30
OH GOD, OH GOD. STELLA, get in here!”
My eyes fluttered open, just enough to see a blurred outline of Jamie leaning over me.
“What’s wrong?” Stella’s voice, from a distance away.
“It’s— Mara did something!”
He grabbed a towel, and I felt pressure on my stomach.
Did I get them out did I get them?
“Don’t you dare even try to talk, you idiot,” Jamie said to me. He propped my limp hands over my stomach, over the towel, then sprang up to get the door.
“What happened?” Stella said as she appeared in my frame of vision. “Oh. Oh my—”
“I wanted to use Noah’s laptop for something,” Jamie said, “and I knocked on the door to get it from her, but she didn’t answer. So I knocked again, louder, and still nothing. And I just had this bad feeling, so I used a needle from the sewing kit to pick the lock, and I opened the door, and she was like—”
“Oh, God,” Stella whispered.
“Like this.”
“Oh my God, Mara, what did you do?”
There’s something inside me, I tried to say.
“There’s nothing inside you, Mara.” Tears filled her eyes. “It’s in your mind. It’s in your mind.” More pressure on my stomach. My vision darkened.
“Call 911, Jamie.”
Get them out
“But what about—” Jamie said.
“I can’t tell how deep the cut is. She keeps moving her hands to cover it, but there’s a lot of blood and she’s pale and shaking.”
“Believe me,” I whispered.
“What did you— Oh my God.” Jamie’s eyes went wide.
“Don’t talk, Mara.” A hand on the back of my neck, cradling my head. “Jamie?” Stella asked.
“There’s something in the house,” he said, backing away.
“What? Jamie, I need you. She looks really . . .”
“It was just sitting by the door to the garden apartment,” he said. “It said ‘perishable’ on it, and so I opened it, but it was just this leather bag inside with a note.”
“What are you talking about?” Stella’s voice was shrill.
“I thought it was for my aunt, but the note said—the note said—”
“What?”
“?‘Believe her.’?”
Stella looked at me, then at Jamie. “What are you—”
“Someone knows we’re here. That note—that bag—it’s for us.”
“Did you look in it?”
“I thought it was for my aunt. I’m going to get it.”
“No, Jamie. I need you to stay—shit.”
Some of the weight lifted from my stomach. My eyelids fluttered, and I heard footsteps recede. Then they came back. Something thumped on the floor.
Get them out
“She keeps saying—she keeps saying that,” Jamie said.
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“The note, though. It says believe her, Stella. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know. I’m just as lost as you.”
“What if—what if there is something inside her?” I heard something unclasp, and then, “Oh my God. Stella. Stella, look.”
“What—”
“It’s a bunch of—doctor shit. Gloves, thread, gauze, scalpels. Jesus, who left this?”
“Any drugs?” I felt pressure on my stomach again. Stella was trying to pry my hands away.
“No. Wait, maybe—yes.”
“Can you get another towel? She’s bleeding through this one.”
A few seconds passed before Jamie said, “Got them.”
“Switch with me so I can look in the bag?”
The pressure lifted on my stomach for a second, and I gasped.
“Press down hard,” Stella said.
“I am.”
“Harder.”
“Are you going to call 911?” Jamie asked.
Stella paused before answering. “We might not need to.”
“Meaning?”
“Let me see for a second.”
The pressure lifted. “She’s still bleeding but not as much, and it’s not superdeep. I could maybe close it on my own, but—”
“She’s saying that there’s something in there.”
There is there is
“Can you—can you hold her hands down so I can really look?” Stella asked.
There was pressure around my wrists, radiating through my arms and shoulders.
“Mara.” Jamie’s voice. “You’ve gotta let us look, okay?”
Jamie held me, pinned me down, as Stella prodded me with something sharp. My entire body winced.
“What—?”
“She’s right. She’s fucking right,” Stella said.
“How did she know?”
“How did she know?”
Another stab of pain. I screamed, I think, because one of them moved to cover my mouth with something.
“Mara, you have to be quiet. Jamie, what’s in the bag, drug-wise?”
“I can’t look while I’m holding her down.”
Stella’s shadow lifted, and I heard the sound of metal against metal as she rummaged. “I’m going to give her this so she stops moving.”
“No hospital?”
“She really didn’t cut that deep. I can do this, I think. Okay, Mara—Mara? Can you hear me?”
Yes
“I’m going to close your—uh, incision. It might feel like you can’t breathe, but you can breathe, okay? And you’re going to be fine.”
Get them out
“We will,” she said, and I felt the bite of a needle in my shoulder as she plunged a syringe into my arm.