I couldn’t listen to any more. I made my way back to my room, where the lawyer had left but Miles and June were still smiling and laughing.
“Alex, dear, there you are!” June motioned to me. “Come and sit over here for a while; we have so much to talk about!”
“I’m feeling a little tired. I think I’m going to sleep for a while,” I said.
“You get all the rest you need.” June smiled warmly. “There will be plenty of time to talk afterward.”
I pulled myself into the bed and yanked the sheets up, my face and side burning with pain. I wondered how much time I would actually have.
Because as much as I hated it, and hated this, and hated her, the Gravedigger was right.
Chapter Sixty
I woke up once in the middle of the night. Bloody Miles stood at the end of the bed, blue eyes wide and piercing, blood oozing from his freckles. Holding his hand was a girl with blood-red hair and a million cuts on the side of her face, her eyes as wide as his. They stood there for a long time, staring at me. Neither of them said a word, but they both smiled with bloodstained teeth.
Chapter Sixty-one
I woke later. It was still night. Miles was writing in his notebook. He looked over when I rolled onto my back and sat up.
“Feeling any better?” he asked, smiling.
“No, not really.”
He closed his notebook and set it in his lap. “Come here.”
I tottered to the edge of his bed, pulled my legs up next to his, and leaned my head back against his shoulder. His arm wound around me.
The world was hollow. What had been the point of this year? Senior year, all the college applications . . . would it have been better just to go straight to the hospital after Hillpark? I was the one who said no. I said I could do it; I said I had it under control. The only thing my parents could be accused of was trusting me too much.
Miles waited patiently, pretending to be interested in brushing my hair back.
“My parents are sending me to Crimson—to that hospital. I heard them talking about it.”
“But you’re old enough—they can’t decide that for you,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
Then the tears came, spilling out before I could catch them, stinging my face on their way down. “I don’t,” I said. “But I think I need to. I can’t tell the difference by myself. Not anymore.”
I didn’t know if he understood anything I said through my blubbering, but his arm tightened around me and he kissed the side of my forehead. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to persuade me otherwise.
He’d escaped the tank. I didn’t know if I ever would.
Chapter Sixty-two
Later, when I’d calmed down, Miles leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed his backpack. He unzipped it and took out a few things.
“Can I look in your notebook?” I asked.
He quirked his eyebrow. “What for?”
“Just because.”
He handed it over. Most of this notebook was in German, but there were still bits and pieces in English. June’s name was scattered through the pages.
“Why’d you keep your mom’s maiden name?” I asked.
“How’d you know?”
“When Tucker and I were looking up Scarlet in the library, June was mentioned in an article. She was the valedictorian.”
“Oh. Yeah. We switched to her name when we went to Germany.”
“Ah.” He didn’t need to give more explanation than that. I flipped through a few more pages of his notebook and said, “I have a confession—I’ve read this.”
“What? When?”
“Um . . . when Erwin died and you gave me a ride home. You went in the building to turn in those papers, and I peeked.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, but he didn’t swipe the notebook away from me. I shrugged. Pain spiked my collarbone.
“Well, obviously I didn’t want you to know that I looked. You didn’t exactly seem like the most forgiving person.” I flipped through a few more pages. “What are these German parts?”
“Journal entries,” he said. “I didn’t want other people to read them.”
“Well, good job,” I said. “I did see my name a few times in that other notebook, though.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, laughing again. “Yeah, I was a little upset on the first day of school. I didn’t think you were the right person. It was stupid, but I guess I didn’t think it was you at first because you didn’t act at all like I’d imagined you would.”
“Hah, sorry. I thought that about you, too.”
I turned to the last pages.
What you loved as a child, you will love forever.
“I think you’re an improvement on my imagination,” I said, flipping back through the pages.
“You, too,” he said. “My imagination—well, what little imagination I have—doesn’t quite live up to the real thing.”
“Agreed,” I said. “The real thing is much better.”
Chapter Sixty-three