Page 27 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Nineteen

The next morning: banging on the door. Hard. Loud.

It wakes Crane with a jolt, or maybe that’s Stagger shaking his shoulder. He sits up, gasping.

It’s not that he wants Levi right now. And Levi certainly doesn’t want him, either; sometimes he finds Levi sleeping on the couch.

(At least Crane gets the bed. Apparently putting Crane on the couch while this pregnant is too far, even for Levi—small mercies.) But the uncertainty of his daily routine recently has been unmooring.

Another flurry of knocking. Stagger grumbles.

Yeah, yeah, he knows. Crane drags himself out of bed—that’s been getting harder recently, what with his center of gravity shifted to his belly—and frustratedly wrestles into whatever shirt Stagger pulled from the dirty clothes for him as he makes his way to the door.

Stagger follows through the dark apartment, hunched dutifully within arm’s reach in case Levi has returned in a mood. Or if Irene has returned at all.

God, did Levi forget his key when he left with her, drunk, last night? That’s what he gets.

Crane unlatches the dead bolt, already prepared to find the key somewhere and shove it into Levi’s hands so he can go back to sleep. Or watch another documentary when he inevitably can’t pass out again. Whatever he has to do to keep from fantasizing about shoving a pen through his orbital socket.

But when he opens the door, it’s not Levi or even Irene standing in the dirty hallway.

It’s Jess.

Visibly ill. Reeking of cheap liquor and metal and sweat.

“ There you are,” she slurs with the same barely contained disgust from her previous visit—as if to say how dare Crane, this ugly unwashed creature, not be expecting her this god-awful early.

She shoves forward, tries to get past him into the apartment, and succeeds only in fumbling over the threshold.

Her hair sticks in clumps to her clammy face.

She says, “Wondered if you’d finally gotten your shit together and killed yourself.”

That wakes him the fuck up.

The heavy door slams shut. Crane catches her by the upper arms. Tries to get her attention and get her to breathe.

Not because he likes her, which he doesn’t, but because when you panic you get stupid, and when you get stupid you get hurt.

And she’s already getting stupid if she’s running her mouth.

How gone is she? How did she get here? Did she drive ?

“But you didn’t,” she says. Thick and phlegmy. She’s smiling with too many teeth and she’s not breathing steady. “God. That’s pathetic.”

Her eyes focus just long enough to catch sight of Stagger in the dark.

She startles. Full-body flinches. Tears herself out of Crane’s grip and hits the armchair.

“Fuck,” she says. “Fuck you.”

It’s Stagger that gathers her up this time, keeps her from eating shit on the hardwood. She’s sweating and gasping for air. Throat twitching with her pulse. Alcohol poisoning, maybe? Did she take too many pills?

“Fuck you,” Jess insists, louder. “You’re pathetic.”

Crane doesn’t have a phone anymore. He makes the stereotypical gesture for phone , then give it.

If Jess drove, took the only car at 636 Victory Lane, then Tammy won’t be able to come get her, but at least the old woman should be able to talk her down.

Deal with whatever the hell this is. Maybe the part of Harry’s brain that gave out that day is giving out here too.

“If you actually wanted that thing out of you,” Jess says, “if you actually wanted to die, you would’ve done it already .”

This fucking bitch.

She vomits.

Crane jerks back. Jess tries to catch it and only ends up spilling a watery mess all over her hands and shoes.

Shit, okay, okay. Not here, not in the living room.

Crane pushes Jess to the back of the apartment.

She doesn’t fight. Too busy short-circuiting with puke on her hands and the taste in her mouth—she’s groaning, making a sick hiccup-laugh noise.

Stagger puts himself between her and the wall when a knee nearly gives out. Bathroom, come on.

“You would’ve done it,” she continues. As soon as she’s through the door, she stumbles, barely catches herself on the toilet and the edge of the bathtub. “Have you even tried? I don’t think so. You know what, I think you like it. That’s what this is. The hive was right. You want it.”

Shut up, shut up. Jess lurches over the tub, yanks on the faucet to get the stomach acid and half-digested remains of what’s probably breakfast and burning liquor off her hands.

Crane grinds his teeth. Of course he fucking tried.

He tried to get an abortion, and it was snatched away the moment Stagger tracked him to Aspen and Birdie’s.

He begged the hive to change their mind, and when they refused, he tried to threaten them into it.

Tammy won’t help and Levi won’t look the other way and now he’s here.

Jess has no idea what she’s on about. She needs to shut up.

Jess thuds to the narrow strip of floor. Smearing water across the tiles. Stagger leans over her to turn off the tub.

“I’m not you, though,” she says.

Her fingers slip over and over in an attempt to unbutton her jeans.

“I was going to die in that room.” Her movements are sluggish, every syllable hard-won.

“Sean was going to keep me there until I rotted, but then the flies came and said I’d never have to feel like that again.

So I’m not. I’m not some—some dog that does whatever it’s told.

” Saliva bubbles up when she speaks. “I’m not gonna lie here and spread my legs and take it like you. ”

In all the venom and spittle, there’s something that’s almost a sob. A piece of broken, painful glass in her throat.

“It’s just. You’re the only person I could think of.”

She gets the button only to struggle with the zipper.

“I’m pregnant,” she says, “and it’s Levi’s and I thought I could fix it, but I messed up.”

That moment in the manager’s office: Levi ducking his head to Jess’s ear, Jess pulling away and shaking her head no.

Every second she looked too much like Crane in the mirror, messy dark hair and thin pink lips and the same sharp collarbones.

Every time he glared across the car or the room or the apartment and hated her for it, every time he laughed along with jokes at her expense, every time he wished the hive had done this to her instead of him.

All of that, the whole time, and this happened right under his nose. It feels like a blood vessel in his brain is about to burst.

He wouldn’t have wanted it to happen if he knew it actually would.

And yeah—some childish part of him wishes with all its might for him to be surprised by this. To be surprised that Levi would do this. But he isn’t, because of course Levi would. Obviously.

Jess gets the zipper and yanks her pants down.

There’s blood everywhere.

Across her thighs, smearing her cheap blue underwear.

Not quite soaking all the way through the seat of her jeans, but about to.

A pile of menstrual pads and tissues and a washcloth crammed inside her underwear to stymie the flow that hasn’t worked nearly as well as it should’ve, not with the extent of the hemorrhage.

Jess pulls out a pad and drops it into the trash can. It’s all soaked, a dripping red bolus. Her pubic hair is matted.

She must have found Tammy’s DIY abortion kit, the one the hive forbid them from using, and grabbed the curette like it was an antidote.

Or googled what should theoretically go into a kit and decided any long, sharp object would do.

She did what Crane couldn’t bring himself to do, but she did it wrong. She hit something bad.

“He didn’t force me,” Jess snivels, as if this isn’t the most blood Crane has seen come out of a living person ever, as if he’d be upset with her.

She tries to shimmy out of her pants but she’s too weak, resorts to digging between her legs and unravelling deteriorating wads of paper towels from inside her.

“Or. I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t think he did. He makes you feel crazy.”

Crane touches her legs, permission to get her pants for her.

She lets him and he drags them down to her knees.

Underwear too. She reeks of copper, and it brings back a high school memory like a slap: waking up to find he’d started his period, groggily coming to in a pool of metallic mess.

It’s an unmistakable smell. Even if he never has another menstrual cycle again, it’s going to follow him for the rest of his life.

Crane clicks his tongue to get Stagger’s attention, signs plastic , and Stagger steps out to fetch it.

Jess reaches in and pulls out the washcloth. It looks like what Levi tried to use to clean up his back the night he got shot. Crane takes it from her and puts it into the trash can too.

“Sorry,” Jess says, spluttering. “I’m sorry.”

What is she apologizing for? Losing her shit in the living room, swearing at him, ruining the floor? Letting Levi do this to her?

Stagger comes back with the plastic sheet. Shifting Jess’s weight to get it under her makes her sob, but Stagger holds her hand and makes shushing noises and Crane squeezes her knee and she takes deep breaths.

Crane is bad at estimating, but if she hasn’t already lost enough blood to classify this as a medical emergency, it’s going to turn into an emergency real soon.

If she just nicked something, then pressure would’ve worked.

Or maybe it just hasn’t had time to clot.

He grabs the towel from the sink and gives it to her and she crams it in, his hand on her wrist to tell her to keep it there, press it in, it hurts but she has to.

He doesn’t know enough about how this works.

Maybe it’s too deep to get pressure on it at all.

You can’t exactly put weight on a wound on the other side of the cervix.