Her Last Day (Jessie Cole #1)(68)

Zee felt pain in her joints when she stood for too long. Worse than that was the hunger. She’d chewed on the dirty straw littering the ground, but it wasn’t helping. “Are we dying?” she asked Natalie.

Natalie was in her usual spot, facing Zee, her back against the cement wall. “I don’t know.”

“What if he starves us to death?”

“We’ll be okay. I read once that dying of starvation is a peaceful way to go.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Do you really want to know what happens?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Simply put,” Natalie told her, “once the organs fail to work, the body will slip into a coma and pass away quietly.”

“But I’m thirsty, and my stomach is cramping.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“What? Cramping?”

“No. That you’re still thirsty. If you were starving, you’d be too weak to sense thirst.”

She’s lying again. She’s a big liar.

“The voices in my head think you’re a liar.”

Natalie shrugged. “Tell them all to fuck off.”

That was one of the funniest things Zee had ever heard. “Do you hear that?” she said out loud. “Natalie says fuck off!” She laughed so hard she had to hold her sides.

Natalie laughed, too.

“What’s it like to be normal?” Zee asked.

“I don’t know if I believe there is a ‘normal.’ We’re all different. I have voices inside my head, too,” Natalie told her. “But I’ve never given them names. I always figured the voices had something to do with instincts and conscience and perhaps lessons I was taught at a young age.”

“What do you mean?”

“For instance, if I feel like having an extra piece of cake, I always hear my mother’s voice reminding me that the extra weight will go straight to my hips.”

Zee chuckled at that. “Every one of my voices would tell me to eat the whole damn thing.”

Natalie smiled.

“Are you hungry?” Zee asked.

“If you gave me a hot dog, I wouldn’t turn it down. And that’s saying a lot, since I don’t eat meat.”

“Do you think he killed your husband?”

“No,” Natalie said.

As soon as the question had come out of her mouth, Zee scolded herself for being so blunt. One more bad habit she couldn’t seem to stop. If she had a question, she asked it. Didn’t matter what it was about. Her father told her not to worry about things like that. He told her to be herself. And to always love herself. She missed him. More than she’d ever missed him before.

“My mom died when I was very young,” Zee confessed. “She had cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I blame my dad.”

“Your dad? Why?”

Zee shrugged. “I’ve been blaming him for so long I don’t really remember why.”

“People often place blame on the ones they love most.”

“Why?”

“I’m not really sure, but most people are more likely to act aggressively against a friend or partner rather than a stranger. If you’re blaming your father for your mother’s death, then you should probably talk to him about it.”

“I guess my questions would be, did Mom know she was dying? And then I would want to know if she had talked about having more kids. I want to know if she knew I was crazy and if that’s what really killed her. I was only six months old when she died. Do you think she knew I was a crazy baby?”

“You’re not crazy now, so my guess is that you weren’t crazy then, either.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’re not on medication, and you’ve been lovely to talk to. In just these past few days, I’d say without hesitation that I consider you to be my friend.”

“Are you always this stupid nice?”

Natalie laughed. “No. Just ask my husband. Like your father, I would say he usually gets the brunt of any anger or annoyance I might be feeling at any given moment.”

“I bet you’ve helped a lot of people feel better about themselves.”

“Well, that’s stupid nice of you to say.”

Zee’s laughter was stopped short when she heard the now-familiar sound of the door above the stairs creaking open. She looked at Natalie with wide eyes. “I don’t want to die.”

“Stay strong. You’re going to be fine.”

“I don’t want you to die, either.”

“Is that laughter I heard?” He lit the lantern and then headed their way. “It looks to me as if you two are becoming fast friends.”

Zee didn’t bother standing up to see why he’d come. Beneath his bloodied shirt she saw gauze bandages. “What happened to you this time, Bozo? Every time I see you, you’ve either been crying like a little baby or you have a new injury.”

Instead of responding, he pulled a brown paper bag from his canvas bag, held it up, and jiggled it. “I’ve got something for you.”

She could tell the way he struggled that he was hurting. “Fool me once, shame on you,” Zee said. “Fool me twice, shame on me. Or something like that.” She shrugged. “In other words, I’m not falling for it.”