CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Who’s your friend here?”
I turned my head and looked over at Tara, who was sidling up to Angus, her lanky arms hanging at her sides, unsure of what to do with them. The party was absolutely packed with people, some I recognized from class, some a bit older, maybe college-aged. The air in the house was filled with clouds of pot and tobacco smoke, music was blaring from three different rooms and beer and hard liquor was being spilled in all directions.
Tara pointed at me and asked Angus, “Her? That’s my friend Perry. I thought you two were in the same math class.”
I sighed internally and walked over to them. I gave Angus a shy smile. He was cute but not my type. “No, it’s the same biology class.”
Angus nodded quickly, thinking it over. A flash of recognition came across his freckled face. “Ah, right, Perry. You sit at the back with the Asian dude.”
Actually there were several “Asian dudes” in our class but my partner was Andy Lao.
“Listen, I better go find Adrianna. I think there are some people who shouldn’t be here.” Angus patted Tara on the shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.
She exhaled all dramatically and threw her hands up in the air. “I can never win.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “Just forget about him. You know he’s with Adrianna. Go find someone else.”
Tara shook her head angrily. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have anyone and you don’t care about anyone.”
I was a bit shocked at that. Tara made a disgusted noise and then took off into the crowd, going the same way Angus went.
Well that sucked. What did she mean, I didn’t have anyone? I had…well, her. And I had…and what about me not caring about anyone.
I looked around me awkwardly, feeling like I stood out like a sore thumb in this place. Of course, no one was paying attention to me at all. They never did.
I chugged back the rest of my beer that Tara had stolen for me from the fridge and then made my way to the back of the house, squeezing through people, too many of whom couldn’t handle their alcohol.
It wasn’t any better outside. The air was crisp but a few people were puking here and there. Mrs. Gee’s garden was going to be totally obliterated by teenage vomit come morning.
I walked out away from the noise and smell and around the side of the house. I wanted to be alone, needed time to get a hold of my heart, which was racing. I had done a line of coke in the bathroom earlier and it was already wearing off. I didn’t have any more, so I brought out another joint and lit that, taking in a deep breath and slowly exhaling it while keeping my cough to a minimum. My lungs were so used to it now, and this strain was surprisingly gentle to me. Potent as hell though, which is why I liked it.
“Perry,” I heard someone whisper.
I sprang up from the fence I was leaning against and grabbed at my pounding chest. I couldn’t see anyone in the shadows where the motion detector light didn’t reach, but eventually I heard a shuffling noise and Jacob stepped out in front of me.
The tips of his inky Mohawk sparkled in the light. He was looking unusually pale. The bandages around his wrists were gone and what remained were two vicious looking red welts. Whatever he had used to attempt suicide with must have been jagged in nature. It made me feel sick.
“I need your help Perry,” he said.
“Jacob, what are you doing here?” I asked, trying not to sound frightened. He had been so obsessive with me lately, the way he followed me around when people weren’t looking, that it was starting to freak me out. And now, he was here, at this party that he wouldn’t have been invited to.
“My girl is in there,” he said. His voice sounded strange and metallic. He nodded at the house. “Adrianna. I’ve come to free her. And help you.”
“First of all, Adrianna is not your girl. She’s with Angus. I’m sure you can go plan a line of attack with my friend Tara, she’d be happy to take him off your hands, but for now, those two are a couple. Get the net. And, help me…help me with what?”
I took a smaller toke of my joint and offered it to him. He shook his head and pushed my hand away.
“Listen to me, Perry,” he said. He stepped closer to me, cornering me up against the fence, and suddenly I was totally afraid. “We have a job to do tonight.”
“We?” I asked, my voice stammering. I shrank back as far as I could go.
“I need to show you some things. Because you obviously don’t see them, do you?”
I shook my head, not understanding anything at all. It wasn’t the pot. What he was saying made no sense.
He raised his arm and pointed over at the back yard. A couple were in the middle of it, making out on the grass.
“Do you see it?”
I squinted. “See what? The couple about to hump each other?”
“No. Beyond them. Do you see that shimmer?”
I squinted again. I didn’t see anything.
“Relax your eyes. Like a Magic Eye painting.”
He placed one of his cold fingers and laid it on my temple. The temperature jarred me and I was conscious of having his mangled wrist so close to my face. I could almost…smell it. It smelled like death.
“Try again,” he continued.
I took in a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the space beyond the couple, on this shimmer. I didn’t see anything but a dark lawn and the outline of the wooden fence against the passing clouds.
“No, Jacob, I…”
But I stopped in mid-sentence.
There was something. Something sort of in between where the couple lied and where the fence was. It was a shimmer, like a mirage in the desert, or heat lines. It radiated from the ground straight up into the sky. It didn’t take up all of the yard, but it was there, and the more I stared at it, the more it was all I could see. My eyes were locked.
“What is that?” I whispered. Was the house on like a leaking gas line or something? That thought filled me with panic.
“That…is where I come from,” Jacob said.
I turned my head and looked at him, unable to process that properly. “What?”
He lowered his head and stared at me with his eyes. I watched them, mesmerized, as they turned from brown to bright red, like unripe cherries. “That’s where the rest of them will come from too. Tonight. The demons.”
Demons? That’s it, I’m quitting drugs first thing in the morning, I thought. Then I slumped to my knees and passed out at Jacob’s feet.
~~
A solid tap on my shoulder woke me up. I blinked hard at the bright light and looked around. I was on Dex’s couch and he was standing above me, poking me repeatedly. The sound of vomiting filled the air. I had thought perhaps I had been dreaming about someone puking, but no, it was Jenn in the bathroom.
I groaned and sat up uneasily, holding my head.
“You just passed the f*ck out,” he said, lifting up my legs over and taking a seat beside me. “You all right?”
I nodded gingerly and looked at the clock on the wall. It was 10 a.m. and I had only been up for an hour but my damn hangover was in full swing. I didn’t think I was all that drunk last night but I guess mixing all the drinks didn’t help either. I had lied down on the couch to watch TV and I guess I fell back asleep right away.
The vomiting noise continued, which turned my own stomach.
“Is Jenn OK?” I asked.
He bit his lip before saying, “She doesn’t do hangovers very well. I’m pretty sure this day will be a write-off for her. How much did you guys drink?”
“I didn’t drink all that much,” I told him. “It was her goal to get loaded.”
“Well it worked. Too well. She snored all night long before the snores turned into puke. That God I had the sense to put the wastebasket beside her last night.”
I made a disgusted face and wiped the fogginess from my eyes. Despite it being early in the morning, there was a weird creepy vibe in the apartment. I looked at Dex, feeling more than ashamed as the realization of what I had done hit me. He was going to be going down a dark road of mental torture and it was all because of me.
He caught me staring and opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. “I’m OK, Dex, really. I should be asking about you. Did you sleep OK?”
“Aside from Miss Snore n’ Puke? Yes. No…nothing else, if that’s what you are hinting at.”
“Good,” I said. I wanted to ask him about Abby more, and about his medication, to find out if he’d tell me the truth about it, but even though Jenn was occupied, I knew he’d never talk about it here, if he was even going to talk about it at all. “So what’s our plan for today?”
“Not too sure.” He leaned back against the couch and put his arms back behind his head, legs splayed open. His T-shirt lifted up a bit, displaying a sliver of stomach. I was tempted to lean over and poke his hairy belly. Then I was tempted to follow the trail of hair beneath his boxers. Start by undoing his belt and then unzipping his pants, slip my hand under…
I blushed and looked away. What a freaking mess I was. It was just morning and already I was a horndog.
I got off the couch and walked over to the kitchen, opening the cupboards absently. I wasn’t hungry and could barely eat a slice of buttered toast that morning, but it was something to do. Something to distract me from my weird conflicted feelings, all while Jenn was still barfing her head off.
Dex was watching me curiously as I pulled out a box of cereal and started picking at it.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I’d like to take you for a little motorbike lesson,” I said, popping some flakes in my mouth and chewing the cereal without tasting it. Taking out the bike would be the perfect opportunity to get him out of the house and away from Jenn.
“Are you serious?”
“I am serious.”
He laughed to himself and got up, peering out the balcony doors to the street below. “Well, lucky for you, it’s not raining out. I don’t know, we should really work on the footage we have and see if Hasselback calls. And we haven’t checked out the voice recordings either.”
I shuddered and put the cereal back, wiping my hands on my pants. There was no way in hell I wanted to listen to the recordings, at least not right now when I had this weird icky feeling. “We can do that later. The doctor will call you when he calls you. I just…I need to talk to you.” I eyed the bathroom door and lowered my voice. “In private.”
Dex nodded, understanding and walked over to the front door, slipping on his skate shoes and jacket.
“OK, let’s go,” he said quickly.
I was surprised at how fast he moved. “Don’t you want to tell Jenn?”
He sighed and yelled at the bathroom. “Hey babe, we’re going out for a bit. Fat Rabbit might need to be walked later, just so you know.”
There was silence. Then she said in a tiny, quavering voice, “Harvey, you moron.” And the puking resumed, which thankfully now sounded like dry-heaving.
As soon as we headed down into the parkade and I rolled Putt-Putt out onto the busy street, I felt better. My head seemed to be a bit clearer, thanks to the brisk air, and the hazy winter sunlight was making me feel less creeped out by the second. It was weird how his apartment would take on that feeling from time to time. It made me wonder if it had something to do with Abby. Maybe sometimes she just watched us but didn’t make herself known.
I shivered at that thought as we waited to cross the road.
“Cold?” Dex said eyeing me up and down.
I shook my head and pushed the bike across the street. There was a large empty parking lot up ahead, which would be perfect for a few rounds.
“Hold on, I’ve got to get rollies,” Dex said, and quickly ducked into the convenience store beside us. I waited on the sidewalk, avoiding the eyes of the passersby, who were looking at me and my bike and probably assuming I wasn’t cool enough to ride it.
I looked up at the apartment, still visible on the other side of the monorail line.
Abby dead, decaying body was at the balcony window. At least, that’s what it looked like. I froze but kept my eyes locked on her. I stayed that way until Dex came out of the store.
“Guy keeps trying to sell me cigarettes, won’t take no for…” He stopped beside me and followed my gaze across the street to the balcony window.
“Do you see her?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said, swallowing hard.
“Is…Jenn in danger?”
We looked at each other. We hadn’t thought of that before. We assumed that because we were the only ones who could see her, that she wouldn’t be of harm to anyone else. But what if she was? Jenn was alone in the apartment with her. Jenn was his girlfriend; maybe Abby wanted her all along.
Dex looked like he picked up on that thought. Panic strained through his eyes. “Maybe, just in case, we should go back.”
Even though the light was red, he sprinted across the street, narrowly getting hit by a white sedan that had to slam on its brakes.
I watched him run past the corner and disappear. With my bike in my hands, I had to wait for the light to turn before I could cross. I kept my eyes on the balcony, watching Abby.
She watched me for a few seconds, her grey goo of an eye barely visible against the window glare, then turned her head and disappeared from sight, moving farther back into the apartment. >
Come on you f*cking light, I thought wildly.
Since it was a one-way street and the traffic had let up, I chanced it and rolled my bike across. Of course, now the problem was, how was I going to get back into the building? I didn’t have a key and I didn’t know if Dex would buzz me in. I didn’t even know if he’d be safe in there.
I waited anxiously by the door, sneaking glances up at the other balcony of their corner suite, the one that came from their bedroom. Finally, tired of waiting and on the verge of a heart attack, I rolled my bike down the steps to the buzzer and buzzed him. It rang and rang with no one picking up. Eventually I stopped and looked around me, hoping someone would come either in or out of the building and let me in. I took out my phone and called him at the same time.
There was no answer. I did simultaneous buzzing and ringing until there was movement inside the lobby and Dex, Jenn and Fat Rabbit walked out of the elevator toward me.
Jenn looked like wrecked and extremely put out as they opened the door and stepped outside to join me. Fat Rabbit was straining at the leash that Dex held, oblivious to what was going on.
“OK, OK, I’m outside,” Jenn said with a grunt and quickly slid her sunglasses down on her face, covering up her tired and ashen eyes. “What the hell is so important that you have to drag me out here?”
“I don’t want to discuss it here,” Dex said. He pointed up the street. “Let’s head to Seattle Center.”
She groaned. “Dex, I just want to go back to bed. I’m not walking anywhere.”
“Please babe,” he pleaded, putting his arm around her. It didn’t help her expression but she relented with a sigh.
We walked off toward Seattle Center and the Space Needle, the same route Dex and I had made on that wet Monday, only now I was awkwardly pushing my bike behind them.
A block into our excursion, near the fountain in the small square, Jenn demanded that we stop. She looked faint and had to lean against Dex. My goodness, she really didn’t do hangovers very well. What a princess.
“Just tell me what’s going on, Dex. Or should I ask Perry,” she said, turning her head to me. I knew her expression despite it being hidden by those glasses.
“OK,” Dex said, licking his lips nervously. “OK, but hear me out. Don’t say anything till I’m done.”
She exhaled and crossed her skinny arms against her, wearing only a thin jacket, but nodded.
I watched a bead of sweat appear on Dex’s brow. I knew how hard this was for him. I wondered how much of his story he was going to share.
“The other night, when Perry saw…someone…in the apartment. That wasn’t in her head.”
Jenn opened her mouth to say something but Dex shushed her.
“I told you. Just listen. I know you won’t believe any of this, but if I don’t tell you, then I’d blame myself if anything happened to you.”
She frowned but kept quiet and he continued. “Perry sees ghosts. You know this. I see them too. You also know this. What you don’t know is that I saw this same person last night. That’s what triggered the panic attack. Which wasn’t a panic attack by the way, it was just me…not being able to handle seeing her again.”
“Who again?” Jenn asked suspiciously.
“Abby.”
Jenn shrugged. “I don’t know who that is.”
He took in a deep breath and closed his dark eyes. I wanted to hold his hand for support but I knew how inappropriate that would be. Instead, I propped up my bike against the brick wall, tired from holding it.
“Abby was my ex-girlfriend. She’s…dead. She died in a drunk-driving accident back in college.”
Jenn put her hand to her mouth. I don’t know if it was out of shock or because she felt sick. Could have been both.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed softly. Dex nodded.
“It was…rough. And that’s putting it mildly as f*ck. It was a long time ago and it really screwed me up. I had tried hard to forget about it, and for the most part it worked, until I saw her in the alley. It was Abby. It was the same girl that Perry saw in the living room and-”
“Oh my God,” Jenn exclaimed again. “You think you’re actually being haunted by your ex-girlfriend?”
I did not like the patronizing tinge to her voice. I exchanged a worried glance with Dex. He didn’t like it either. His face fell.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “But you have to believe me.”
She shook her head, seeming to be at a loss for words. She looked around her at the people occasionally walking past, at the monorail line, at the bare trees that waved slightly in the breeze.
Finally she pointed at me and said, “I’d understand if she was the one saying these things. She’s a bit off her rocker, but you, Dex…”
My mouth fell open. I was the one off my rocker, not Dex? Dex, who had been in a mental institute? I was so close to saying something but I bit my lip. Hard.
“Jenn. Please. This is what is going on, like it or not.”
“So you rushed into the apartment and pounded on the bathroom door like a f*cking maniac, yelling all over the place, because you thought your dead ex-girlfriend was going to harm me? Are you serious?”
Dex’s head hung low. It looked like all the fight had gone out of him. That wasn’t like him at all. He stared at the ground, keeping his face away from Jenn.
Finally, I had to say something.
“It’s true, Jenn. I know you don’t believe us and that’s fine, but we had to tell you. Like he said, if anything were to happen to you…”
“You’d be the first one dancing on my grave!” she spat out. Fat Rabbit looked up sharply at the tone of her voice.
I sucked in my lips and looked away. An unbelievably stifling silence enveloped the three of us. Even the dog stopped panting and shook ever so slightly.
“What if I told you-” Dex began to say, raising his head to look at Jenn, but I put my hand out and squeezed his arm.
“You don’t have to say anything, Dex,” I told him, begging him with my eyes to keep his mouth shut. Jennifer wouldn’t understand in a million years.
“What could he possibly say to make any of this normal?” she asked incredulously. “You both sound like total f*cking nut jobs. You can do whatever you want with your ghost-hunting show; I really, really don’t care. But please, don’t let it interfere with my life. You f*cking dragged me out of the apartment for this?”
“Why are you so mad?” I asked her. It just came out.
Both of the looked surprised at my question.
“What? Because,” she stammered, stamping from one foot to the other. “I’m cold. And I want to go to bed. And I don’t want to have anything to do with your little ghost club here. This is like an episode of Goosebumps.”
And at that she took the leash from Dex’s hands and stormed back to the apartment.
We watched her go, her mad supermodel strut even when on the urge of vomiting.
“Should we let her go back?” I asked, even though she was halfway there.
“Whatever,” Dex said, turning around and leaning against the wall. He stared blankly at the ground in front of him. “We warned her. That’s all we can do. Something tells me Abby won’t be bothering with her anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“Because,” he said slowly. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You’re more of a threat than Jenn is. When it comes to seeing things. And otherwise.”
“Otherwise,” I repeated.
He nodded, popping a piece of Nicorette in his mouth.
I mulled that over for a second. “What happened when you went back inside?”
“Nothing. Abby wasn’t there. The apartment was one big cold spot, though, but Jenn’s been complaining about the lack of heat in that place.”
“You were going to tell her about the institute, weren’t you?”
He smiled to himself. “And then you stopped me, kiddo. Here I thought you were a beacon of honesty but you kept me from telling the truth.”
That stung a bit. I knew how far from the truth that actually was. I pushed it aside.
“It wasn’t the time. She could barely handle what you said about Abby.”
“You’re right,” he said with a sigh. He looked at the bike.
“Still want to give me a lesson?”
“What will you give me in return?” I asked.
He gave me a funny look. “What, so now I have to pay for a lesson? This was all your idea.”
“Tell me what your medication is for.”
He jumped a bit at that and almost sneered at me. “What are you harping on about now? I told you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head and adjusting my bike handles between my hands. “You didn’t. So what are your pills for, Dex? It’s no big deal; I just would like to know.”
He chewed slowly and raised his face up to the sky. The sunlight hit his face and created a shadowy crevice between his furrowed brows. He raised his shoulders up slowly. “Nothing to worry about. Some are for sleeping, others are just for my mood. You know, to keep me on an even keel. That’s it.”
My heart pinched. I grimaced in response, a look he didn’t catch. “Are you sure? Maybe your medication has something to do with the fact that you see ghosts. Isn’t that how they treated you in the hospital?”
“I got better.”
“And yet you’re seeing Abby again.”
“Fine,” he said quietly. He straightened up and rubbed his hands against the side of his face, pulling at his eyes and then tugging at his hair. He let out a quick burst of air through his nose and spit out his gum. “I’m jonesing for a smoke so hard, you have no idea.”
I didn’t say anything, just observed him calmly, feeling like he was going somewhere with all of this.
“The truth is…” he said slowly, carefully, watching me with each word that left his mouth. I stared back at him, as emotionless as possible.
“I’m not bipolar. I mean, I guess I am…a bit moody. But I don’t think I’m bipolar. I just explain to my doctors what has been happening to me, my past, and they give me medication. Sometimes it’s bipolar stuff. Sometimes they give me meds for schizophrenics. Because it makes things go away. Do you understand?”
I nodded. It was what I thought. It was still shocking to hear him admit it.
“I tell doctors that I see dead people. Just like that kid from The Sixth Sense. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Whatever. Sorry. So I tell them that. And they prescribe me antipsychotics. Because they think I’m crazy. And I let them think I am, even though I know I’m not. And sometimes the medication doesn’t work. So I go to a new doctor and they give me something else. So far I’ve got a combination that seems to work…or at least it did.”
I looked down at my feet at that, paying extra attention to the cracks in the grainy, damp sidewalk. “That doesn’t seem fair, Dex.”
“It’s perfectly fair,” he said, surprised. “I don’t want to see them. That’s why you’re here. To see them for me.”
My head jerked up at him.
“Well, it’s true,” he explained, fumbling for words. “I mean, it was true. At the beginning. That’s why when I saw you in the lighthouse and you heard the things I heard and seemed to believe what was going on…I thought you could just see everything for me. You could take the brunt of everything and I could walk away, sanity intact.”
I glared at him, not able to take everything in at once. Angry heat rushed to my face. “You used me?”
“No!” he cried out and grabbed my hand. “Not at all. We saw everything together…”
“You weren’t…you weren’t attacked by Roddy, you weren’t strangled by kelp and held out of a window, almost killed, you weren’t almost raped by-”
“I know! I know, Perry, I know but that was just…what happened. You were there. It could have happened to me too, it was just as likely. It wasn’t about you instead of me. You…just don’t understand.”
“No, I obviously don’t,” I snarled and whipped my hand out of his.
“This is why I’ve been lying to you. I knew how pissed off you’d be if you found out. I was just trying to protect you.”
“Oh!” I said, throwing my hands up and waving them at the sky. “Look at Dex Foray being all big and noble again, as usual. My knight in shining f*cking armor!”
“Perry please,” he said and grabbed at me again.
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered.
He did the opposite and brought me closer to him, his hand around the small of my back, raising my body into his. Though they barely registered in the moment, I could tell the passing people on the street were staring at us, worried.
“Perry,” he breathed hard, his brown, fathomless eyes looking deep into mine. “You don’t understand. It’s not just Abby. I have a past that I can’t run away from. Just as you do. I know you do. I can see it on your face, after a bad night’s sleep. You’re haunted in your dreams. I’m haunted in my everyday life. Now part of it has come back and I would do anything to keep her away. I’m not as strong as you are. I wish I was. I would do anything to have your strength, Perry.”
Now would have been the perfect time to tell Dex that I f*cked with his meds. He was bound to figure it out on his own anyway. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I felt like I had that rare upper hand again. It was a sick, sad thing to want but I couldn’t help but grab at it. With Dex, you never knew how long it would be until the rug was pulled out from under you again. As I had just found out. >
I hate you, I thought, my eyes turning narrow and bitter.
“Maybe I should go on meds too,” I said while trying to get out of his grasp in such a subtle way that it wouldn’t cause attention on the street.
He released his grip a bit but kept his head down and close to mine. “Do you remember in Red Fox. When I had been off the meds and I told you how…alive I felt. That I really felt something?”
I nodded, keeping my breath controlled.
“That was the truth. Because the medication does some funny things to you. When it shuts down one part of your brain, it has a ripple effect. It keeps you from seeing with all your eyes. It sucks away your creativity. It hampers your soul. It keeps you from how you really, really feel. Deep, deep inside. For once, I felt everything. And the biggest thing I felt was the way I felt about you. That was like a hammer to the heart.”
I was speechless. I looked into his eyes, which were so close to mine. He was sincere. Sincere, worried, ashamed, scared and so many emotions. And I could see he was feeling something, whatever it was. Despite the damage I had done, I had freed him somehow, even if he didn’t know it. Even if it came with terrible, terrible consequences.
“What are you saying?” I said softly.
“I’m saying that you’re like my best friend,” he said. “You are my best friend, and I could never let pills take away what makes you, you. Your heart. And your beautiful soul.”
Oh. It was wonderful to hear, because I had come to think of him as my best friend, as twisted as that was. But...
And then his motherf*cking phone rang. He kept my gaze for a few more moments before letting go of my waist and fishing out his phone.
I didn’t know how many best friends held each other like that.
He glanced at the display and answered it, looking excited. “Hello, Dex speaking.”
He smiled at me as the other person talked. It broadened and for the first time that morning, he looked truly happy.
“Thank you so much. We’ll see you then.”
He hung up and stuck the phone back in his pocket.
“That was Doctor Hasselback.”
“I figured.”
“He said we’re all set to film Block C tonight,” he said, clapping his hands together and wiggling his fingers. An entirely crazed look overcame his eyes, which made me think that he was at least, naturally, a bit manic when it came down to it.
I was still mad at him though. And at one glance at my face, he knew this.
“Look. I know you think I’m a pretty shitty guy after what I just told you. But you have to know that I’m constantly looking out for both of us. I care about me. And I care about you. In the end, I care about you a lot more.”
Well at least he admitted it wasn’t just one way.
“But I’m being honest. I really am. That’s all there is. And now you know it.”
I did have to commend him for actually coming clean when he didn’t have to. It took a lot of guts and a dip in his pride, which I knew didn’t happen too often. I could have come clean too. But I didn’t.
I just nodded. “So I assume Doctor Hasselback didn’t have a problem with us poking around the other night? I was a bit worried about the lights on the second floor, thinking he’d blame it on us.”
I was also worried that after I showed him Dex’s pills, he’d think twice about letting us in.
“No, he didn’t mention it. Doesn’t matter, we’re in.”
He raised his hand to high five me. I returned it half-heartedly. With everything that was going on, returning to the institute kinda seemed like the worst idea on earth.
He clasped my hand in his and gave it a quick shake. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you earlier. I really am. I hope we can just…tell the truth with each other from now on.”
I gave him a tiny smile. There was nothing I wanted more, I just knew on my side it wasn’t going to be too easy. Then again, Dex was here, functioning, and aside from seeing Abby, he seemed to be doing OK. He seemed…alive, as he would put it. Maybe everything would be fine.
We turned and headed back to the apartment. I let that last thought drift behind me and get caught up in a dirty breeze. Of course, things never end up being fine.