Chapter 38: The Fake Zone: Chapter 38

I open my eyes, my heart beating the same painfully fast rhythm it was in my dream. The room is dark, and I still can’t breathe. Disoriented, I sit up and yank my arms out from under the covers, the razor-sharp cuts still burning my skin.

“Mila?” Grey’s voice is thick and groggy with sleep. “Are you okay?”

I nod as I get out of bed, my stomach roiling and skin damp with sweat.

The pungent scents of blood, cigarette smoke, and mustiness are in my nose as I cross to the bathroom. I close the door and flip on the lights. Under the bright fluorescent lights, I inspect my arms and hands again, shocked there’s no blood, though I know it was a nightmare. Tears streak down my cheeks, as hot and ticklish as the blood had felt.

I clutch my wrist, the pain still so intense it feels real.

Grey knocks softly. “Mila?”

When I don’t respond, he opens the door. I don’t see his reaction because I can’t force myself to look at him.

I wait for him to ask a dozen warranted questions, but instead, Grey closes the distance between us and pulls me into a secure embrace. I keep my arms folded in front of myself, one hand still pressed to my wrist as his warm skin engulfs me. Sandalwood, cedar, and a hint of orange chase the smells of cigarette smoke and must, but the scent of blood lingers just as real and intense as the pain on my skin and in my chest.

I tuck my face in the crook of his neck, trying to sort through what I saw, and what happened. But as soon as I think of the room, the broken glass, and Evelyn on the ground, I sob.

I cry for what feels like hours until my nose is congested, my head aches, and my lips and eyes are dry.

Grey rubs a hand over my back.

“It was a dream,” I say, shaking my head. “It felt so real.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I don’t. Not even a little. But the idea of holding it all inside of me makes me feel the threat of breaking, that there won’t be enough gravity to keep me together.

“I dreamed you and I were at the house my sister died in. But we were the ages we are now. I wasn’t seven.” I run a hand across my cheek, sticky from crying. “Evelyn was there, too, calling for me, but I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t find her. I didn’t get to her fast enough.” My voice cracks.

“Mila,” Grey’s voice is barely above a whisper.

Tears fill my eyes again. “I didn’t save her.”

His grip tightens, pressing me against him with a fierceness like he doubts gravity will be enough, as well.

Mila cries until she throws up, and then she clutches her head while I retrieve ibuprofen and a tall glass of water.

She takes them and downs the water, glancing at her wrist where she’s stained her skin red from gripping her arm so tightly.

I want her to talk to me, tell me about the dream, but the way her eyes close and her fingers dig into her temple assure me now isn’t the time.

“Come on. Let’s lie down.”

Mila shuffles to the bedroom, her entire body dragging before she collapses into bed. She doesn’t bother with the blankets, curling into a ball on her side. I tuck her in and climb in beside her. It’s just past four thirty, still dark out.

Mila cuddles close to me, head on my shoulder. Her breaths are ragged and occasionally she wipes a stray tear away as I hold her close.

To my relief, she falls asleep faster than I expected.

I grab my phone and enter Mila’s name and Oklahoma into an internet search. Nothing from the past pulls up, but Jon’s social media is in the mix of results. Mila shares their last name. She must have changed it when she was adopted. I have no idea what it was before. Like much of her life before Oleander Springs, it’s a mystery to me.

I turn off my alarm to go running and lie back, doing the only thing I can right now and hold her.

Mila stirs just after ten. Thankfully, it’s Wednesday, and neither of us has an early class.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Kind of numb.”

She looks numb.

“Talk to me, Mila. I swear, nothing you tell me will make me change my mind about you—about us.”

“You’ll look at me like I’m broken.”

The sun seeps in from the corner of the window shade, just enough to highlight her face as I roll so she can see the sincerity in my eyes. “Not a chance.” My voice, too, is filled with sincerity. “I already know you’re a badass.”

She forces a smile, but it barely hits her lips and certainly doesn’t touch her eyes as she stares into the distance as though her thoughts are in a different place, a different time.

“My sister’s name was Mallory. She was bossy, and headstrong, and stubborn, and my idol. She was my constant. In a world where nothing remained static, Mal did. We had plans, huge plans. Mal was an artist, and we were going to move to Paris. She was going to paint, and I’d sell her art, and we were going to live with ten cats near the Eifel Tower and eat french fries and french toast in France.” A tear rolls down her face. “Every night we were together, we’d sleep in the same bed, even if it was on a towel on a bathroom floor. We didn’t care. Maybe because we didn’t know to care or because kids know how integral hope is for survival.”

She pauses, biting that spot on her bottom lip.

“The last time my mom had custody of Mal and me, she was trying to get sober and clean again, but my mom could never say no. She’d go a week or a month—longer—and the first offer for a drink or a line of coke, and she’d accept. In her mind, anytime she went a day without drinking or getting high was her overcoming addiction. She thought she could choose to stop, but she never could. A sip would turn into a glass, and that glass turned into two, and then three, and then a bottle. It was the same with drugs.

“Sometimes I wonder if she battled with depression and anxiety, like me, and that was her way of self-medicating or maybe she just…” Mila shakes her head as her eyes shine with more tears. “I don’t know. I just know she couldn’t stop, not for Mal, or me, or even herself.”

I thread my fingers through her hair, coaxing the strands out of her face, wishing I could siphon off some of her anguish.

“We were staying in this really old rundown house. It smelled, the carpets were filthy, and it was always freezing. Mal and I stayed in a room together upstairs, and there was a lock on the outside of the door. They said it was to enforce bedtime. But they would forget about us, sometimes all day.”

Anger races agony as her words run through my mind, imagining Mila cold and hungry.

Her face reddens as tears spill over her lower lashes. “Sometimes it’s really hard to remember her. Like every day, every new memory threatens to replace ones of her. But that day…,” she shudders, “we were so hungry.”

She shakes her head, anger visible in her eyes for a second. “Mal thought she could sneak out the window, and back into the house and let me out. So we pushed the hide abed over so she could climb on the back to reach the window. The windows, like the house, were old, and it was sticking from being painted, and the handle was broken. Mal was pressing on the window, trying to grip it, and it broke. All at once, she lost her balance and fell out headfirst.”

She sobs, the sound of her heart fracturing. Mine fractures for her.

“I couldn’t reach. I was too small. I could only see over the edge of the window.”

I know without her explaining that’s how she got her scars—why telling me about them was too hard.

“A neighbor heard me screaming eventually, but it had been hours. My mom was arrested that night, and I never saw her again.”

I pull her close to me, tucking her into every part of my body, understanding with absolute certainty she’s a hundred times stronger than she realizes to survive that and continue trusting, and smiling, and loving as she does.