The Loneliest Girl in the Universe(56)
The bed is hooked up to an IV. I’m imagining what he’s going to do to me – if he’s going to cut me up or knock me out cold, or worse – when I notice that … there’s someone in the bed, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sleep.
J pushes me towards them.
It’s my mother. She’s not in stasis any more. She’s alive.
After all this time, she’s still alive.
HOURS SINCE THE ETERNITY CAUGHT UP:
40
When I see my mother, I start struggling in J’s grip.
“No! NO! NO!” I scream. “Stop!”
“Shh,” J murmurs. “You don’t want to wake her up, do you?”
I stop fighting. No. I don’t want that. Not in a million years.
J loosens his arm, but pulls me in closer so that my back is pressed up against his front.
My mother is alive. I can’t deal with this. I want desperately to disappear inside my head like she used to do, so I don’t have to process what’s happening, but I can’t.
“What are you doing?” I say in a desperate, quiet voice. “She’s dangerous! She killed my dad!”
He snorts. “She can barely move. She’s been in stasis – she’s got reduced muscle strength. How is your mother still alive, by the way?” he asks, curious and calm. “You told NASA that both of your parents died in an oxygen tank explosion almost six years ago.”
“I lied,” I gasp. I can’t let him wake her up. I need to keep him talking, to distract him. “I couldn’t tell NASA the truth about what she did.”
He hisses through his teeth. “I had everything planned out so neatly, thinking you were alone. This has changed everything. But I can work with it. I can’t believe that after everything she did, she’s still alive.”
“Please don’t. Whatever you’re doing, stop. I thought we had a connection,” I add, half to delay him by talking, half because I still don’t understand, not even a little bit. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you,” he says, confused. Once again, he sounds genuine. How did he get so good at lying? “You’re sweet, Romy.”
“Then why are you doing this?” I say.
“Why don’t we ask your mother to explain?”
“No!” I cry, but it’s too late. He’s already shouting.
“GOOD MORNING, TALIA!”
Time freezes around us for a second. Then my mother stirs, half-opening her eyes. She looks woozy.
“Over here!” he trills to her. My mother blinks, her gaze wandering the room until she spots us. Her expression sharpens from hazy to awake in seconds.
Without warning, I throw up, chunks of mac and cheese forcing their way past J’s arm on my throat, spraying down the front of my top and onto the floor.
J makes a disgusted noise in my ear and moves away from me, leaving a space between our bodies. “Jesus Christ.”
I draw in a deep gasp of air, trying not to choke.
“You should never have woken her up!” I tell him, spitting bile onto the floor.
He doesn’t know what happened to Dad. He has no idea what she’s capable of.
My mother is wide awake now. She’s watching us carefully. She coughs quietly, testing her throat.
“Don’t worry,” J says into my ear. “I’ll look after you.”
The words echo what J always said in my daydreams, when we first met and fell in love. I fight back another wave of vomit. The fiction I created about us feels like the naive nonsense of a child.
“Please,” I gasp. “Whatever you’re planning, you can’t— Don’t—”
“Romy?” The words, uncertain and hoarse, come from my mother. I stop talking abruptly.
“Mum?” I say. The sound of her voice makes me feel like I’m eleven again.
“Romy, who is that man?” Her words are calm – nothing like the manic shriek I remember from when I last saw her, smashing up the embryos.
“Mum!” I choke back a sob.
I used to crave the days when she was lucid more than anything else in the world. Even now, I want to run to her, to hide under her arm and breathe in her smell, despite the image that never leaves my mind: her pushing Dad away, him falling onto broken glass.
“Mum, you have to help me!” I say, desperately grasping at a fragile hope. “He’s going to kill me!”
“I’m going to kill you both, actually.” J jerks his arm against my neck, casually testing his strength. It’s a reminder of how powerless I am.
“Let go of her,” my mother says, struggling to sit up in bed. “You’re hurting her!”
“Oh, Talia. I’m going to do much more than hurt your daughter. I’m going to make you sit and watch as I kill her,” J says. “And then I’m going to kill you.”
Tears stream down my face. “Why are you doing this?” I wail.
“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” he spits. “This is my revenge. Your parents killed my mom and dad. Dr Silvers here was too busy fawning over her perfect little newborn baby to actually do her fucking job.”
Suddenly, everything makes sense. “That wasn’t their fault!” His parents’ deaths were just an accident. He’s so lost in grief that he can’t see the truth.