What You Don't Know(18)
“I don’t know,” she’d said, and she’d felt Hoskins looking at her closely, trying to figure out if she was lying or not, but she wasn’t, because that was the truth, she didn’t know. She sometimes wondered if she was really alive, or if she was taking part in some virtual reality and her real body was curled up in the fetal position somewhere, floating in a sac of fluid and hooked up to a giant computer, like in that movie, the one she can never remember the title of. Because that’s what her life had been like—one long, never-ending bad movie. She could only hope that she’d wake up at some point and find out that none of it had happened.
She doesn’t have a TV, can’t afford one, so she usually reads a book before bed. A library book, because she can’t afford to buy them, not now. She sometimes falls asleep with the book still open and her bedroom light on, a habit Mr. Cho has been lecturing her about, because he doesn’t like to see her waste electricity, even though she pays her own bill. So she tries to turn off the light before she goes to bed, although she’s not a big fan of the dark, never has been. When she was small the kids were always playing that game Bloody Mary, and once, at a slumber party, the other girls had shoved her into a dark bathroom and there were a few terrifying moments when she couldn’t find the light switch, when she was sure that the big mirror above the sink would light up witchy red and a woman would appear, holding a big knife, her cracked lips spread in a silent scream. It was always dark when her uncle snuck into her room, and Seever had liked to keep a blindfold on her, so she’d never be sure where he’d touch her next, and he’d chuckle when she jumped or shied away. But Mr. Cho doesn’t know all that about her uncle or Seever, and she isn’t going to fill him in; he’s concerned about the electric bill, so she tries to sleep in the dark, because that’s what adults do, she needs to get over it. Her uncle is dead and Seever is locked up in prison and she’s fine, she’s fine, she’s safe and she’s alone and no one can hurt her.
Falling asleep isn’t her issue. It’s staying asleep. There are the nightmares, lots of them, usually about Seever, and sometimes the dreams are replays of her actual memories, but she can’t tell the difference between what’s happened and what she’s imagining, not anymore. Like the memory she has of being blindfolded, of lying on a piece of carpet, although she could plainly feel the cold concrete beneath, and hearing a door whistle open, and she thought it was Seever, that he’d already come back for more even though he’d just left, but maybe it wasn’t him at all, because Seever loved to talk, to hear his own voice, and whoever was there with her that day never said a word. But there was a scent, the faintest whiff of perfume, it made her think of the purple flowers that had grown in bunches beside her mother’s front door, and when she started groaning for help, trying to form words around the cloth taped into her mouth, there was a puff of warm air and the creak of the door again, and the scent was gone, like it had never been there at all.
“You should think about talking to a professional about all of this,” Hoskins had told her after Seever was locked up and sentenced and everyone had dusted off their hands and was finished with the whole thing, and she was supposed to go back to normal like nothing had ever happened. “It might help.”
“I could tell you the same thing,” Carrie said, and Hoskins had actually looked surprised at that, as if he hadn’t realized how bad he looked, how much weight he’d lost.
“A doctor could prescribe you something to help you sleep,” Hoskins had said, and how she’d laughed at that, because she’d been clean for almost a year by that time, no drugs, no booze, no problem, and people never seemed to realize how easy it was to slip back into that shit, that one sleeping pill could lead to a beer before bed, just to relax, and then it would be three beers and a half-dozen pills, and it would be a quick slide from there; she’d been down that path before, but now she was clean and she wanted to stay that way. So she puts up with the insomnia, deals with it, and now here she is, three in the morning, shivering under her blankets and wide-awake, the stump where her finger had once been throbbing, staring out into the dark bedroom. She was dreaming about Seever again, she thinks, the way he smelled, that cheap cologne he wore, and the rasp of his stubble against her bare shoulder as he’d lain behind her, his arms crossed over her middle, holding her close. He’d take her blindfold off then, so she could see his arm hooked around her stomach, look around and see the big red toolbox standing against one wall, and a big stack of empty vases in another. She’d never been violent, even when she had some drug or another raging through her system, but she thought that if she could get to that toolbox or that pile of glass, she’d have a weapon, she’d cut Seever’s throat without a moment of hesitation, then she’d slice off his lousy dick and cram it in his mouth, give him some payback for everything he’d done, not that that would be enough, not by a long shot. But she never got a chance to even try, not until she escaped, and the only thing she could think about then was getting the hell out of there, not revenge.
She can’t stop shaking. The dream was so real that she can still smell Seever, along with something else, and she realizes it’s the smell of her own sweat. It’s hard to believe that she’d sweat so much when her room is so cold, and she starts to sit up, thinking the furnace must be broken, that she’ll have to bother Mr. Cho while he’s out on his golfing trip in Phoenix, and an arm slips around her neck, pulling her back down into the pillow so fast she doesn’t have a chance to scream.