Remember Me (25 page)

Jimmy smiled. "Is that so? Who's going to stop me?"

In response, Amanda kissed him long and deep on die lips, her bathrobe breaking open partway at die top. She was definitely naked underneath. "I am,"

she said when she finally pulled back. "I'm going to keep you awake as long as I like, and then I'm going to put you to sleep with a bang."

"Sounds dangerous," Jimmy said, getting interested but yawning again.

Amanda moved back on her knees. "You're tired because you didn't take your medicine this evening. You don't have to be embarrassed. I take insulin, too, remember?" She tossed her head as if she had just been struck with a brilliant idea.

"Hey, let me give you your shot. And you can give me mine."

"Peter," I cried. "Do something."

Jimmy pushed himself up on his elbow. "Are you serious?"

"Sure. And then you'll have the strength to make love to me. Would you like to make love to me, Jimmy?"

He nodded as he sat up farther, even though he couldn't stop yawning. "Yeah, but I'm bushed. I don't want a shot. I need rest. I haven't been sleeping well the last few days."

Amanda became very still. "Have you been dreaming of her?"

"Shari? Yeah." It broke my heart to see him glance at the flames at the mention of my name.

''I dreamed about her last night."

"So did I, " Amanda said. "I dreamed we were blowing bubbles. But she kept trying to burst mine. It made me mad."

"Shari wouldn't have done that."

"She was doing it."

Jimmy gave her a puzzled look. "Shari liked you, Amanda."

Amanda lowered her head. "No she didn't. She didn't like me seeing you. She tried to keep us apart. She thought our relationship was—wrong. She was going to tell you, I know she was. She was just waiting for the right time."

"She was the one who introduced us," Jimmy said.

"She didn't know we were going to fall in love."

Jimmy forgot about his poor dead sister for a moment. He brightened. "You never said that before."

Amanda smiled sadly. "That I love you? Couldn't you tell?"

Jimmy reached out and took her hand as it rested in her lap. "I wanted to think you did, but I wasn't sure. Especially when you stopped returning my calls."

"My mom didn't always give me your messages."

"Was that all there was to it?" Jimmy asked gently.

Amanda bit her lower lip. "No. The main reason was because of what I heard my mother saying."

"When?"

"Late at night, when she was praying. I told you. I thought I had to stay away. And I tried, too, but I couldn't."

"What did she say?" Jimmy asked.

Amanda raised her head and stared him in the eye. "That we were related."

Jimmy chuckled. "Really?"

Amanda stared at him a moment longer and then slowly nodded. "I'm glad you don't care.

I don't. I remember a line

I once read in a poem. It said, 'Love knows no reason.'

That's how I feel about you. That I would do anything for you. Anything to keep you for myself."

Jimmy was amazed. "Have you always felt this way?"

"Yes. I can't even imagine your being with anyone else."

Amanda took his hand and kissed his knuckles. "Especially her."

Jimmy wasn't sure he had heard correctly. "Who?"

Amanda's eyes lingered on that portion of his arm not covered by his sleeve. "I can see your needle marks," she said, which was a lie. I couldn't see anything.

"I wouldn't leave marks like those."

The smoke from the fire seemed to back up in the chimney and choke the room. Jimmy took hold of her chin and looked longingly into her cold, clear gray eyes, noticing, perhaps, the way her rosy lips trembled at his touch, but failing completely to see the spiked halo that spun like a sticky cobweb from the core of her black-widow heart.

"You know I love you," he said.

She smiled faintly. "More than anyone?"

"Yes."

"You trust me?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then let me do it," Amanda said.

"What?"

"Let me give you a shot. And then you can give me one."

"Do you need insulin?" Jimmy asked, obviously not keen on the idea. "Have you tested your sugar level?"

She leaned closer, enclosing him in her claws. "I need it.

You need it. We can make love afterward. Then we can sleep."

"But why?" Jimmy began. Amanda put her finger to his lips.

"Because I want to do it," she said. "Please?"

Jimmy thought a moment and then shrugged. "All right."

"Where is Garrett?" I cried.

Peter checked his watch. It had a luminous dial. "He could be as long as another ten minutes."

Amanda kissed Jimmy quickly and stood up and walked from the room.

Leaving Peter with Jimmy, I went after her.

She headed upstairs to the hall bathroom, where I had unknowingly caught her sticking herself before the party.

There she retrieved three syringes and one vial of insulin from Jimmy's refrigerated supplies. Going back down the stairs, I tried tripping her, but she didn't care.

"Bitch," I swore at her.

In the flickering shadows outside the door to the steaming living room and the cracking fire, Amanda poked a needle into the vial. Like most diabetics, Jimmy took two forms of insulin: regular and long-lasting. Regular acted far more quickly, and it was that kind Amanda held in her hand. It was the medication of choice to rid a diabetic of sugar blues.

But whereas Jimmy's normal dosage was ten units, Amanda filled the hundred-unit syringe to the hilt.

"What will that do to your brother if she gets it in his bloodstream?" Peter asked, rejoining me and watching Amanda's secret preparations.

"It could send him into insulin shock," I said, unable to stand the tension.

"But could he survive it?" Peter insisted.

"Yes. But even if it just puts him to sleep, that's no good. The girl's nuts!"

"How long till it takes effect?"

"It requires half an hour for its effect to peak," I said.

"But he'll be out in less than fifteen minutes."

"Still, time is on his side," Peter said.

"Time is never on your side when you're alive," I said.

Amanda stuffed the loaded syringe into her bathrobe pocket and strode into the living room. The bad black vibes were alive and hungry and everywhere to be seen. Jimmy continued to lie on the pillows by the fire. He had his eyes closed and only half opened them as his true love knelt by his side.

"I'm thirsty," he muttered.

"Your pancreas is probably freaking out," Amanda said, the two empty syringes and the half-filled vial clearly visible in her hands. "You need this."

"I don't know," he mumbled, yawning and rolling over.

"I just want to sleep."

Amanda put her left hand on his right ankle, setting down the insulin and unused syringes and carefully slipping the full needle from her pocket. "Let me take care of you, and then you can rest," she said.

Jimmy suddenly sat up. Amanda deftly dropped the needle back into her pocket. He nodded to the unopened syringes lying on the rug near the fireplace bricks. "Maybe I should test myself first."

"We can estimate your dosage," Amanda said.

He was doubtful. "You use synthetic, right?"

"Yes. In the evenings, I usually take ten units of regular.

How about you? The same?"

Jimmy yawned and nodded wearily. "All right. Let's do it."

"Turn over," she said.

"What?"

"I'll give it to you in your backside like a nurse." She smiled at his discomfort.

"Don't be embarrassed, Jimmy."

"I usually just do it in my arm."

"Your arms are all sore." She picked up one of the unopened syringes and gestured for him to turn over. "It'll just take a sec, and then you can do me in the same spot."

Amanda was convincing. Jimmy lay down on his belly and closed his eyes. Yet she made no move to pull up his robe.

"If it will make you feel better," she said, undergoing an abrupt change in tone,

"I can put it in your leg."

"That would be fine," Jimmy muttered.

"Or your foot," she said, setting down the empty needle and picking up his right foot.

Once again, she removed the loaded syringe from her pocket.

"Won't that hurt?" he asked.

"You'll hardly feel it," Amanda promised.

"Be careful not to hit a vein," Jimmy said.

"Peter!" I cried. "She's going to put it in his vein!"

"What will that do?" Peter asked.

"The insulin will go straight into his bloodstream! He'll be out in minutes!"

I had guessed Amanda's plan well. Quickly and smoothly, she pinched the skin around the big vein closest to his ankle and slid the needle home. Jimmy's eyelids barely flickered. It took Amanda only a few seconds to empty the syringe. Then she gathered together all the needles, plus the insulin vial, and put them in her pocket. She patted him on the rump as she stood.

"Rest there a minute," Amanda said.

"What about you?" Jimmy asked.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she said.

"Watch him," I told Peter as I chased after her.

Amanda returned to the bathroom upstairs and put away both the unused needles and the tiny bottle of insulin. Yet she left the opened needle in her pocket, even though it was now drained. I could not imagine what she wanted it for.

Amanda stopped to wash her face before she left the bathroom. I stood to her left and watched her in the mirror as I had done the previous Friday night when I had been admiring her beauty.

"Please don't do anything else to him," I pleaded.

Amanda dried her face and put out the light.

Jimmy was sitting up on the pillows when she reentered the living room. "I don't feel so good," he mumbled.

Amanda strode to the pile of wood to the left of the fireplace. "You'll feel better in a few minutes," she said.

Jimmy frowned in her direction. "What are you doing?"

Amanda picked up a log. "Keeping the fire going."

"Don't. I'm hot." His head swayed atop his shoulders, and he raised a hand to steady it.

"What's happening?"

Amanda threw the log into the fire. The sparks cracked like cheap fireworks.

She came and knelt by his side and placed what might have been a cool palm over his sweaty forehead. "You poor darling," she said. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No." He bent over. "I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"That's the insulin," Amanda said. "I gave you a hundred units."

He sat up and winced. "What?"

Amanda sat back on her knees. She looked sad. "Mrs. Foulton called me earlier. She's over at my mother's house right now. They're discussing us. They don't want me seeing you anymore."

"What are you talking about?"

"I thought it would stop with Shari. I thought they would leave us alone. But they're not going to."

Something darker than sickness touched Jimmy's face.

Too late, he was beginning to get the message. "Why do you bring up Shari?"

Amanda looked to the fire and appeared to go blank for a few seconds. When she spoke next, it was with a peculiar mixture of bitterness and confusion, a small girl mad at a world suddenly grown big and complex.

"When I decided to go to the party," she said, "I didn't know what I wanted. I thought maybe I would talk to Shari about us, bring it out in the open and get it over with. I didn't want to, though. Then she kept me from having my shot when I needed it. She forced me to eat cake.

It made me feel weird—I shouldn't have had a second piece. I could hardly think. Then, at the party, there was this magnet that you could ask questions. I asked about us, and it said that our love was real. It said that I should protect it. The magnet told me I had to take control of my own destiny." Amanda lowered her head, her pale face disappearing behind the fall of her long hair.

"But what I did, I did on the spur of the moment."

I glanced at Peter, silently asking if he knew what she was talking about in regard to the magnet answers. He quickly shook his head.

"What did you do?" Jimmy whispered. He was having trouble breathing. Sweat no longer merely dampened his forehead; it poured off his brow and into his eyes. Amanda raised her head, and her arm, too, and gestured to the richly furnished living room.

"I grew up in a slum," she said, her tone harsh. "She grew up in a mansion.

She was given everything she wanted: new cars, new clothes. I had to take the bus to school and wear hand-me-downs. She was spoiled rotten. Do you know my own mother had to make her bed for her? She should burn in hell!"

"The message on the Ouija board," Peter gasped.

Jimmy sagged forward and had to throw out an arm to keep from landing face-first in the carpet. "What did you do to my sister?"

Amanda was suddenly concerned. "Are you still sick?"

"What did you do?" he demanded.

Amanda smiled. "Nothing. Your sister's fine."

Jimmy swallowed thickly. "You killed Shari."

Amanda nodded. "I did push her off the balcony. She deserved it. She was standing there and thinking mean thoughts about me. I pushed her, and then I climbed onto the roof and went over to the fire escape and came back in Bern's front door. I thought I had blown it, that everyone would know. But I was lucky. When I came back into the bedroom, Dan saw me and thought I had just come out of the bathroom." Amanda's face softened, and she touched Jimmy on the shoulder as he huddled before her in the throes of his insulin fit.

"I know you liked her, but she really was no good. She wasn't even your sister."

He fought it but was unable to stop from toppling over onto his side. He glared up at her with glazed eyes. "You're crazy."

She looked hurt. "No, I'm not. I had good reason to do it.

And
I
am your sister." She leaned over to give him a kiss.

"If I can't have you, no one's going to have you."

Then she jolted upright, blood on her face.

He had bit her on the lip.

"Go to hell," he gasped, his eyes falling shut.

Amanda stared at him for a long time after he had lapsed into unconsciousness, the blood trickling over her chin in a steady stream. "Yes,"