Page 3 of The Bleeding Woods

I am awoken by the sound of my cell phone. It barks, a beast of digital flesh and pixelated bone. To my utmost horror, the text message that lights up its screen is not from the pharmacy. It is from none other than Grayson Warner.

I’ll be there in an hour!

I had forgotten. Amid the chaos of yesterday, I had forgotten our arrangement, the plans we’d made weeks in advance. With shivering fingers, I type out a response, no matter how many pangs it sends through my heart.

Hey, Gray. I’m so sorry, but I’m not sure I’m feeling up to it. I ran out of pills, and I’m waiting on a new prescription.

Bubbles of contemplation manifest as he conjures a response. Disappointed as he might be, it is essential that he be kept safe, and that means he must stay as far from me as possible until I’m properly medicated for . . . whatever condition I carry.

No worries! You left a few at my place the last time you stayed over, though. Want me to bring them by?

My throat seizes up, cutting off my windpipe fast enough to coax a cough from my lungs.

Had I left a few at his apartment? When would I have done something so careless?

I suppose Grayson has a way of making me feel normal enough to overlook such things.

I respond with record-challenging speed, thanking him profusely. He sends back a smiley face.

I take a few meditative breaths while changing into a presentable outfit. Movement is a difficult but necessary evil right now. I keep it breathable and loose to avoid any excess touching of the skin beneath. It burns bare, and layers are making it much, much worse.

My eyes catch the corner of a densely packed duffel bag kicked to the left of my bed. I’d packed it when Grayson first invited me on a trip beyond the city’s borders. I had been excited. The noise here is suffocating—a boa constrictor of sound. I was looking forward to the quiet.

Blinding streams of sunlight pour in through the windows, and each one hurts more than the last. There is no time to mourn the weekend I could have had.

I kick the duffel farther into the gloom, tug a few fingers through my tangled hair, and race for the lobby of my apartment complex to meet Grayson at the door.

On the edge of the doorman’s desk, I spy the twenty-dollar tip he must have slipped them to gain entry without a key card.

“M’lady.” Grayson enters the space wearing a grin and a metaphorical suit of shining armor. Though he is no more than three years older than me, his soul is a skyscraper, and he extends it beyond his flesh proudly.

“Gray.” I breathe his name. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much of a lifesaver you are.”

“Don’t mention it.” He pulls a sealed plastic bag from his pocket. It contains five translucent pink orbs. Before I can reach out for it, he’s centimeters from my face, inspecting my eyes like an ophthalmologist. “You got no sleep last night.”

“I got some sleep.”

“I could put groceries in those bags.”

He’s right. He probably could fit his weekly supermarket haul in my lower lids. Unlike the workaholic Grayson Warner, I require sleep to appear presentable. He looks perfect no matter how long he spends carrying briefcases through the city’s finer districts. “Really?” I murmur.

“No, no. I’m kidding. You look fine. Just a little tired.” Like a mother hen, he pulls a pill out himself, places it on my palm, then produces a bottle of spring water from the satchel hanging at his hip. “Beautiful, but tired. Bottom’s up.”

I slip the glossy pink orb between my teeth and swallow it without the water. Grayson stares between a series of surprised blinks. I must have looked far too eager.

“What are those for, anyway?” he asks, airy and clueless to the magnitude of his question.

“Anxiety.” The Universe, in all its infinite humor, chuckles at me. “Hence the grocery-bag eyelids. Plus, this weekend is the anniversary of . . .”

My parents, hanging slack-jawed from their seat belts. My parents, screaming with infantile instinct despite decades in flesh. My parents, and the lie they’d been telling me since I was born. “We did it to protect you,” they had said.

They knew good and well what they were protecting me from, meaning .

. . the answer to my problem might be one they can provide.

How hadn’t I thought of it before? If the pharmacies fail me, my final lifeline is attached to them.

They stockpiled the supply that’s kept me sated all this time.

Conversation of their past was constantly waved away, hidden behind a nebulous, nonspecific veil, but I remember talk of pensions, contracts, and redacted files from behind the bars of our creaking wooden staircase.

I remember the way they’d nose-dive into whispers at the chance of being overheard.

“I’m sorry,” says Grayson. Sadness and concern dance woefully behind his eyes. They flit across the street, where a coffee shop promises discounted cappuccinos. “Can I buy you a coffee?”

I bury my feelings of realization. I need access to someone Grayson is bound to have better luck with, and coffee will lead nicely into that conversation.

“I’d appreciate that,” I reply. A silence settles over us as we exit the building and cross the street.

Just as his hand hovers over the café’s gilded doorknob, I utter a timid, “How’s Jade? ”

Grayson stalls.

“She’s . . .” He blows a sigh through his nose, his eyes glazed over with too many emotions for me to read without subtitles. “She’s trying. I asked her to come along this weekend, and she actually agreed to it. If you’re feeling better, you should too. It’ll give you two a chance to talk.”

His intentions are innocent enough. He has no idea that every time I look at my sister, I see myself bathing in the blood that birthed us.

Her eyes have always been wrought with suspicion, logically unfounded but atrociously valid.

On the surface, I’m the reason they drove out into a blizzard.

Below it, darker demons dwell. If I hadn’t so often screamed their names in my sleep, she might have gone unaware of them.

When I called out, I wasn’t mourning them; I was cursing them.

In my waking life, I couldn’t conceal every sigh of relief at the mention of their deaths.

Jade knew vengeance from grief all too well.

She knew I didn’t miss them as she did, and she hated me for it.

When I look at her now, I see someone who sees right through me.

Her gaze reaches into the depths of my bloodstained soul.

If all were right with the world, I’d never see Jade again, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “Does she still have Mom and Dad’s stuff?”

Grayson purses his lips into a line that glistens with bubble-mint balm. “Where did that come from?”

“I’m just curious. It’s been ten years. It’s like a morbid milestone.

I thought I might take a look at it, if she’ll let me.

” I let a few seconds hang in the air. A groan rumbles strategically through my throat.

I’m a drained, nervous Clara in mourning.

I’m anything but overeager, anything but desperate.

My shoulders squirm into a shrug. The groan becomes a sigh.

“Plus, it’ll . . . give us a chance to talk. ”

Grayson’s grin tells me everything I need to know.

Not only is he prepared to oblige my request, but he is also planning to do so in a way that will give Jade no room for rebuttal.

We abandon the coffee shop for an impromptu trip to her den of solitude.

To call the drive overwhelming would be an understatement.

I squint against each glimmering sign. Sirens and screeches dissolve into complete disarray.

My ears ring. My eyes sting. Even with a proper dose of pink making its rounds through my system, I cannot belong here.

“I’ll keep her in check. I promise,” says Grayson. As sincere as those words are, they are the words of a man with a clouded sense of judgment. “I’m proud of you for this. It’s a big step.”

“She still hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. I don’t think she’s capable of it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s Jade we’re talking about. This is still the girl who beat up three boys in your fifth-grade class for making fun of your favorite hair bow.

She’s still the girl who chased after that ice cream truck for giving you the wrong sprinkles.

God, remember that time she yelled at your piano instructor? ”

“Please stop, Gray.” It hurts. It hurts, and focusing on all her rights conveniently excludes all her wrongs.

She’s also the girl who was unwaveringly human in all the ways I couldn’t be.

She was a constant reminder of my fundamental failings.

Then she left. She left me. I wasn’t someone worth staying for, but I wish she would have.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Grayson’s face blossoms into a gentle smile. “I’m just proud of you, that’s all.”

As sunlight dances across his enviably perfect cheekbones, I remember how fluttery it feels when he’s proud of me.

Despite all the heartache, he still knows how to make me feel like light.

He just knows—and sometimes a bit too much.

He befriended me before the world was a stage and I stepped onto it in character.

He knows the version of me that used to hope for happy endings, and the version of him that wants so desperately to provide them comes out as we arrive at the corner of Aspen and Deadhead.

Jade stands at the mouth of an alleyway, wearing a scowl that could startle Hades. When she catches sight of me, the hatred in her eyes cuts deeper than a knife. It’s a well-deserved wound, but a wound nonetheless.

“Where’s Joey?” she hisses.

“We’ll get him,” Grayson reassures her. “In the meantime, Clara wanted to come see you.”

Jade’s gaze, bursting with vermilion veins, scours me, body and soul. “Did she, now?”