Page 22

TREY

Two months later

“Happy birthday, angel. You’re even more beautiful at twenty-three.”

Arella responds the way she normally does: with a soft smile and her eyes glued to mine. Her long chestnut hair drapes over her shoulders in loose waves I want to claw my hands into and pull on until she’s close enough for me to feel her warm breath on my lips.

I want to touch her, but whenever I do, my hand just falls to the mattress. That’s why I usually stick to only looking at and talking to her.

“Sorry I haven’t seen you in a while. Liz came to visit last week, and she thinks I quit jaderro last month.

Thank fuck she’s not a Detector. I probably shouldn’t have lied, but she wouldn’t get off my back about it.

Deep down, I think she knows I haven’t quit.

How can I, when this is the only way I can see you? ”

Arella’s hand slides up my chest, leaving behind a trail of tingles. Then she cups my face. I close my eyes and lean into her touch, indulging in how soothing it feels.

“This is all I need to be happy, baby. Just you and me here, where nothing else matters and no one’s trying to hurt you or take you away from me.”

Her hand stops caressing my face. I open my eyes, and she’s gone. Not again.

I roll onto my side and throw my feet over the bed.

Then I dig out the silverware box and ready my arm for another dose.

My little glass jar is almost empty. It’s got about a dose left.

Might as well finish it out. Lately, the jaderro has been wearing off too fast, so I’ve had to shoot up in the middle of my hallucinations.

It’s annoying, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The hallucination returns the same as it always does.

First the bright light, then the cockroaches, then she shows up.

This time, she stays a little longer than usual.

I try to talk to her, but suddenly, the nausea overwhelms me.

I lean over the side of my bed just as the vomit rises up my throat.

It splatters over my carpet with bright stars and rainbow colors.

I wipe my mouth off with my hand, then turn back around to stare at my girl.

Suddenly, she’s not the only person I’m seeing anymore.

Two people in suits have appeared in my bedroom.

One is a woman whose blonde hair has a strip of purple in the front.

The other is a man with a goatee. Behind them are more bright lights and neon colors.

“I told you he’s getting bad,” the woman says. “I really think it’s time to intervene.”

“But our job is to keep out as much as possible,” the man says.

I cock my head at them. “Are you guys real?”

The woman continues like she didn’t hear me. “If he proceeds like this, he’s going to kill himself. What’s more valuable? Keeping out or this?”

The man thinks, then sighs. “You’re right. Let’s do something.”

Usually, Arella can hear me, but she never talks. These people are talking, but they can’t hear me. Strange. That extra dose is really fucking me up. First the puke, and now two people in suits?

I blink a few times as if it’ll reset my vision. Suddenly, a loud pop! sound cracks through the air, then the woman disappears. I blink a few more times, and after another loud pop! , the man is gone too.

I wake to the sound of something beeping. It’s coming from outside my bedroom. What the hell could be beeping?

“Could you go check on the patient in six twelve?” a woman asks as the beeping stops. “She pressed her call light again.”

Getting my eyes to open feels like trying to pry apart a stubborn mussel shell. Once I succeed, a blurry image of a dim hospital room appears. Cords are attached to my arm.

“Hey, T,” someone softly says from my left.

I slowly turn my head to find Liz sitting on a chair at my bedside, with a closed book in her lap. “Where am I?”

“A hospital,” Liz says nonchalantly.

“H-how did I get here?”

“Ambulance.”

I squint at her. “Did I get into another accident?” I can’t see why.

I haven’t ridden my bike in months. Anywhere I go, I walk.

That is, if I go anywhere at all. Lately, I’ve been getting food delivered because the thought of having to put pants on is daunting.

My trash is overflowing with takeout containers and pizza boxes.

Liz chokes up as she says, “T, you almost died.”

“What happened?”

“I called you multiple times for two days straight, and when I didn’t get a response, I booked the first flight out to New York. I broke my way into your penthouse, which wasn’t hard, by the way. You left the front door unlocked. I found you lying on the floor next to a puddle of vomit.”

That’s odd. I’m usually pretty good about locking my door.

Liz continues, “At first, I tried to shake you awake, but you didn’t respond.

I exploded into tears, thinking I’d lost you.

I hated myself for waiting as long as I did to fly over.

When I realized you were still breathing, I called for an ambulance.

You’ve been here for two days while your zoctor has pumped you full of medications I can’t even pronounce. ”

I reach out and gesture for her to give me her hand. She takes her gloves off first, then places one palm into mine. “I’m sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean to put you through that.”

She falls into a quiet sob, making me feel like the shittiest friend ever. I can’t imagine what that was like for her. To rush into my bedroom and find me unmoving on the floor? If it had been me with her, I would have lost my fucking mind.

“I’m so sorry, Liz,” I say as if my apology can erase the panic she must have felt.

“T, please be honest with me. Did you overdose with the intent to...” She hiccups a tearful breath. “God, I can’t even say it.”

“I know what you’re trying to ask. It’s the same thing you wanted to know the last time I was in a hospital, right?”

She nods, wiping her tears off with a few fingers.

I debate lying to save her from the pain, but she can always see through my lies. “Liz, you and her are the only beneficiaries of my will. Everything I have would have been split between you two. That’s millions for each of?—”

“No! I don’t want millions of dollars. I want you!”

I scoot over to one side of the medical bed, then tap the empty space next to me. Without hesitation, Liz climbs up and digs her face into my chest. As I circle my arms around her and pull her close, she cries even harder.

Usually, I’d offer to kick the ass of the person who made her cry. This time, it’s me, and I don’t know how to handle that. Instead, I give her a soft kiss on her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Liz.” I choke up as I kiss her forehead again and silently beg for her to stop crying. “I’m so sorry.”

I don’t think my apologies are doing anything. Her body is still shaking.

I end up turning two nurses away before her tears finally subside and I can breathe again.

“I can’t lose you, Trey.”

Wow. She hasn’t called me Trey in a long-ass time. She only does it when she’s being super serious.

“I don’t have a family, T. You’re all I’ve got. If I lose you, I won’t have anyone.”

“You could find a new best friend.”

“Not one I can hold hands with. Not one I can have sleepovers with, where they’ll hold me all night to keep the nightmares away.”

Zordis can’t dream, but Liz does. Sort of.

Technically, they’re the horrifying memories she’s caught over the years, replaying in her head.

It happens whenever she sleeps, and it wakes her up after only two or three hours of rest. Because she never gets enough sleep, she has to sleep every night like an Ordinary.

Back when Liz stayed over for Thanksgiving, we shared my bed.

To help her fall asleep, we put on a movie.

Normally, we cuddle during movies, so it didn’t feel weird to cuddle in my bed while she fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning, I was still holding her because I didn’t want my movement to wake her.

She slept through the night—a full seven hours—and she didn’t have a single night terror.

The next night, we tried it again. I held her while she slept, and she got another full night of rest without a single replay of anyone’s trauma.

When she stayed over for Christmas, we found out that if I left her while she was sleeping, the nightmares crept into her head within a few minutes of my disappearance. But one hundred percent of the time, if I stayed in bed and held her, the nightmares stayed away.

Like how Liz doesn’t question how she can touch my hands without seeing my parents get blown up anymore, she doesn’t question how this is possible either. There is still so much that Zordis don’t understand about our powers.

I’m the only person Liz can touch hands with without seeing their traumatic past. I’m the only person who can keep her nightmares away too.

Everything we have has happened over many, many years, and it all happened organically.

Now that I think about it, I realize it’d be hard for her to rebuild our friendship with someone else and I’m angry with myself for almost taking that away from her.

Liz tilts her head back to look at me. She’s not crying anymore, just hiccupping from the previous cries. “You’ve always said you’d do anything for me, right?”

I nod, knowing exactly where she’s going with this. She’s gonna try to convince me to go sober again.

“Remember when we first met and how I encouraged you to be sober?”

“Yep. You said there’s a better version of me who exists under the drug habits and fistfights.”

“Um, sure. That’s not how I remember it, but if that’s what you heard that got you to clean up, then sure.

Either way, the point is that you quit the drugs cold turkey.

If you did it once, you can do it again.

The thing is that I can’t just encourage you to quit.

You have to want to quit. The only thing I can do is say things to help you want it. ”

“Lemme guess.” I lean back a little to see more of her. “You’re gonna say I need to quit so I can be here to help you keep the nightmares away?”

“Nope. Guess again.”

Outside my hospital room, that beeping sound chimes again. I ignore the commotion. “You’re gonna tell me there’s still that better version of me beneath the drugs?”

“Closer.”

I think hard. “You’re gonna say this isn’t the man I want to be?”

Liz smiles up at me. “Even closer.”

“I’m done guessing. Just tell me.”

“I was gonna say this isn’t the man she would want you to be.”

That slams me right in the gut. I wasn’t expecting Liz to say that, because she normally avoids bringing Arella up. Liz doesn’t mind when I bring her up, because that means I’m choosing to talk about her. But Liz avoids mentioning her so I don’t get that “sad and depressing look in my eyes.”

I swallow hard. “She doesn’t know me well enough to have an opinion on who she wants me to be.”

“No, T. I’m not talking about Ari. I’m talking about Arella. Ari doesn’t know you, but Arella does. You’ve said it yourself: Your girl is still in there somewhere. If she saw you now, what would she think?”

If Arella saw the terrible things I’ve done in the last six months, she’d be so disappointed in me.

Getting wasted in bars until they kick me out, shooting poison up my arm, barely eating or doing basic things like drinking water or combing my hair.

I’ve lost so much weight, my cheeks are sinking in.

The thing is, though, Arella’s not around to see me, which is why I don’t care what type of man I am.

Liz continues in her same gentle tone, “If she suddenly reverted back to remembering you and came looking for you, how would it make her feel to find you like this? Is this the man you want her running back to?”

“But she’s not running back to me, Liz. She’s not even walking to me.”

“But what if she was?”