Purple Hearts(57)

“Yeah, explain it.” He stood in front of me. “Please. Before I start fantasizing about beating this guy up.”

“It’s not complicated,” I said, even though it was. But there was no way to explain it that Toby wouldn’t misunderstand. I swallowed. “I want you, and that’s it,” I said, knowing how vague that sounded, and stood up to wrap my arms around his neck, kissing him hard enough that he’d forget.





Luke


I was running through green hills on packed earth that formed a circular track. Up and down, up and down, and Jake was there in one of the valleys, lying with Hailey and JJ on a blanket. They called to me with faraway voices: Yes, go, yes, go.

Suddenly, Jake yelled and I could hear him better. “They’re picking us off from the northwest hill.”

Which one is the northwest hill? I shouted.

A gun sounded right next to my ear.

I opened my eyes.

I was lying on Cassie’s couch.

Still dark. I reached behind me to the table next to the couch, feeling around the ashtray and roach clips and guitar picks and diabetic-candy wrappers for the edge of the lamp, working toward the lamp cord.

I needed distraction. I needed to slow my heartbeat down.

Cassie had stacked her magazine subscriptions next to me on the floor. SPIN, featuring a girl with buckteeth and braids—read that one; Rolling Stone from September, August, July, and June—read those. I knew more about the evolution of David Bowie’s career than I’d cared to.

I clutched the couch cushions to pull myself up to sit, swinging my gimp leg around. I’d been here about a week now, and every day I’d try to get into the chair on my own. Mostly I could do it.

I rolled my chair in front of my legs, and locked the wheels. The scars winked at me. They looked like bad bruises that would never heal, with dark holes where the pins went in. I grasped the back of the chair and pushed with my good leg, up, up, up, and for a second it seemed like I could swing the momentum of my hips over to the target.

Then the slightest twist of my ankle on the floor and the pain came streaming back. And just like that I felt the bullets again. The metal spikes stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.

I was on the floor, rolling. Wetness on my cheeks. Stabbing, stabbing, up through the bottom of my foot and from the sides, my bones were made of pain. A gunshot sounded near my ear.

It’s not real.

Footsteps.

Cassie knelt and bent over me, her hair on my face, smelling like sleep. “Did you fall out of bed?”

“No,” I said, and I wanted to explain exactly what happened, but the stabbing dominated my thoughts. The red polka dots on the dust. A pair of boots. I pulled them toward me.

No.

Open your eyes.

“One, two, three,” she whispered, and I was sitting upright on the floor in the pile of old magazines.

Her eyes were half open, her tank top thrown on backward and inside out, a strap falling off her shoulder. “Can you get back on the couch from here?”

“No,” I told her, avoiding her eyes.

She put her hands underneath my armpits, the skin of her chest in my face. I turned my face away, blood rushing to my head.

I propped my hands on the edge of the couch, ready to push.

“Were you having a bad dream?” she asked.

“No.”

If I told her what I saw, she might think it worse than that, but it wasn’t. It was just a bad dream that happened to come when I was half awake, half asleep, sometimes all awake, mostly all asleep.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Right. One, two, three.”

When I was back on the musty cushions, Cassie straightened, gave me a weak smile, and sat on the floor.

“You can go back to bed,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes. “No I can’t.”

“Why?”

She looked up at me, confused, a little hurt. It must have been my tone. Damn it. I didn’t mean for it to sound as bitter as it did. When the Oxy wasn’t working, it was like the pain was a filter for everything I said, clipping it, spiking it.

She shrugged. “I just can’t get back to sleep once my brain starts going. I’m supposed to get drowsy on metformin, but it never seems to work. God, I hope it’s working in general,” she mused.

Metformin was one of her diabetes medications. I’d peeked in the medicine cabinet on Wednesday while I was washing my hands. She had seven altogether. Even under my health insurance, that was a lot. A lot to pay for, and a lot to put down your throat.

I wanted to be kinder. “Sorry I woke you.”

“You— I’ve kinda noticed in the past week,” she began, then stopped, choosing her words. “Luke, you make noises a lot when you sleep. Like screams.” She continued, slow, each word making me feel smaller, more compact. “Do you think we should rethink the plan? And maybe get you some help?”

Just like that, kindness failed me. I felt like a floodlight was shining. How was it possible to feel so exposed under the stare of just one person? Her eyes were still sleepy, gentle, but if this was her version of kindness, I didn’t want it. It was too close to pity.

I tried to keep my voice level. It didn’t work. “I said sorry for waking you. I don’t know what else to say. If you want to go back on the plan, then that’s on you.”