Page 68

68

BLAKE

I’m still alive.

It’s been one week since…well, since everything. One week since Krista tried to kill me. One week since she died on the floor of our living room, with me crouching over her bloody body in tears. One week since I was carried away to the emergency room, where I had to be sedated and intubated. (I don’t remember much of that last part.) Apparently, there’s no antidote to tetrodotoxin, but if you live through the first twenty-four hours, you have a good chance of not dying.

And now I have been pronounced (mostly) recovered, which means I get to go home from the hospital.

My father closed the hardware store and flew out to the city to be with me, but he went back home yesterday when it was obvious that I was out of the woods. I told him to go—I know he’s short on help at the store, and I didn’t want him to lose his business because of me. But it meant that I didn’t have anyone to pick me up today, when I’m being discharged.

So I asked Amanda.

It still feels strange to call her that. For the whole time she was living with us, she was always Whitney. But actually, she seems more like an Amanda.

She told me why she changed her identity—about how she needed the money to pay for her mother’s chemo and that she got it from the wrong people. The story broke my heart a little bit, especially because my own mother died of cancer, and I also know what it’s like to be desperate for cash. But what astonishes me most is that Krista heard that story and still wanted Amanda dead. Krista was right—I really didn’t know her.

I get dressed on my own in anticipation of going home. Even though I’m able to do all the motions of dressing myself, my body feels like it went through a battle, and when I’m done dressing, I feel like I need a nap to recover. I’m beyond exhausted.

Ingesting a lethal toxin? Not recommended.

The nurse who went through my discharge paperwork with me today comes by with a wheelchair. “I don’t need that,” I tell her, which isn’t entirely true, because I’m still pretty shaky on my feet. Still, I can make it out of the building.

“Hospital rules,” she says. “We don’t want anything to happen to you—at least not until you leave!”

I don’t want to make trouble, so I obediently climb into the chair. She pushes me down the hallway to the elevator. After an interminably long elevator ride, we arrive at the lobby. As promised, Amanda is sitting in the lobby waiting for me. She rises to her feet when she sees me.

“Is that your girlfriend?” the nurse asks me.

A split second after the question leaves her lips, her face turns pink. Because she knows—of course she does. Everyone knows I’m in the hospital because my girlfriend tried to kill me. And if that weren’t enough, it’s all over the news. The whole city knows.

Krista is famous now. The New York Times had a big splashy article about all the dead bodies left in her wake. It’s more than I even knew about—more than just Stacie and Mr. Zimmerly. My ex-fiancée had a bad habit of dealing with her problems with murder.

“Hi, Blake,” Amanda says as she gets closer to me. “You look like shit.”

“Hey, thanks.”

After her own wound was deemed non-serious and she was released from the hospital the next morning, Amanda has been back to visit me several times. And right now, she helps me get out of the wheelchair and steady myself on my feet.

“I can’t catch you if you fall, you know,” she says.

“I’ll be fine.”

There are taxis waiting outside the hospital, and I would have been perfectly fine to hop into one of them on my own, but I’m glad Amanda is here with me, and also, it was the hospital rule that someone had to pick me up. She opens the taxi door for me and then climbs inside behind me.

“But the ride is on me,” I tell her. “Don’t say no.”

“Why would I say no?” she retorts. “I saved your life after all. The least you can do is pay for the ride.”

That is very true. The doctor told me that if I hadn’t come to the hospital and been intubated, I would have been dead within the hour. Krista wasn’t going to call for an ambulance. If Amanda hadn’t stabbed her from behind, she would have let me die right in front of her.

“I’ve got all my stuff packed by the way,” Amanda tells me as the taxi shoots up First Avenue. “My friend from the diner told me I can crash on her couch for a while.”

I look at her in surprise. “Why would you move out?”

“Um, because you told me to move out. You ordered me to.”

I did do that. I banged on her door and told her she had thirty days to get the hell out of my home. But a lot has changed since then. I don’t want to kick Amanda out and make her live on a friend’s sofa when I’ve got a whole house that’s practically empty.

“I want you to stay,” I say. “I mean, if you want to.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You sure about that?”

“Very sure.” She looks hesitant, and I add, “And you can eat all the cereal you want.”

Her face relaxes into a smile. “Well, I won’t turn down a decent mattress over a lumpy sofa.”

Even just the brief conversation with Amanda has exhausted me, so I lean my head back against the headrest so I can rest. But every time I shut my eyes, I see Krista standing over me, watching me die. I still can’t wrap my head around what she did to me or the fact that she killed so many people in her lifetime…until Amanda finally put an end to it. It’s no exaggeration to say that Krista was a psychopath. Hell, you could go ahead and call her a monster.

Is it terrible to say I miss her?