take you away again."

She was holding herself together well, but I could tell this was tearing her apart.  Still, she'd been prepared, at the ready with a hot towel when Sean carried me into the room and slammed me down on the bed.  She'd expected me to puke.

"Here, take this."

She handed me two tiny oblong capsules, both red on one side and white on the other.

"Benadryl?"

"So you'll fall asleep."

"Why?"

"You have a massive headache coming in a little while.  It's best if you nap through it."

She was right.  I could feel the pressure building up.  Without another word, I popped the pills in my mouth and gulped down the glass of water Flora handed me.  Then I tried to sit up, but she easily pushed me back down, leaned over me, and grabbed a pillow to stuff under my head.

"When you wake up, you'll be sore," she said, "but we'll have to get you up anyway.  You'll have a hard time walking, but the Jacuzzi will make you feel better."

"I could go for a glass of wine," I said.

Flora giggled, then pursed her lips.  "You say that every time.  They took all the alcohol, Melissa."

So that part of the hypnosis had been real.

Shit.

I sat up quickly this time, before Flora could intercept.  I was too weak to fight her, but I managed to be quick.

"What else did they take?"

"You should lie back," she said.

"Flora, tell me."

She took a deep breath.  "Promise you won't yell at me this time."

"I yelled at you?"

"A lot."

"When?"

"Almost every day for the past three weeks."  She looked up at me then.  "I know it's not your fault.  They're doing this to you--
changing
you.  It--it scares me."

I could tell she was scared--not of the circumstances per se, but of
me.
  Terrified to the point that she hesitated to even express her fear.

She had every reason to be scared.  I could feel myself getting irritated with her, a surprising yet overwhelming sensation.  It came with a surge of guilt, and I tried to fight it, but the more my irritation grew, the more lazily I tried to suppress it.

Until finally I was just pissed.

Why the hell was she so scared, anyway?  This was happening to
me
.  I was the one being brainwashed.  All
she
had to do was play nurse.

Flora climbed off the bed.

"Where are you going?"

"You need sleep," she said timidly.

"You didn't answer my question."

She winced at my tone--a little snappy, I admit.

"I'm gonna go sleep on the couch," she said.  "It's four in the morning.  They always come get you late at night--to scare you, I think.  So you'll lose sleep the rest of the week.  It's working, too.  On both of us."

She did look exhausted, standing there barefoot in her wrinkled nightgown, her hair frizzy and misshapen.  Even in my state it was hard not to be impressed by her resourcefulness. 
She was, after all, only eighteen years old.

My eyelids had grown heavy, and just as I was about to lash out at Flora for leaving me to lie here by myself--still operating out of jealousy from having hallucinated Kate and her hitting it off so well, I think--I succumbed to the sudden urge to yawn.

"I meant the other question," I said, still frustrated but lazily so.  "What else did they take from the room?"

"A lot of stuff," she said.  "The weed, the steak knives, cleaning chemicals--James gave us a list of things we're not allowed to have.  I guess they're afraid you'll build a bomb or something."

"What about the Libido Drug?"

She shook her head.  "That was the first thing Sean asked for."

"And you
gave
it to him?"

"No, you did," she said calmly.

“No I didn’t!”

When you suffer amnesia, you don’t just forget things.  You forget that you forgot.  This is never portrayed accurately in movies.  Someone brings up something you did, particularly something bad, and your immediate response is denial--not acceptance.  It’s like the morning after a night getting black-out drunk, being told by your best friend that you made out with a stranger.

Flora stood there shivering and I felt another sharp twinge of guilt.  She didn’t look wounded so much as lonely.  All things considered, I was lucky she had the heart to not hold my behavior against me.

At the same time, she was completely alone with it.

So why did she want to sleep alone?

I asked her as much.

“You’re about to have really bad nightmares,” she said.  “You punched me in the nose the first time.”

“Did you bleed?”

She nodded, balking not from the question but from the tone with which I delivered it.

One thing was certain: I did need sleep.  I couldn’t stand the feeling of constant irritation, emotions dancing on the brim.

And Flora didn’t deserve this.

“Go to sleep,” I said, dropping my head on the pillow and staring up at the recessed light fixtures, all glowing a dull orange.

“Goodnight, Melissa,” Flora said.

~ ~ ~ ~

I remember opening my mouth to say goodnight, but I’m not sure it ever came out.  I was instantly asleep and, as Flora predicted, trudging through some of the worst nightmares of my life, mostly involving Patton and Kate in various sexual positions, sometimes laughing at me as I sat unable to move at Patton’s dining table, watching them fuck like porn stars.

When I woke up, it felt like the entire morning had passed in a single blink, only now the soreness had intensified all over my body.  Despite my lack of sleep, the pain had me fully
awake in just a few seconds.

Flora was already up.  I could hear her opening the refrigerator door.

It took a lot of effort to sit up.  When I finally made it, Flora appeared beside me with a food tray.  On it was a single waffle, three strips of bacon, a handful of strawberries, a glass of orange juice, and a glass of water.

Strangely enough, it was exactly what I wanted.

I dove in without even thanking her, first chewing down a strip of bacon and then tearing into the waffle, over which she’d lightly drizzled syrup.

“The first two times, you asked for waffles and bacon,” Flora said.  I looked up at her and saw she was very pleased with my ferocity.  “And last time you wished you’d asked for strawberries to go with it.”

“Weird.”

The food was gone in no time and I had Flora fetch me another glass of water.  On top of everything else, these rounds of experiments left me dehydrated, probably from all the sweating.

I downed the water, handed her the glass, and fell back onto my pillow.

“
Nuh-uh,” Flora said, a sheepish yet authoritative tone in her voice.  “We have to get you to the Jacuzzi.  You’ll be stiff as a board otherwise.”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“You have to.”

“I don’t have to do shit, Flora.  I tell
you
what to do, remember?”

Jesus.  I sound like Kate
.

The thought was alarming--not so much the similarity in behavior, though normally that would be enough to make me want to slit my wrists, but the idea that maybe Mr. Shriver was trying to turn me into Kate.

Trying to turn me into a loyal Your Favorite Girl employee.

“You can be mean to me if you feel you have to,” Flora said, “but I’ll drag you in there if that’s what it takes.  Come on.”

She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled.  My first instinct was to jerk my arm away, but I managed to stop myself.  In true Kate fashion, I was trying my best to be Little Miss Contrary, but I knew I didn’t want to wind up bed-ridden.  Flora said Sean came to collect me once a week.  If I had any chance of putting a stop to these experiments, I needed all the time I could get.

Truthfully, though, I wasn’t thinking about that.  The aching in my muscles demanded all my attention, and if relief waited in the steamy water of the Jacuzzi, that’s where I wanted to be.

“Easy,” Flora said, putting my arm over her shoulders and helping me stand up off the bed.

My knees wobbled and my legs felt like they’d been doused with flaming gasoline.  With each slow, cumbersome step, a jolt of pain shot up from my ankle to my hip, an agonizing sensation somewhere between a Charlie horse and a limb falling asleep.

“Goddamn it, this fucking hurts!” I shouted just as we entered the corridor, my voice amplified and sharpened to the point that even I found it abrasive.

“You’re doing great,” Flora said.

“Yeah, look at me.”  I grunted.  “Ready for the fucking Olympics over here.”

Flora giggled.

“What’s so fucking funny?”

“You say that every time.”

“Do you laugh at me every time, too?”

A quiet moment passed.  Then she said, “I’m just trying to cheer you up.”

“Well you’re doing a piss-poor job.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can say.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re always irritable and I‘m pretty sure you can‘t control it until you’ve spent some time recuperating.”

“Irritable?  Just go ahead and say it.  I’m being a bitch.”

“Basically,” Flora said, and I laughed--the way you laugh at someone you’re about to fight.

We entered the shower room.

“So now I’m a bitch, huh?”

“They’re trying to turn you into one.  Here, sit down on the ledge.”

I obeyed but toyed with the idea of pushing Flora fully dressed into the water.  Where were these thoughts coming from?  It was as though my mind had split in two, like cellular meiosis, one side relishing the torture of Flora, the other revolted by it, and neither side fully conscious.

“Raise your arms.”

A wave of nausea rushed through me as I lifted my shaky arms over my head.  Flora pulled my tank top off and goose bumps forming instantly on my chest.

She had to help with my pajama pants, too, and as I spun around to face the Jacuzzi, she guided one leg over the ledge and into the water, then the other.

I managed to lower myself into the pool on my own.  Then my body seemed to melt.  I closed my eyes, taking in the heat and the overwhelming relief it provided, and breathed with my mouth open as the pain slowly dissolved.

“Fuck yes, this feels awesome.”

For a moment the room went silent.  I was so entranced by the remedial water I forgot Flora was there.

Then I heard a plopping sound and opened my eyes to find her undressed and stepping into the pool next to me.  She sat quickly and scooted around to face me.  What she did next, I mistook for a sexual advance.

Scooting as close as she could get, she crossed her right leg over my left leg, then dug her foot under my knee and scooted her left leg under my right leg.

“What the hell are you doing?  Trying to--”

“Scissor you?” she interjected, smiling.  “Just relax.”

I felt her thumbs pressing into the muscles on my right thigh, and then it made sense.  She was giving me a massage.

I closed my eyes again, resting my head on the hard granite ledge behind me.

“This . . . this is worth a million a day."

I realized how bad that sounded, but I didn't care--even though I knew Mr. Shriver was doing this to me, making me callous.  He was winning at a game in which I'd lost interest.

My most hedonistic moment, legs interlocked with a naked virgin, scoffing her as she worked the pain out of my muscles, the ends of her hair dipping into the water when she leaned forward, clinging to her shoulders and breasts when she straightened her back.

She wasn't safe around me anymore.

My intentions for her were evolving.

"Let me ask you something."

She looked up at me and shook her head.  "You ask every time."

"Well?"