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James drives away from the mansion at a normal speed. I squeeze my eyes together and concentrate on breathing. Once we’re a few blocks away, he pulls out a handheld radio from the glove compartment.
He breaks our stunned silence by talking into the receiver. “Location?”
Oso’s voice crackles through the small speaker, giving the name of an intersection unknown to me.
“Copy.” James puts the radio down.
“I knew it,” Blare bursts out. “I knew we shouldn’t have taken them. They could have gotten us killed. I don’t understand why you would take such a risk. They’re snotty kids, for crying out loud, James. They’ve got no business in this.”
James looks straight ahead, drives for a few seconds without responding, then finally says, “This is everyone’s business.”
Blare pulls off her blond wig and throws it down. “Maybe, but risking everything like this just makes no sense.”
“I had to see Elliot while he was still in Seattle. The party was my only chance. Also the best opportunity to get Xave and Marci on board. Two birds with one stone. You know time is of the essence.”
Blare huffs. If I was her, I’d feel the same way. James’s secretiveness and MO isn’t reassuring. Xave stares out the window. He hasn’t looked at me, not even once.
The sight of my own hands covered in dark, dried blood makes me dizzy. I try to worry about trivial things to take my mind off of it.
Ruined dress.
Ugly scar.
Terrifying answers ... like those unearthly, black eyes and probing tentacles whose images will be stamped in my cerebral cortex forever.
The car comes to a stop and I snap out of the mental anguish caused by the automatic movie playing in my head. James ushers me into the van’s back seat and slips the ring off my finger. No one notices.
“Oso, first aid,” he orders like some sort of general.
Oso hops to it, a regular soldier. He grabs a small metal box from under his seat.
“Where are you hurt?” he asks after a quick glance at all the blood.
I point at my arm and cringe from pain and shame. I cracked. Things went wrong because of me. Blare gets in the van. Xave follows, squeezes into the back, and slides away from me, as far as he can.
“You okay, bro?” Clark asks him.
Xave ignores him, leans his head on the side of the van and closes his eyes. Aydan looks pale and breathes in and out in measured rhythm. Oso’s dexterous hands work quickly, cleaning the wound and uncovering the gash.
“How bad is it?” James asks.
“Not bad. A bit of skin glue will hold it together.” Oso pulls out a small tube and gets to work. “So ... what happened?” he asks as he glues me back together, like a broken toy. “It was all so fast on those tiny cameras, we couldn’t make heads nor tails out of any of it. Next time we need sound. We were so jumpy we almost crashed in there to help.”
James opens his mouth to explain, but Blare beats him to the punch.
“She freaked!” The words come out accompanied by spit. “That’s what happened. You owe me ten bucks, Oso. She didn’t bite her tongue like she said. She screamed like a little schoolgirl.”
Oso gives her a nasty glare at the mention of the bet. At least he was betting on me. “But nothing came of it, right?” he asks.
James shrugs and looks at Xave.
“It could have,” Blare says. “And it still could, if we keep acting like we’re running a pre-school. Xave better not show his face around anymore or it’s ‘game over’—unless we’re planning to kill him for real.”
“Shut up, Blare!” Aydan bursts out. Everyone jumps, even Blare. Until now, Aydan has seemed the quiet type and—judging by everyone’s surprise at his explosive words—this isn’t typical behavior.
“So says the one who also freaked,” Blare mocks.
Aydan’s hands twist on his lap. He answers in a barely subdued tone, like the price of keeping his anger in check is too high. “It affects everyone differently for different reasons.”
James puts a hand on Aydan’s shoulder, a warning not to say more. Aydan stares at the floor, clenching his jaw. But there’s no way Blare will ever understand his meaning. She isn’t one of us. The horror she experienced can’t be anywhere near what I just went through, what Aydan and James must have gone through. It’s one thing to see the monster, and quite another to realize that you’re it.
A whimper escapes me without my permission.
This is what I am: a monster, a real freak of nature.
I want to cry. I want to die, want to bash my skull against the ground and kill the thing that lives in there.
I. Am. A. Monster.
Tears roll down my face and I keep whimpering like a sad puppy.
“She’s losing it,” Blare says.
“Leave her alone,” Xave growls, suddenly alive after I thought he’d died of resentment and hatred. “You’ve no idea what she just went through.”
“Same thing as all of us, jackass,” Blare growls back.
“Wow, why don’t we just chill it, everyone,” Oso says. “We can just—”
“No, not the same thing,” Xave interrupts, looking like he’s gone from a dying ember to a raging bonfire. “She had to pretend she didn’t really know me or care about me. She had to convince those freaks she intended to do away with her best friend. She was brave.” Xave looks at me. Our eyes lock, and his gaze shines on me, giving me strength.
“And whose fault is that?” Blare says with an upward twist of her mouth and eyebrow. “That wouldn’t have happened if—”
“Just shut up.” Xave points a menacing finger at Blare.
“Listen, you—”
“Enough!” James shouts.
Blare looks injured, betrayed.
“Blare,” James’s voice is quieter now, conciliatory. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry.”
She seems to shrink a few inches, looks outside through the windshield.
James rubs his forehead. “We’re all in this together. We’ll talk about it later. This isn’t the best place—”
“Fine,” Blare says and moves away from James as his hand approaches her shoulder. She slips into the front passenger seat with a grunt.
Oso shakes his head, then removes his bloody latex gloves. “There you go. Hopefully that won’t leave a scar. It wasn’t as bad as it looked at first glance. It never is.”
The bandages are comfortable. My arm still hurts, but it feels much better. Numb somehow.
“Change the bandage for two or three days. After that you can uncover it. Keep an eye out for swelling or redness. Okay?” Oso wipes a tear off my face. “It’ll be all right,” he says in a tender voice, too tender for such a big guy like him. “It gets better.”
I appreciate his effort to cheer me up, but he doesn’t understand. Things might get better for someone like him, but for me they won’t. I don’t see how I’ll ever get over being whatever the hell I am. I’ve seen what James wanted me to see. I’ve been a victim of his experiment. Maybe I wouldn’t have believed him if he’d just told me what I am, if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. But this was cruel.
I wish I’d never agreed to come. I wish I’d been happy with thinking I was crazy.