Page 130 of Devil in Disguise

She and Pavani met Fletcher and Avery at the Rec Center. Pavani had started going with them last quarter, and Dyma was glad of it today, because it meant she didn’t have to say much. Also, climbing didn’t let you lose focus.

Well, not usually. She was halfway up one of the highest walls, a climb she’d made more than a dozen times, when her muscles just gave out. Her head was spinning a little, her legs and arms were jelly, and she was frozen. She hung on for fifteen seconds, then thirty, tried to breathe her way through it, to summon the strength to keep going, and couldn’t.

Fletcher shouted up, “All right?”

Climb,she told herself.Get going.

She couldn’t.

She took a breath and shouted, “I’m coming down.”

After a second, she heard him say, “Lowering you now.”

Feeling the rope start to play out, then, and keeping her feet outstretched, bouncing gently against the rock and then out again in a pendulum, the way she’d done dozens of times. Her legs trembling worse than ever. And then the moment when she missed, hit with only one foot, and spun. Her helmeted head and shoulder crashed into the rock, and she was spinning more, hitting again. Shouts from below, and Fletcher holding the rope taut until she stopped spinning. She tried to focus, tried to get her balance back, and finally, her voice shaking all over the place, said, “OK. Lower me again!”

Too loudly, because half the noise around her had ceased. Fletcher said, “Lowering you,” from not very far down, and she made it down the last twenty feet, every muscle quivering, the nausea roiling in her stomach.

When she reached the bottom, she couldn’t stand. Her legs gave out from under her, and she collapsed to the ground and hit her head against the wall again. With her helmet, but it hurt. She thought,I’m wearing my helmet, Owen, see? I’m going to be all right.

But he wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t care.

The dam burst. She was crying. Sobbing. Her back against the wall, her knees up against her chest, trying to hold herself safe, to hold herself in. Dimly aware of Fletcher unhooking the rope, unfastening her helmet, of other voices, other hands. She fell over on her side, and cried.

* * *

In the medical center,then, even though she’d told the paramedics not to take her, that she was fine. She’d kept saying, “I wore my … helmet, though! I wore myhelmet!”But they took her anyway, because they didn’t get it.

In a curtained exam cubicle, with a doctor looking into her eyes with a penlight, asking her questions. Answering him, her voice sounding dull and hollow. A nurse was taking her blood, and she asked, “What do you need that for?”

Pavani said, from her spot next to the bed, “They have to see what’s wrong with you.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Dyma said. “I got lightheaded, that’s all. I probably haven’t been eating enough, and I think I’m dehydrated. I don’t … I don’t consent to this.”

The doctor said, “Your friends say your behavior has been erratic. Is there a reason for that?”

“What,” Dyma said, “you mean, am I on drugs? No. I don’t take drugs.”

He looked like he’d heardthatone before. “Dyma,” he said, “we’re trying to help you. Your friends are concerned about you.”

“Fine,” she said. “Test my blood. I don’t take drugs. I haven’t had anything to drink since … since New Year’s Eve.” When she’d come back to Owen’s to tell him that he couldn’t push her around, that she was her own person, and he’d said …

That, yes. She was.

That was it. She started crying again like there was a well inside her made of all the tears she hadn’t cried since that horrible morning at the airport. She cried in great, racking, painful sobs for what felt like forever, and the tears just kept coming.

Halfway through it, the doctor said, “I’m writing you a referral to the Counseling Center.”

“I don’t need …” It was so hard to be convincing when your head hurt, your shoulder was bashed, and you were crying all over some doctor. “I don’t need counseling. I know what I have to do. I have to figure out a better way.”

“Yes,” he said, “which is the reason for the counseling. Freshman year is tough. All sorts of things come up.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve noticed.”

* * *

It was Friday,and two weeks since Dyma had left. Two weeks that Owen had walked through the same way he’d walked through every impossible time he’d experienced in his life. One foot in front of the other. It might be a slog, but you couldn’t stay where you were. You kept walking, and eventually, it got better.

Not so far. But eventually.