I took one last glance back at the news and then followed Stellan. He stood squinting at his head in the mirror. He leaned closer, trying to see the wound, and smacked his forehead right into the glass.
“Ow,” he said, indignant, like the mirror had come out and hit him.
I stopped in the doorway. He was so tall. His head nearly brushed the train’s low ceilings. Tall and intimidating and carved like a statue of a beautiful half-naked Viking prince, and here he was in this tiny train bathroom, with blood running down his forehead, in ladies’ pajama pants and with a pout like an angry toddler’s. I ducked my head to conceal another inappropriate giggle.
Stellan rubbed his eye with the back of one hand. “What?” he said petulantly, and I bit down hard on my lip. What was wrong with me? I threw a hand over my mouth, but a snort escaped, and all of a sudden, the giggles that had been trying to come out for the last hour burst the floodgate and I was hysterical.
“You look . . . ridiculous,” I forced out, and it was high-pitched and desperate, and all of a sudden, I was sure I was about to come fully unhinged. “It’s all . . . Everything is ridiculous.”
Stellan’s pout turned into concern, and confusion. He reached for me.
“No.” I stepped out of his grasp. If he tried to hug me or say something reassuring, I would cry. If I cried, I wouldn’t stop. “Sit,” I ordered.
I pulled a little stool from the vanity, still giggling a little. Stellan sat, his head flopped down until his chin rested on his chest. I inspected his head, where only the top layer of his blond hair was clean, and the mat of blood beneath it hadn’t been touched.
I started laughing again, hard enough that I hiccuped. “Elodie did a horrible job,” I gasped. “What is wrong with her?”
Stellan raised an eyebrow. I took two rasping breaths and shoved it all down. Compartmentalizing. I’d been doing it all night, and I could keep doing it.
“You need to wash it the rest of the way tonight, or it’ll never heal right,” I said.
Stellan eyed me warily, but used my shoulder to stand up, gesturing to the shower stall.
“I don’t know if you should do it yourself.” In this state, I was afraid he’d kill himself in the train-sized shower. Or at the very least, not be gentle enough with the wound and rip it open again.
A woozy but wicked grin spread across his face. “Does that mean you’re getting in with me? I never thought you’d take me up on that rain check, but I won’t say no . . .”
“We’ll wash it in the sink. Sit.”
I ran warm water in the basin and swished in some orange-scented shampoo from the shower, and he leaned back until his long torso was taking up half the bathroom. I rolled up one of the puffy white towels and wedged it under the back of his neck. He winced almost imperceptibly, like if he’d had his wits about him he would have been able to suppress it.
“What?” I said. “Did you hurt your shoulder, too?”
He shook his head.
“What is with you guys?” I said. “If you have a broken collarbone or something and you just haven’t mentioned it . . .”
“It’s nothing,” he said, but the lie wasn’t convincing.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Finally, he took a deep breath, then touched the scars snaking up his neck. Those strange, translucent scars, all up his back and twisting like ghostly vines over the tops of his shoulders and around the sides of his throat.
“Your scars hurt?” I said. “Did you do something to them?”
He shook his head slowly, staring up at the ceiling. “Always,” he said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear.
It took me a second to understand what he meant. When I did, my breath caught. Of their own accord, my fingers reached out to the same scar he was touching. “The scars always hurt?” I said.
He nodded.
I traced the scar down his neck and across his shoulder, at the lesions pearlescent against my own white skin. I didn’t know what to say.
Stellan’s fingers brushed my hand.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
The heat at the back of my eyes built up again. What this world did to people. What it’d done to this boy whose life had been far harder than mine, looking up at me with a mix of emotions in his face I wasn’t sure I understood. Wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. The fact that, despite it all, there was something in me that was telling the truth when I told Jack I didn’t want to run.
“Lean back,” I said, and splashed the warm water over his hair. Fighting the tightness in my throat left my words clipped, too cheerful. “I hurt my head like this once,” I chirped. “I was leaning over, and had left an upper cabinet open, and stood up right into the corner. Blood everywhere! It was disgusting. My mom washed it out. She always knew exactly—” I drew a ragged breath, full of tears that had been building all day that I wouldn’t, couldn’t let fall. “That’s how I know what to do. We’ll work the blood out of your hair first to get to the cut and then—and then—” My voice cracked. No more words would come out around the lump in my throat. “And then—”