4

Jeremy

Saturday: 12:25 AM

When the room finally stopped spinning, I sat up. Marisa stared back at me, her eye nearly swollen shut in a purple squint.

“Holy— For the love of God. What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing! I told you—a man jumped out at me near the park and grabbed me, but I got away. You’re a mess, Jeremy. Do you think you need stitches?”

My head pounded, the dark salty liquid running into my mouth. But I was pretty sure it was just a cut and I was only in shock. I knew what real pain felt like and this was just a scrape for me.

“Not the romantic weekend tryst I was imagining,” I said. “Being you’re the future doctor among us, you should know the scalp bleeds profusely from even the slightest scratch.”

I heaved myself to a sitting position and wriggled off my jeans. Under its silly little sock, the stump was a bright raw red. And genius that I am, I had left the massage balm that soothed the angry little bugger back in my dorm at Duke.

Pushing Marisa to talk would just make her clam up even more, so I reached for a tissue on her desk to wipe the blood out of my eyes, and then for another one to wipe down Veronica. She was a little dented from the fall, but basically unharmed.

I slipped the sock back on the stump, positioned it into Veronica’s waiting embrace, and then, like a metallic praying mantis, limped into the bathroom to get a look at my sorry self.

Marisa followed, brow furrowed over her bruised eye. “Let me wash it off.”

I brushed her away. “Talk about starting our weekend on the wrong foot. Just go and relax. I may be a cripple, but I’m not an invalid.” I knew it was harsh, but I wasn’t going to let her nurse me as a way to avoid her own troubles. We’d been down that road already.

I glimpsed her pouting in the mirror behind me. She stared me down for a moment, then whirled around and stormed out of the bathroom.

I was pretty certain the cut on my hairline was superficial. I’d live. I rinsed it with hot water until it was clean and the bleeding had stopped.

It was so silent in the room that I wondered if Marisa had slipped out. I skidded out of the bathroom, and walked right through an icy cloud. Turning back, I caught a quick glance of the fly-wing woman from the park. Hands fluttering at her side, her blurred mouth opened in a silent howl before she dissipated into nothing.

I found Marisa curled into a fetal position on the bed, bawling her eyes out.

“Why are you such a shit, Jeremy?” she whispered.

“It’s what I do best,” I said softly. I kneaded the clenched muscles of her back, feeling each rib through her fluffy sweater. “Now why don’t you tell me what really happened.”

She twisted around to look up at me. Her makeup ran down from one reddened eye, the other dark purple, her black hair falling from her usually severe ponytail like spilled ink.

When I gathered her in my arms, she let out a deep slow moan like I’d hurt her. We lay on the bed huddled together and my own warm tears joined hers. She would tell me when she could.

Someone had hurt my girl. And I was going to find out what had happened.

But it was going to have to wait until morning.