drink binge, wasn’t it? The sweaty nights, the weird dreams?
Were the triplets right? Was I really that “strung out?” “High?” No wonder my head was so fuzzy all the time and I’d felt like death warmed up when I’d stopped taking everything for that brief period. They had half convinced me I had alcohol poisoning. Then I wondered if I had flu or caught a virus. Then I blamed it on myself for mixing alcohol with antihistamine meds—everyone knew there could be side effects, but this? Pill-tampering?
They wanted me out of it, they wanted me drunk. Being locked up wasn’t enough for them. How long had this been going on? From the first day I sprained my ankle? I remembered Kate’s concern: “You should take an aspirin or some kind of anti-inflammatory for that.” And Beanie, too. Planned from the start so I’d take the meds. “We thought he’d be perfect for you. Picked him out specially for you.”
I looked in the mirror at the pale ghostly figure before me, the woman I hardly recognized. I told her, “We will get out of here, I swear. We will beat this, I promise.”
Thirty-Eight
“Wake up, it’s dinner.”
I opened an eye and saw a hazy version of Jen leaning over me, her long blond hair spilling over her shoulder, tumbling onto my face. As my vision cleared, she became three-dimensional. I had resisted. Hadn’t swallowed one single pill, and my body was screaming at me because of it. “How long have I been asleep?” I asked groggily. I was curled into a fetal position, sweat soaking the comforter. I felt like an army had marched over me. Jen sashayed off, out of focus.
Kate came into view. “You’re always asleep when we get home,” she snapped. “Your bedroom’s a mess, you know, you could have cleaned up a little.” She poked me with her elbow. “Seriously, haul your lazy ass out of bed. Make an effort, clean the scum off your bath, you lazy slob. If you don’t get up now, you won’t sleep tonight.” She stomped out the door in her big black hiking boots, leaving me there: the lump on the bed who had done nothing all day other than will myself not to take any pills, will myself not to drink any Mumm.
A wave of shame flushed over me, hot through my torso. Shame that I’d been such a dunce not to put two and two together about the Trojan horse meds. I thought about the science programs Dan had got me into. How our bodies are as intricate to a cell as the universe is to us, and how each of my cells was flushed with humiliation and disgrace. And how opiates—or whatever they’d given me—were flowing through my veins and would be for several more days, until I could get them out of my system.
I heaved myself up, feeling like I weighed four hundred pounds, even though the mirror told me I was leaf-thin. My head was still muzzy and thick, the withdrawal pains unbearable, my brain a block of concrete. I flicked my gaze down to my left hand to check my ring was still there. If I focused on this one thing I could block out the pain. I gazed at the yellow diamond, glinting, not from natural light now, because it was almost dark outside, but from the overhead lights in the room. The middle of my ring looked like a doorway with a thousand corridors, like the golden Palace of Versailles. A serene little smile tipped up the corners of my mouth as I thought about Juan. My engagement ring felt like it was all I had in the world right now.
“What. What are you smiling at?” It was Dan. His aura was gray. I’d taken to seeing people’s auras lately, or imagined I could. He strode into my room and set a tray of dinner down. There was a banana. Lucky. I needed the potassium. I’d force myself to eat it, although I felt like vomiting.
“Hi, Dan,” I mumbled. “How was work?”
He gave me a crushing look, his eyes flinty and hard.
Kate was back, standing by the doorway, guarding it. “Has Beanie been here with you today?” They’d bring Beanie in to visit me. I had supposed they were being thoughtful (yeah, right) but now I understood why they encouraged me to hang out with Beanie—so I’d take more medication.
“I thought Beanie went with you, Kate, on your hike?”