A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)(25)

At least, that’s what I remember through the haze of drugs and surgeries and more drugs.

So, yeah. I want to run out there and ask her a thousand ugly questions about a million ugly truths amidst the giant, big fat lie she and Tara and Jenna told the world.

Instead, I jump up and bolt for the bathroom, where I throw up until Jane comes in and calls out my name.





Chapter 19





“Lindsay?”

I say nothing.

“You okay?”

I say more nothing.

“Stupid question,” Jane mutters to herself. “Sorry.”

“S’ok.” A hand appears under the bathroom stall door. It’s holding a small plastic cup with ice chips in it.

“Here,” Jane says. “I was pretty sure you were throwing up.”

I take the cup. “Yeah.”

“Drew’s really worried about you.”

I snort.

“He is,” she says again, as if we’re arguing.

“About time. Too bad he wasn’t so worried four years ago.”

The door makes a slight rattling sound. “What does that mean?” Jane asks.

I say nothing. Suddenly, she inhales sharply.

“Oh, my God, Lindsay. He was the fourth guy?”

“Oh, please,” I snap. My mouth tastes like fermented cotton and my head throbs with pain. “Like you didn’t know?”

“Mandy and Jenna and Tara spread these vicious rumors, but no one believed them!” I can’t tell whether she’s lying or not. I need to believe her, so I do.

“You mean, people believed their rumors about me, but they couldn’t believe their rumors about Drew?”

Her turn to go silent.

“I never thought about it that way,” she finally says in a squeaky voice.

“I should never have come home,” I groan. My purse shuffles against my hip and I remember my pills. I remember Stacia’s call earlier. Maybe I’m really not ready for all this. The island looks so much better. More appealing. Life was so simple there. I knew what was expected, even if I couldn’t always manage to do exactly what they wanted.

Out here, in real life, the complexities are so much more convoluted.

“Don’t say that, Lindsay. You have every right to be home. You’ve suffered enough.”

“Define ‘enough,’” I moan, sucking on a piece of ice.

She makes a snort-laugh. “I think there’s a picture of you in the dictionary next to the word ‘suffering,’ Lindsay.”

Jane wasn’t this sharp four years ago. While I always liked Jane, I’m coming to admire her now.

“Huh.” I make a sound that’s half laugh, half recognition of the truth in her words.

“Look. You have a lot to face. Mom and I wish your parents had brought you home a long time ago—”

“You and Anya talk about me?” I ask, surprised by the thought.

“Of course we do.”

“Oh! Because of the..because you found me that night.”

“No. Because we like you. We care about you. We hate what happened and wish we could change it. And Mom’s been telling your dad for two years now that it was past time for you to come home. He said the people at that place you were in were telling him you weren’t ready.”

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

“How long?”

I pause. I think. “About two years.”

“What the hell did they have you do there for four years?”

“I knit 126 sweaters in knitting therapy.”

She laughs. It’s a guilty sound, like she’s not supposed to find that funny.

“I’m serious! They were insistent on knitting therapy. I finally started to ‘show progress’ when I suggested we knit penguin sweaters for environmentalists to put on penguins under oil slick conditions.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Penguin sweaters?” Her voice takes on a slightly hysterical tone.

“Yeah.”

“Like, with little holes for the—the—the flippers?”

“Yeah.” I can’t stop laughing now. We sound like hyenas.

Someone knocks on the door.

“Lindsay? Jane? You okay in there?” It’s Drew.

“Penguin sweaters!” Jane screeches.

“What?” Drew calls back.

“Flipper holes!” I shout.

“They’re not making any sense,” he mutters through the door.

“I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Silas says back.

“I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Jane mimics, her voice going high and loud with the effort.

I can’t stop laughing. My sides hurt. This is worse than throwing up. I’m sitting on the floor of a bar bathroom with my face pressed against the scraped bathroom door, the metal cool and rough, and I’m laughing about knitting penguin sweaters as part of my therapy in a mental institution where I lived for four years after being gang raped on live, streaming television.

I double up and laugh some more.

Because, really, what else can I do?