deliberate, leisurely step. Malaya marched more than she walked. Her steps were always very strong and crisp. Each one could be heard separately and definitively. These anonymous steps belonged to someone else. Not someone she knew very well, that was for sure. Lily’s curiosity was growing more and more as every second ticked by. Silence reigned in the little room. There were no audible clues as to who might be sitting across the room. It occurred to her that this person might be a complete stranger. With that prowling walk, this person could be some creep off the street. It was starting to make her skin crawl. The stranger was probably watching her. What kind of hospital lets in a bum straight out of the gutter? This was just too much for Lily. She had to know who it was. She tried once again to open her eyes. Nothing moved, not even a twitch of the eyelid. She finally had a visitor, and she couldn’t even crack an eyelid. Even if it was a hobo off the street, he had come to visit her, and that said something about his character, so this person must not be all bad. Lily was determined to find out the identity of this person. If she could just have a glimpse to know who it was. She tried again, and put her whole soul into forcing her eyes to open.
“Open, open, open,” she chanted in her head. “Please open just for a moment!”
Then it happened, she saw a sliver of light shine though her eyelids like two crescent moons. Muted daylight danced through her short, delicate strands of eyelashes. Lily forced another jolt of energy towards her eyes and opened them even farther. The Little Engine that Could, a favorite book her mother read to her years ago, came to her mind.
“I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” she recited in her head.
Lily pushed her eyes the rest of the way open and blinked a few times looking towards where the wall and ceiling join together to create the cold room she was now laying in.
“I did it,” she mumbled. Lily realized she had said it out loud. Relieved that she could see at last, she breathed a sigh of relief. Then she remembered the stranger. She tried lifting her head to see, but was unsuccessful, so she flopped her head to the side and down hoping to catch a glimpse. In the corner of the room in a worn chair sat her stranger. Lily gazed at her visitor, not knowing what to say, or even what to think. He sat hunched forward looking at her with red, bloodshot eyes opened wide with shock. It was the person she detested most on the entire planet. It was Slade.
***
Slade Turner was known by the entire student body as one of the biggest bullies of the school. His days at school were spent tormenting younger and weaker classmates. If someone in the hallway whispered his name, the sea of students would automatically part like the Red Sea. Everyone watched out for him and his gang at school to avoid becoming the next object of their persecution. No one ever saw him outside the school grounds. His “friends”, if you could call them that, liked to hang out at the local mall. Slade never went with them. He didn’t really want to. Contrary to popular belief, “The guys” as he called them, were not really the kind of people he wanted to spend his time with. Sure he was with them at school, but if he could change that he would. He had joined their group at the beginning of freshman year right after moving to Allendale, Texas. In high school once you picked your friends it seemed like there might as well be a thick web of chains welding you to each other. There was no getting out. Not unless you wanted to be shunned and abused by them until graduation. The group of boys hadn’t been all that bad at first, but as time went on one prank led to another and they had gained the reputation of being jokesters and bullies. It wasn’t that they liked watching their peers suffer, it wasn’t like that. They just liked how they felt afterward. It made them feel strong and powerful. Even Slade would admit this was how he had felt at first, but if he had the choice to do high