Chapter Five
3 Years, 26 Weeks, 0 Days
Dr. Fenwall is Santa. If Santa went on a SlimFast diet and wore corduroy pants every day of his life and used terms like “endometrial tissue.”
“Now, Isis, if you could just lie back…”
I slump on the CAT scan bed and huff. “I’ve done this before, doc! I’ve done lie-backs every freaking day since I’ve been here! At least seventy billion lie-backs!”
Fenwall’s eyes crinkle and his white mustache curls with his smile. “You should be a little used to it.”
“You never get used to being slotted into a giant doughnut’s vagina.” I motion at the CAT machine. It beeps excitedly. I plot its demise.
“Well, this is your last time doing it. Come on now, lie back.”
I shout “UGH” and flop back and bang my head.
“And be careful, will you? We spent a lot of hours sewing that cranium back together,” Fenwall chides. He presses a button and the CAT bed slides in, a tunnel engulfing me in dimness.
“You okay in there?” he asks.
“Everything’s cramped and smells like cotton balls.”
“Perfectly fine, then. Start it up, Cleo!”
A woman at the control panel in the next room waves through the window and the machine starts to whir. I hear Fenwall leave, and then it’s just me and Big Bertha. And her vagina.
“How’s…how’s the weather up there in…robot land?” I try.
The machine gurgles.
“Good. That’s good. And the kids?”
Big Bertha bleeps enthusiastically and a blue light blinds me.
“Ahh!” I shield my eyes. “Th-They must be going through teenage rebellion!”
The machine blips sadly and the light goes out.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “When they’re in their twenties they’ll think you’re smart and worth listening to again.”
“Tilt your head to the left, Isis,” Fenwall’s intercom blasts in my ear.
“Rude! I’m having a discussion here!”
“Are you talking to inanimate objects again? Mernich would love to hear about that.” I can hear his grin.
“No! No, I’m not talking to anything! Nothing at all! Just…myself! Which is basically nothing. Nothing special. Except my butt. My butt is definitely something hells special—”
“Left, Isis.” Fenwall doesn’t take my shit. In a friendly grandpa-y way. I tilt my head and Bertha beeps once, twice, and there’s a pause. The regular white lights come back on and the bed slides out slowly.
“Phew!” I leap up and shake off the claustrophobia. I hate small spaces.
Fenwall comes in. “Feeling all right?” he asks.
“Well, I need to spend five therapeutic years on the open plains of Mongolia, but other than that I’m good.”
“Fantastic. Your results will be done in just a second. Let’s go get your mother.”
I follow him out to the hall. It feels so good to walk around in my real clothes, not a hospital gown anymore. And the absence of a stinky bandage turban clinging to my head is a mild plus. I practice shaking my hair out like a majestic lion but almost hit an intern and stop. They have enough problems without strands of fabulous hair in their eyes. Mom’s waiting in the lobby. She smiles and gets up and hugs me.
“So? What are the results?”
Fenwall looks at the papers in his hands. “Everything looks fine. The hemorrhaged tissue has cleared up remarkably well.”
“What about this?” I point at the scar just to the side of my hairline and above my forehead. “The hair isn’t growing back. I’ll never get married!”
“The scar will shrink and fade, but that will take time. Years,” Fenwall says.
Mom pats my head. “It’s not too big, sweetie. Unless someone is seven feet tall and can look straight down on your head, no one will ever see it.”
She’s right. What’s one more scar on a girl full of them already, inside and out?
“Do I get any meds?” I ask. Fenwall smiles.
“Nope. You’re free to go. We’d like to set up a checkup appointment in a few weeks.”
He motions to Mom, and the two of them go to the counter and speak to the nurse. There isn’t a big crowd, but there are more people than normal on a Saturday. That doesn’t stop me from noticing the bright red hair walking through the lobby.
“Avery-boh-bavery!”
The flame-haired girl turns, perfect porcelain skin freckled as ever. But her eyes are all wrong—tired, bloodshot. Her clothes are perilously unfashionable. And the way her expression stays the same instead of a grimace or sneer forming when she recognizes me? Something is really off.
“You.” Her voice is tinny.
“Yes, me! I am alive! But that can be easily remedied.”
“Get out of my way.”
“How’ve you been? Busy? Beautiful bitch duties as usual?”
Avery’s mouth remains straight, not even the faintest of frowns appearing. “If you don’t move, I’ll make you move.”
“You can try! Push me a little, maybe? Throw me around? Don’t get too enthusiastic, though. If you cut me in half, nothing but rainbow sparkles and Bacardi would spill out. Also you would be a murderer.”
“I should cut you in half,” Avery finally snarls, her emotionless mask breaking. “You fucked her over.”
“What?”
“You.” Avery jabs her finger at my chest. “Sophia finally started talking to me, and then you ruined everything.”
“How did I ruin it?”
Avery’s expression is a cruel, twisted thing. “How fucking fair is it? I’ve been trying to make up for my mistakes with her for years. She’s shunned me for years. And then you come, for three weeks, and she likes you already? Now you’re leaving her. She won’t talk to anyone. Not the nurses. Not me.”
“I’m—I’m not leaving forever.”
“It doesn’t matter. She thinks you are. She thinks everyone leaves her.”
There’s a long pause. I know that feeling, more than I’d like. I nervously pick at my sweatshirt. Avery scoffs.
“But I can’t be all mad at you. When you came, she told me I could visit for once. So I did. And I got to tell her I was sorry.”
She looks off into the distance wistfully.
“I got to apologize, to at least try to make things right. So. Thanks. I guess.”
“You’re welcome? But also I’m going to see her before I leave? And I’ll come visit her? So I’m not actually, uh, leaving.”
“She’s having her surgery soon.” Avery doesn’t seem to hear me. “And now I can’t even say good-bye to her.”
“You can. I mean, you can say it. She might not be talking to you, but she’s listening. I’m sure of it.”
Avery shrugs, her face becoming blank and despondent again as she shoves past me.
That’s not Avery. That’s a hell-bent shell of the glorious bitch she used to be.
Mom and Fenwall come back, talking amicably. Mom says something about my checkup in February, but I barely hear her.
“When is Sophia’s operation, doc?” I ask. Fenwall looks alarmed.
“She told you about that?”
“Yeah, duh! Can I come see her before it?”
“Of course. You’re always welcome to visit. Sophia needs more visitors, in my opinion.”
She needs more friends. Not visitors. But I don’t say that. People always complain about me saying things. I say too much. Too fast. Too loud. Maybe I should hold things back. Maybe that will make me smarter, or more mature.
I squeeze my eyes shut, thinking about Mom, Dad. About Leo. About how maturing seemed to be less about accumulating dignity and more about accumulating pain on top of pain.
Maybe I don’t want to mature.
Sophia’s room and the hall leading to it look different in the day. Naomi came and said good-bye earlier and took me to say good-bye to Mira and James for the last time. But somehow, this good-bye is the hardest. Standing outside this door and trying to knock is the hardest thing I’ve done in a while. What I saw last night, her screaming—the way Jack looked when I mentioned her—all of it’s confusing and stops my throat up like a cork. How am I supposed to look her in the eyes and say good-bye when I heard her screaming that she hates me just a few hours ago?
How do I say good-bye to Sophia when maybe she isn’t the Sophia I thought I knew? It’s hard.
But I’m Isis Blake. I’ve done harder things. Like live.
I knock twice, and Sophia’s voice emanates faintly.
“Come in.”
She’s sitting up in bed. Her platinum hair fans all around her on the pillow, her skin milk-white and glowing. She looks like a princess of starlight and snow. None of the thrashing anger I saw last night is in her. She smiles.
“Hey. You’re leaving, huh?”
Her voice is so soft, so Soapy-like. Normal.
“Yeah. I ran into Avery downstairs and she said—”
Sophia shudders, and I recognize it. It’s the same shudder I give when someone says Nameless’s name out loud.
“Sorry,” I cover up instantly. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Sophia manages. “She’s just the worst person alive, is all.”
“But she said…she said you’ve started talking to her again. After I came here.”
She’s quiet, staring out the window, but then she nods.
“I felt sorry for her.” Her voice is bitter. “The same way you feel sorry for a lost dog. She tried to apologize, but nothing she can say now will undo the pain she’s caused me. Nothing. And yet she still tries. It’s pathetic.”
It’s my turn to flinch.
“Maybe she’s really and truly sorry,” I try. Sophia laughs.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I have to forgive her for what she did.”
“What…what exactly did she do?”
It’s a dangerous question, one that Sophia doesn’t answer. Finally, she opens her mouth to speak.
“Come here. I have something I wanna show you before you go.”
I inch over and sit on the chair by her bed. She pulls open a drawer and brings out a stack of letters bound with pink ribbon. She unties it slowly and riffles through them before settling on a single letter and handing it to me.
“Read that, will you?”
“Out— Out loud?”
“If you want.”
I glance down at it and clear my throat.
“‘Dear Sophia—’”
It suddenly hits me—these are the letters she and Jack send each other. This is Jack’s wide, impeccably even handwriting. I glance up at her nervously, but she just smiles and waves me on. Is this some kind of sick trick? Why does she want me to read her boyfriend’s letters to her? I search for any resentment in her eyes, but there is none, just a cool, sweet passivity.
Does she really hate me?
I only knew her for three weeks. And we were only “friends” because we were the only teenagers in the hospital. We hung out—texted each other and showed each other stupid cat pictures from the internet and talked about music, but do I really know her? I don’t. I don’t know who Tallie is. I don’t know why she screamed like that last night. I don’t know what her disease is. I don’t know anything about her.
I look back down at the letter.
“‘I’m sorry I haven’t written to you in a week. There is no excuse, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I hope this longer letter gives you more comfort than two shorter ones would’ve.
“‘I’m doing well. Mom has been painting again—horses, mostly. She loves them. She said she was painting one for you, for your birthday. July is so far. But she says a masterpiece will take time. I can only hope she doesn’t paint you an entire hospital wall worth of ponies.’”
I snort and instantly regret it. Sophia’s eyes are locked on me, and the pressure they exert is crushing. Gently crushing. Crushing like a quaint spring breeze. From a typhoon. I read again. “‘By then, you’ll be done with your surgery. You can choose—I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. The sea? My grandfather’s beach house in California is empty for most of the year. We could go there for the summer. Just you and me. The warmth would be good for you, I think.’”
It’s so bizarre—this isn’t the Jack I know. I mean, I barely know him, but a cold, sneering douche bag with a savior complex and a penchant for cheating on his girlfriend shouldn’t sound this…gentle. This kind. It doesn’t make any sense. It does, though, because he loves Sophia, but if he loved her this much, why would he kiss me?
“‘There’s a new student in my class—an annoying gnat that constantly buzzes around my skull. Can’t keep her mouth shut. She annoys the teachers, the principal—practically all the people with functioning eardrums find themselves instantly repelled by her idiocy. I’d tell you her name, but it’s a plant—Ivy or Iris or some nonsense like that. I can’t be bothered to remember. She spread some stupid rumor because I politely let her friend know I wasn’t interested at a party last week. She punched me. It didn’t hurt. Much. Anyway, she spread the rumor we kissed in juvenile retaliation.’”
My voice wavers. I did? I don’t even remember—
The party. The smell of spilled Pepsi and the sound of drunken laughter. Avery’s house. A grand chandelier with cocktail wieners stuck in it. Kayla. Kayla and me talking for the first time, Jack walking in for the first time and the crowd parting around him and Kayla working up all her meager courage to talk to him, his jaded, bored words as he ripped into her, and my punch—straight, true, blood coming from his nose—
The memories dart up like sprouts after a long winter. I read frantically. This is my past. These are the things I can’t remember, here, in this letter.
“‘It was so annoying, Sophia. God, I wanted to strangle every idiot who kept asking me about it. Finally I got so sick of it, and I lashed out. I debunked it by kissing her. I’m sorry. You understand, I hope. It was disgusting and sloppy and she’s—’”
My voice catches as I process what the next words are. They don’t sting. They just ache. Ache like everything does when I see people who are better than me at love, who know more, who’ve had more real, soft, true experiences.
“‘—inexperienced to the extreme.’”
I look up. Sophia frowns.
“I’m sorry he’s so mean about this, Isis. I just wanted you to know the truth.”
“Like I care what he thinks,” I scoff. “This is the truth. I gotta know it. Let me keep reading.”
Sophia nods. “If you’re sure.”
“‘I nearly threw up in my mouth. No more rumors about kissing, though. I’m telling you this for honesty’s sake—I apologize. It won’t happen again. Some idiots just need to be silenced before they become worse.’”
I snort. He’s the idiot. The king of ’em, actually. Someone should inform him he’s won the crown. I read the next few lines to myself and feel my cheeks start to warm.
“‘I miss you, Sophia. Every day.
“‘I’ll come visit soon.
“‘Yours,
“‘Jack.’”
“Uh, never mind. I think I got the gist. That last part is, uh, private.”
Sophia giggles and takes the letter back. “He is quite the silly romantic.”
“Yeah. So. Thanks. Now I know.”
“Now you know,” she agrees.
“He kissed me to get me to shut up.” I nod. “Not bad. It’s the one thing that would probably shock me into silence.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, you know. Guy like that kissing a girl like me. Unnatural. Not right. Unequal, really. Hell, any guy enduring my close-up face long enough to kiss me just plain goes against the laws of nature. I mean, there are lots of other girls out there. Like you! And Kayla! And like, everyone! Choosing me to mack on? That’s like choosing plain yogurt over a bunch of awesome cakes for dessert!”
I laugh. Sophia is quiet, her hair shading half her face. I can’t see the other half. She doesn’t speak for a good minute, and I nervously shuffle. Me? Nervous? I shake it off and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, Soapy, are you—”
“You’re disgusting.”
The contempt in her voice freezes my insides. It’s the voice I heard last night. The other Sophia. She tilts her head, the hair sliding off her face and her eyes heavy-lidded.
“Do you really think anyone is falling for that?” she asks.
“What do you—”
“Those depressive little comparisons you make. The way you pan off any worth of yours. You’re a sick, masochistic bitch who likes playing ‘modest’ to make people like her. To make people feel sorry for her.”
The words hit hard. Harder than the impact when Leo threw me against the wall.
“Is that what you really think of me?” I ask. “You think I— You think I say these things so people will like me?”
Sophia laughs, full and rich and downright dark.
“Don’t play innocent. I’ve done the same thing countless times. You and I are exactly alike, Isis. That’s why I understand you. Neither of us is our real self around other people. Because that would scare them. So we pretend. We don’t say what we mean. We don’t say what we really think, and everyone else believes we’re normal. Harmless. But that’s far from the truth.”
She seems so different—her posture is totally relaxed in a luxurious, satisfied way. Her eyes are slits and her lips form a subtle smile.
“I get it now. That’s why Jack is so fascinated with you. That’s why he kissed you. That’s why he even bothered getting to know you. Because you’re exactly like me. Hopeless like me.”
“Sophia, this is crazy.”
“Is it? Am I crazy? Am I just an insane girl cooped up in a hospital, taking my frustrations out on you? Am I seeing things that aren’t really there? How can I know what’s going on, when I’m trapped in here?”
She throws her head back and laughs that intimidating laugh again. Her head snaps down all of a sudden and her eyes blaze, two stony sapphires exerting their full pressure on me.
“You and I are alike, Isis. But you and I are also different. You get to leave. You’re healthy. You get to be normal, to run and jump and have sleepovers and have dreams and go to school, and go to college, and all the things normal girls get to do, you do. Because you’re normal. Or are you special? Do only special girls get to do those things, and I’m the normal one? No. Don’t answer that. I’m not normal at all. I’m defective. You pretend to be defective, but I really am. So go ahead. Give me your fake-modest bullshit one more time. Do it.”
For once, I’m silent. No comebacks run through my head. No quips. All I can do is ball my fists and tremble. Sophia smiles.
“That’s what I thought. Now leave.”
I get to the door before I turn. Sophia’s watching my every step, her sickening smile never fading. But I can’t just leave it like this. I liked her. Like her. Genuinely.
“When the surgery is over, you’ll be normal, too. And we should… If you don’t hate me still, we should go…shopping. Drinking. Or something. Something normal girls do. Because I think…I think we could be friends.”
“I don’t,” Sophia says lightly. “Now get out, and never come back here.”
“You’re pushing me away,” I say, my voice getting stronger. “You push people away first before they can leave you. You did it to Avery, and with good reason, probably. But you still did it. And now you’re doing it to me. And that’s fine, but I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to be lonely and scared. I know what it’s like to not want someone to leave you.”
Sophia’s smile just hangs there, but it’s like a painting now, instead of something with real feelings behind it. A facade.
“Thirty-eight percent,” she says.
“What?”
“That’s the likelihood I will survive the surgery. Thirty-eight percent. And if I don’t go through with the surgery, I only have two months left.”
I’m quiet. Sophia folds her hands and leans back, her smile fading.
“No, Isis. You don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea what it’s like to wait to die. Now get out. And leave me alone.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not going to. Even if you ask me. Even if you won’t talk to me. I’m coming back here. A lot. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I could sic security on you,” she snarls.
“Clearly you are underestimating how many times I’ve evaded plump Taser goblins with badges before.”
“Screw you,” Sophia lashes out.
I take a deep breath. Is this what Naomi’s been dealing with? Is this what Jack’s encountered? It must be so hard for them, but it’s harder for Sophia. It’s harder to watch yourself from inside your physical shell as your emotions and hidden pain take over. I know that most of all. Being consumed by emotion made me starve myself when I was fourteen; it made me torture myself. I was my own worst enemy for so long, and there was nothing I could’ve done about it. I could only watch myself taking a ride headfirst down to shittersville. Why? Why couldn’t I stop myself back then? Why didn’t I just wrest control back from myself?
The answer hits me instantly, like the punch line of a bad joke: because I didn’t want to be in control.
Back then, I was hurting so badly I didn’t want to be in control anymore. The Isis who’d been in control fucked up and allowed herself to be hurt. I didn’t trust myself, I realize. That’s why I went off the deep end, why I didn’t want to be responsible for my actions. I didn’t want to face them, or face the fact I’d messed up really, really badly by trusting Nameless. So I handed over the reins to my darker side and sat back for the ride, wanting to punish myself.
Sophia’s eyes are the same. I recognize them as the same look that Isis in the mirror had so many years ago. I still have that look in my eyes sometimes—a look like a saw blade is tearing you in half inside. Sophia doesn’t trust herself, either. And so she definitely can’t trust anyone else.
So I smile.
“I know it’s hard. Leaving is always hard. But coming back won’t be hard. I think you’re wonderful, Sophia,” I say. “I promise—I’ll be back.”
She glares daggers at my chest, straight into my heart. But I can’t feel pain. All I feel is compassion, understanding. All I feel is a kinship—and no amount of awful words can change that.
I’ve never been happier to see home in my life.
Except that one time Kayla let me have her burrito and then Wren let me have his burrito, so I ate three cafeteria burritos and then sat through algebra thinking intensely about toilets and I’ve never driven home faster in my life.
My cat, Hellspawn, is the first to greet me when I get home. He comes bounding around the corner, and I run toward him, ready to smother him in a hug of pure love and friendship. He thoughtfully gnaws my ankles.
“Ow! Ow, that hurts, you little shit!” I hiss. Hellspawn hisses back.
“Aw, look at that. He missed you so much,” Mom says as she comes in behind me.
“He missed me or the ability to eat my shoelaces?”
Mom chuckles. I drop off my backpack upstairs—my room feels so foreign. It smells so weird compared to the faint scent of antiseptic and bleach I’d gotten used to. I flop onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling. Who knew I could miss a hunk of plaster so much?
Ms. Muffin the stuffed panda droops sleepily. I put her on my chest and hug the Chinese stuffing out of her.
“I’m back.”
I laugh at my own words, still a little sore from the hospital and the mental toll it took on me. Still sore from reading Jack’s words. But I’m too grateful to be home to dwell on it much. For now.
“I’m really back,” I exhale.
The smell of something delicious wafts up and yanks me out of bed. It’s saucy? And cheesy? Downstairs, Mom pulls a lasagna out of the oven.
“You made that? For me?”
Mom smiles sheepishly. “I bought a cake. But no, I didn’t make this. Someone…someone very nice did. They brought it around.”
She serves me a plate and urges me to eat. I take a bite, and the flavors explode in my mouth. It’s the best thing I’ve tasted in a while—hospital food doesn’t have shit on this. Hell, an actual Italian restaurant would be hard-pressed to beat this.
“This is… Who made this?”
“Do you like it?” Mom takes a bite. “I think it’s very good.”
“Uhm, I’m kind of the master of avoidance, Mom, and you smell like five whole avoidings! Who brought you this?”
Mom frowns. “Jack.”
I look down at the lasagna, then back up at her, then down at the lasagna before I run to the bathroom and attempt to stick my fingers down my throat.
“Honey!” Mom bangs on the bathroom door. “What are you doing?”
“He poisoned it!” I yell around my fingers. “Eat some bread and Pepto-Bismol to slow the spread of it in your blood!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Isis!”
“Uh?” I throw open the door. “Have I not updated you on how evil he is? He cheated on his girlfriend, he practically abandoned her these last three weeks, he hates me—”
Mom’s frown turns absolutely deadly. She grabs my ear like she used to do when I was little and twists, pulling me back to the table.
“Ow ow ow ow I NEED THOSE TO DIFFERENTIATE SOUND.”
“You will sit down, and you will eat this meal, and you will finish every last bite of it, so help me.”
“He’s poisoned—”
“He has not poisoned anything!” Mom exclaims, banging her fork. “He’s been nothing but kind and considerate since you went to the hospital. He’s been bringing food nearly every night and checking in on me, and may I remind you he was the one who saved you, Isis. So you will be respectful and you will eat it and I will not hear you complain about it again.”
I wince. After a long staring contest with a bit of cheese, I take a slow bite. Only then does Mom relax, marginally, and start eating her own. Something like resentment takes root in my heart, but I quickly prune that shit. She has no idea who Jack really is. I barely know who he really is. So it’s understandable that she’d defend him.
Halfway between our slices of slightly stale store cake, Mom breaks her stony silence with a single tear that plops onto the tablecloth. She buries her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry, Isis. I didn’t mean to hurt you. God, I’m so sorry.”
The sorry is a little deeper than the usual apology.
I get up and go behind her and lace my arms around her neck, resting my cheek on her shoulder blades. I can see the court papers and police statements piled on the coffee table in the living room, my medical bills among them.
“I’m s-so sorry,” she sobs. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. And when I saw you in the hospital, your head all bloody—oh my baby.” She turns and grasps me in a hug. “It’s my fault you got hurt. I let Leo into my life and he hurt both of us. It was fine, I thought. It was fine if he only hurt me. I could take it. But I never thought—I never wanted—”
Her sobs turn to chokes, and she’s shaking so hard I can hear her teeth chattering.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
That night, she asks me to sleep in her room with her, and I do. The old air mattress is a comfort, the familiarity of the floor beside Mom’s bed welcoming. I’ve been here many times. This exact spot is where I do the most good—comforting Mom, making her feel safe. It’s the most I can do for her.
This is where I belong.