CHAPTER 37
“Where's the bottle?” he said.
“It's right next to you, where you left it,” Sonya replied, her voice changing from catty to bitchy.
“Pour yourself a glass. You're gonna need it.”
“With the sedatives I've been on, are you trying to kill me?”
Sonya's tone had turned to total scorn. She didn't want to be like this, but she felt it was her only defense, as though there was another person inside of her trying to make her act strong, to push Dmitri away before he could hurt her anymore.
“You're right,” Dmitri said, before taking a long swig of vodka. “Sorry, sis.”
“Sis? You mean sissy? You're calling me that when you're the one who screamed like a little girl when I poked you?”
“Sis is short for sister, right? I speaka da eenglish gud, no?”
“Yeah, so what, you think you're a black lady now, you call me sister? You're drunk.”
“You were so much nicer when we were kids.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You should go to bed and sleep off that booze. I could use some rest too. My nap was interrupted by the ruckus in here.”
Sonya was sincere, she didn't know what Dmitri was implying. But subconsciously she was starting to realize.
“When we played together in the woods or hid under the bed. You never insulted me for protecting you.”
“Stop it. You're being creepy.”
“I bet you cried when I left. I did. I bet you cried when your mother told you I was imaginary. Katya, that was her name back then, right?”
“How did you know? I never mentioned her name. You are with Halim. You've all been spying on me. What kind of sick game is this? Using my most personal secrets against me?”
Sonya hurried out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind her, hitting Dmitri's feet again.
“You will ruin my soccer career if you keep pounding my feet like that, Liza.”
Sonya froze in the hallway. After a moment, she stomped back to the bathroom. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like it would tear through her chest any second.
“What? What did you call me? Did you guys hypnotize me? How could you know that?”
“Because that's what I always called you. That was your name.”
“My nickname when I was little... I wanted to be called that for years, but my mom said it was silly, that it was from a movie or something, that I should forget it. I don't know how you're doing this, why you're doing this, but please stop, leave me alone.”
“What was your friend's name?”
“The imaginary one?” she said, the word “imaginary” sticking in her throat.
“Yes,” Dmitri said with an ironic smile.
“You know little kids make up funny names for their friends, relatives, animals, toys, anything. We used to play in the woods, so I called him Tree.”
“Tree?” Dmitri laughed until his shuddering torso seared his ailing shoulder. “Ah yes, now I remember too. You couldn't say my whole name.”
Sonya didn't understand what was happening. Her stomach was twisting into knots. Tears tumbled down her face.
She felt like she should be afraid, hurt, bitter, that she'd been betrayed, tricked, used in the worst way. But hope also flickered deep inside of her.
“Stop it. Stop it. Who are you?” she said, backing away through the door but staring at Dmitri as he lay on the floor, smirking but obviously still in great pain.
“I'm not going to hurt you. This is not a game. Or maybe it was a game for somebody else, but not for me. I was fooled too. Sit down.”
Sonya sat down at Dmitri's feet, her body halfway in and halfway out of the door.
Dmitri told her everything that Sergei and Halim had told him, and everything he had figured out for himself in these past two weeks, not only about their own past, and how her mother was murdered in that car “accident,” but about Halim monitoring them both while playing cupid at the same time.
Sonya hid her chaotic, conflicting emotions behind a poker face as she listened. She didn't want to show any vulnerability or gullibility.
Her hesitancy to give into Dmitri and her desire to do so clashed inside of her heart, while the thought of her mom being murdered crashed through her mind. It was something she was not yet able to grasp, even though it made sense. It explained so much.