“Eat that. Sorry, it’s a little beat up.”
“Wait, what about sunset?”
He stares at me for a moment. “It’s morning.”
My stomach gives a hungry lurch as if to confirm. The thought of being utterly defenseless for so long only adds to the queasiness. My brain’s foggy. Words are fighting their way back into my consciousness. Crunching leaves. Ploy pacing on a phone call. Apparently, you nicked my spleen or something?
I wince and give my head a shake. That can’t be right. He’d been talking about being robbed, the stab wound. The drugs, I think. They messed with my dreams. He doesn’t have a phone and mine’s dead. But in the dream, he hadn’t said ‘he nicked my spleen’, he’d said ‘you.’ You nicked my spleen.
“How long do you normally take to get moving again once you...you know, die or whatever?” he asks and I try to focus. He saved me. Jamison was coming but Ploy did what I said with his blood and got us both away. Kept me safe while I was out.
“That was my first time,” I say and he looks up sharply. I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You swiped my back-from-the-dead V-card. Congrats. Hope it was good for you,” I say, wincing as I stretch to calm my over-fired nerves. Every muscle is tight and tired.
The barest hint of a smile tips up the corners of his mouth. “If it’s any consolation, you got my stab-a-needle-into-a-girl’s-heart virginity. Pretty sure that’s a lucrative one.”
The chuckle I force hurts. My lungs feel like they don’t quite remember their function yet. I cough hard and taste blood. Peeling the wrapper off the granola bar, I take a bite to kill the copper flavor.
When I finish chewing and look up, Ploy’s staring at me. “I brought you back,” he says, as if he doesn’t quite believe it. Technically, he only sped up the process—my genes would have done the job on their own—but I let him believe what he wants. Because in truth, if he hadn’t gotten me out of the cabin before Jamison showed up, my genes wouldn’t have done much good. “You said it was temporary. Me being able to do this.” He touches his chest, his heart, almost unconsciously. “Or were you lying about that too?”
“I wouldn’t have lied to you,” I say, my voice soft, a bit bitter though I don’t mean to make it sound that way. “It’ll be gone in a month.”
“You’re sure?” He’s holding his hand in front of him, slowly turning it over as if he expects to find the answers he wants tattooed on the other side. Where’s his sudden doubt coming from? There hasn’t been any time for me to get away. The words drift through my mind in Ploy’s voice, fragments of a conversation I can’t place.
I offer him a weak smile. “My cells changed yours. As soon as your body starts producing new cells they’ll treat mine like an infection and kill them off. You’ll be able to heal basic cuts and scrapes until everything’s flushed from your system. Broken bones, anything worse, and you’ll be knocked on your ass just like you were after you showed up dead on my doorstep. If it works at all. I told you, it goes away unless you’re born with it.” It’s all information he already has; I’m careful not to give him anything new.
The suspicion in his eyes catches me off guard. “You probably want to change,” he says, suddenly shuffling, bent over, toward the entrance. “Your shirt’s wrecked.”
“Okay,” I manage. When he’s gone, I take stock of myself. Blood is crusted to my side. The material sticks to my skin when I try to pull. It’s not until I get it over my head that I see the bandage he’s taped over the wound. The gauze is freshly changed.
My backpack is next to me. As I reach for it, I see the pile of leaves, the vaguely Ploy shaped indent in the middle where he’d clearly slept, giving me the sleeping bag. It makes me pause. Leaves. Something falling in the leaves. I remember it.
“There was a phone,” I whisper before I can stop myself. I remember my head on the backpack and the phone tumbling into the leaves. He reached for it as my eyes slid closed, but I listened. He talked to someone. Should I forget it? Leave her here? I mean, she’s worthless if we can’t get anything off her, right? I freeze. Ploy wouldn’t say that.