Chapter twenty-nine:

 

 

I wake slowly to the feel of lukewarm water.

The wetness cocoons my face like a blanket.

It slips off as I sit up.

I feel a hundred times better than before. I look down at my body, seeing the water tinged pink where my feet have bled. I reach for my left foot first, expecting the worst, but it’s nothing really. Just some small cuts. The same can be said of my right foot.

I peel off the bandage on my arm and take a proper look at it. The stitches look angry and red, and that’s worrying, but I can’t go back to the pharmacy for anything so I’ll just have to deal with the problem. I pull the plug on the tub and I stand up, grabbing the towel and drying myself with it. It’s nice; it still smells of Carrie and it makes me feel more and more relaxed the more I rub it over my body, as if I am rubbing Carrie all over me.

I need to clean the tub out, but it will have to wait for now.

I stand up, catching sight of myself in the small vanity mirror. I look exhausted and beaten down. Dark rings are heavy under my eyes, and a small bruise has formed on my chin where I fell.

I look away with a shake of my head, my brain already in overdrive as to how I can turn this entire mess around. I look through Carrie’s things and find a white T-shirt which looks pretty clean, and I take that with me down the stairs to the kitchen. I pull my clothes from the dryer and put them back on, feeling more and more like myself as the minutes pass.

I cut the T-shirt into strips and wrap them around my arm to make a clean bandage, tying them in a knot. I wince, but I feel better now that the wound is covered. I boil the kettle and make myself a black coffee with extra sugar, because I know that sugar, or really glucose, is important when you’ve lost a lot of blood, and I know now that that’s what happened to me. I lost too much blood and passed out. They gave me fluids and blood at the hospital and probably some antibiotics, though I’ll need to get more at some point.

The thoughts hit me all at once, like a wall moving toward me at full speed. The hospital will have filled out a police report about me because it was a stab wound. They have my wallet because they stole it from my jeans.

“Fuck,” I say to myself, because that means they have my ID and they’ll find out who I am.

They’ll go to my apartment, to my job.

They might contact my parents.

And they’ll definitely contact Mr. fucking Jeffrey.

I’m panicking, but it’s okay, I eventually decide. It’s okay. I’m not at home, I’m here with Carrie.

The police can’t and won’t find me here because they don’t even know that Carrie is alive.

They think she’s dead, just like her dad.

Carrie and I will eventually go to the station together to clear my name, and I’ll apologize for leaving the hospital like I did. And I’ll explain that I needed to get back to Carrie because she was here all alone. Though of course I won’t mention that I tied her up, because they won’t understand.

And I can understand why it would look bad. I’m not stupid, but they don’t know me and Carrie. They don’t know how our relationship works.

I’ll even ask where my sneakers are, and we’ll all laugh at how I had to walk home in the rain with no sneakers on.

I smile and I feel calmer now. I feel like I have a better plan. I sip my coffee, and it’s really not nice at all. Carrie really needs to get some better coffee than this. And I’d go to the store for her and buy some things, but I don’t have my wallet so I don’t have any money, so I can’t.

“What a mess,” I say.

I look at the clock on the wall and see that it is 3:15 a.m., but I’m not even a little bit sleepy. I cook another can of her beans, and I eat them straight from the pan because it’s just easier that way. The beans fill the empty hole in my stomach, and that’s nice. My stomach feels warm and full, and I don’t feel so worried or nervous anymore. The anxiousness has gone, not just from thinking about the police or being at the hospital, but from being with her again. It’s nice, I think, that we’re slowly slipping into some form of normalcy.

I think of the homeless man I spoke to earlier. I wonder where he is sleeping tonight; with all this rain, his cardboard won’t keep him dry. I worry about how hungry he must be, and I vow to go back and give him some money once all of this mess is sorted out.

Mom always said I was a caring soul. Those were her exact words.

‘You’re a caring soul, Ethan,’ she’d say, and she’d smile at me with her pretty pink mouth.

And Mom was right, and she still is, even if she doesn’t believe it anymore. Even if my dad made her turn her back on me. I am a caring soul. If I wasn’t then I wouldn’t be here, looking after Carrie and making sure that she was okay. I wouldn’t be planning to go and help that homeless man.

A caring soul wouldn’t do those things. But I am and I will. Because I’m good.

I’m not bad, or rotten, like the lawyers said. Like the reporters said all those years ago. Mom didn’t do anything wrong; she was a good mom, and I was a good boy, and now I’m a good man.

Sometimes things just seem worse when you don’t know the full story.

I smile and I finish my coffee, and then I wash the mug out and I make Carrie a coffee, because she’s not had any coffee in over twenty-four hours so I bet she has a killer headache. I get that sometimes—a headache from no caffeine. It’s an addiction really, the caffeine, but it’s my only one so I don’t berate myself too much. Some people have much worse ones. Like drugs, or drinking, or sex, or other things that are much, much worse. Things that people don’t talk about as much.

My first roommate in the hospital had one of those addictions, and sometimes he’d tell me about the things that he fantasized about. The people he dreamed of hurting, and the ways in which he would hurt them.

It made me feel sick, and that’s why he did it. He would tell me the stories of things he wanted to do, and things he had done, until I puked and I cried and I begged for my mom. And then he’d laugh and he’d kick me in the stomach as I lay in my own vomit curled up on the floor, and he’d tell me to ‘stop being such a pussy.’

So I did.

I stopped being such a pussy.

I stopped crying when he told me those things, and I became impassive to them, even though they still made me want to puke and cry. Even though I would never get the images out of my head and sometimes they still haunt my dreams even now.

I stopped being a pussy and I became a man, because it was the only way to survive in that place.

I’ll always be haunted by the things that went on there. I’ll never forget them. The stories I heard, and the things that I saw, and the feel of someone’s head beneath my boot. I had to prove I was strong to stay alive. At times I wondered if it was all worth it. But I know now it was, because I’m here and so is Carrie.

I frown and I look up at the clock while the kettle boils again, the steaming bubbles escaping from the spout.

It’s been longer than twenty-four hours, I realize, a small, steaming bubble of anxiety creasing my stomach.

I got here Friday, but I’ve slept since then. Then I was in the hospital, so now it must be Sunday. I frown harder, because the timing still seems wrong. I go into the other room, the one with all the strange things in it, and I turn on the television. I flick through the channels and my movements are hurried because I’m worrying now.

I find a news channel, and scrolling along the bottom is the date and time. It’s Monday now. Which means Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam is coming back tomorrow. Fuck, it’s not enough time.

It’s never enough time.

*

“I have to go, Ethan.” Carrie is crying, her tears mixing with the rain that falls from the sky. “Please. It’s not you, it’s me.”

I don’t want to be angry at her for using that line, but I am. It’s the most cliché line ever. It’s used in all bad literature. It’s used in cheesy films. That line is every editor’s nightmare. And here she is, my Carrie, using it on me.

 

“I know it’s not me,” I say. And perhaps I say it with a little more venom than I mean to, but again, I can’t help it. She’s making me mad. She keeps doing this. She keeps running when I want her to sit down. She keeps going when I need her to stay.

“I can’t do this anymore, Ethan. Do you understand?” Her face is beseeching me, and I soften to her, I really do, but I’m also still angry so when she puts her hand on my shoulder, I shrug her off.

She nods like she understands, but of course she doesn’t. Because if she understood, she wouldn’t leave. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Carrie leans across and kisses me on the cheek. I want more from her, but of course she doesn’t give me more.

The bus has turned up and she’s gone; climbing the steps into the bright light of freedom and away from the rainy, dark streets of our hometown. And then she’s gone, and I am alone.

All alone without my Carrie.

I stand there, cold and wet, for far too long.

The streets are soaked, the world a blurred and dirty image.

I hate the rain, I think. I hate it because it washed Carrie away.