“Was it this fucking cold when you were up here earlier?” I asked, the air hurting my lungs, my breath frozen in a cloud.
Dex shook his head. “No, not at all.” His teeth started chattering. “You know what, you ladies hold tight and I’ll be right back.” He thrust the camera into my hands and started running down the stairs.
“Dex!” I yelled after him. “Where the hell are you going?”
“Getting you guys your jackets,” he yelled back as he rounded the landing on the third floor.
I looked over at Rebecca, expecting her to say she was fine. Instead, she was slightly hunched over, holding her arms close to her, her face like ivory snow.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
She swallowed hard and nodded. “I’m fine. I’m just cold too.” The she straightened up and walked down the hall, peering into the rooms, illuminating them with her light.
“What are you doing?” I asked, following her.
“Taking another look,” she said, her eyes darting from doorway to doorway as she walked. “When I was up here earlier I thought I saw something in one of the rooms.”
Of course only someone who never saw a ghost in her life—only weird lights, abnormal sounds, and strange music—would be brave enough to investigate this.
“What was it?’ I asked, keeping right behind her.
“A painting or a drawing on the wall,” she said. She aimed the light into one of the rooms and said, “Ah hah.” She went in and stood by the missing door, and I watched her as she ran her fingers over the wall. She was right, there was something. It looked like a mess of black and red, like someone was painting with charcoal and blood. Given the fact that the floor was where a lot of the mental patients were, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“What does it say?” I asked, not wanting to get any closer.
“Help me,” she said grimly. “Help me, they’re going to kill me.” Her words put a block of ice in my chest. She slowly turned to look at me. “Who are they?”
I took a step into the room. “I think they are the nurses.”
She straightened up. “How do you know that?”
“Because,” I said, looking down at my sneakers, “last night, when I was sleeping in the break room, I saw Shawna again. She told me that she was killed, that though she had TB, she didn’t even have a chance to die from it. She said that many were thrown into the incinerator or smothered with pillows to make room.”
I could feel her eyes on me, deciding if I was telling the truth, if I were crazy or not. I finally looked up and saw in the weak light that she was wiping away a tear. “I’m sorry,” she said with a sniff. It took me a moment to understand what she was apologizing for. “I’m sorry for telling you the way I did. I’m sorry for not taking your feelings into consideration…”
My grudge evaporated on impact. “Rebecca,” I started.
“No, Perry, let me say this,” she said. “Please. I’m angry, alright? I was angry before I even got here. And then when I got here, I started feeling sick. Started feeling like this was real, I was actually bloody pregnant. Then I got scared and I got angry all over again. Because there you and Dex go, deciding you aren’t doing the show anymore. You’ve made me jobless.”
I felt like she punched me in the gut. “I’m sorry. It’s not that we weren’t thinking of you…”
“I know,” she said quickly, her eyes flashing, her liner spilled under her eyes in dark pools. “I know. You and Dex are the show, you are each other’s show, and what you say goes. I know that. I also know I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for you. But there you are, in love with each other, about to start a new chapter of your life together, and here I am. I’m pregnant. Joblesss. Alone. I’m bloody alone, Perry.” She started to sob but caught herself quickly. “I am so scared. So, so scared. I’m so good at so many things, so good at pretending. And yet I can’t deal with this imperfection. I am so fucking scared!” she sobbed.
I forgot my fears and immediately went across the room to hug her. I took her in my arms and held her tight as she sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I whispered into her hair. “We’re here for you, you know that. You aren’t alone.”
“I feel alone,” she whimpered, “and that’s the scariest feeling of all.”
“You aren’t alone,” I reassured her. “And I’m not even talking about Dex and I. You’re keeping the baby…I can tell.”
She pulled away and looked up at me with glassy eyes. “Yes. I want to. It was the thing that drove me and Emily apart, but god, that’s all I wanted.” She looked down. “I just wish it was with her.”
“I know you do,” I said, holding her tight. “But we have to deal with what we have. This is a blessing, you know that. A challenge, but in the end, it’s a good thing. Maybe the best.”
“Do you ever want kids?” she asked.
I found myself nodding. “Yes. As funny as it seems, I think Dex would make a great dad.”
She smiled. “I think so too. I am happy for you, really I am. I’m just...”
“Scared?” I asked. “You’re allowed to be scared. We all are. And I don’t mean with ghosts. I mean with life.”
She smiled gently and put her head on my arm. That’s when I bit the bullet and asked, “So, who is the baby daddy?”
She stiffened against me before finally looking up. “Promise you won’t tell Dex?”
“No,” I said. “I tell him everything.”
She managed a small smile. “Then…just don’t tell him until I do.”
“I promise.” I held out my pinky finger and she hooked it with hers.
She took in a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “All right. It’s…Dean.”
I’m not sure why my first instinct was to laugh, maybe because Dean was so totally not the person I was expecting. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Dean was black and Rebecca looked like Snow White. It was that Dean was Dex and Rebecca’s friend, not a lesbian and so totally not Rebecca’s type, even when you ignore the non-lesbian thing. Dean was a fucking awesome guy but he seemed really chill whereas Rebecca was well-manicured and slightly uptight.