Chapter 31 #2
I get through a huge section deconstructing and annotating interviews with possession survivors.
The interviews vary in length and detail.
Harry J has the shortest. He only answered one question and was so combative that I’m not sure why he agreed to the interview in the first place.
Some survivors were willing to be interviewed on multiple occasions, like Alex W, whose interviews take up a good amount of space.
After four hours, the words swim together, and I stop retaining any of them.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I announce, closing the book.
Nico double-clicks on his tracking pad. “No.”
I pull a face. “What do you mean, no? You can come with me and stand outside the door, but I need to pee.”
“You’re staying here,” Nico says. “Keep reading.”
I rest my elbows on the table and clasp my palms together. “Please, oh please, my mighty protector, may I have permission to use the facilities? Unless you want me to squat in the corner and blame it on Bob.”
He lets out an exhale so long it makes me want to flip this table.
“Go.” He waves at the door. “Come back when you’re done.”
I push up from my chair so fast it shrieks against the floor.
I head for the upstairs bathroom since it’s the farthest one from the library and will give me a couple of extra minutes out from under Nico’s watchful glare.
I hold my head up high like I’m totally fine and not bothered at all that the guy I’m obsessed with is treating me like an annoying kid asking to use the bathroom during a test.
Nico’s allowed to reject me. That’s fine, and I need to let it go, but why is he being such a jerk about it?
When I’m done, I wipe the smudged mascara out from under my eyes with a wet tissue and step back into the hallway, my feet dragging like they’re trying to give me more time to enjoy not being in the library. I notice Griffin’s door cracked open.
I poke my head in. “Can I come in?”
Griffin’s sitting in bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows with a computer on his lap. “If you can stomach the smell.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I say, but those turn out to be famous last words. The second I step inside, the smell of ectoplasm and vomit hits me. Even when I breathe through my mouth, I can practically taste it.
Griffin laughs at me. “Second thoughts?”
“So many,” I say. “But I need to talk to you.”
“About yesterday?”
I nod. I was too focused on Griffin yesterday when I stood in the doorway of his room watching Nico get him settled on his bed, to really take in any details about his room.
Twinkle lights are strung around the window, casting a warm glow over everything.
It’s extremely organized, and the walls are barren except for a sprawling cluster of Polaroid photos behind his bed of Griffin and a girl who must be Bonnie.
Her orange hair catches the sunlight like copper wire.
Glancing between the photos feels like traveling through time. Bonnie in braces. Bonnie and Griffin jumping off a dock. Bonnie sitting on a horse with her arms stretched up over her head. Griffin with a buzz cut and a military uniform, kissing the side of her head.
I pull my gaze away from the photos because looking at them makes me feel like an intruder. “I’m sorry. For kissing you.”
“As I remember, I kissed you.” His voice is easy, like we’re talking about borrowing his charger or something. “And seriously, don’t sweat it. You know my deal. Yesterday was never serious for me.”
I guess that’s one less thing to feel like crap over. Maybe I can get through this day without destroying every relationship I have.
Griffin sets his computer aside and gives me his full attention. “You find anything on Morrow?”
“Only that he probably still thinks we’re a couple.” I shrug. “Donny thinks he’s going to hunt us.”
“For real?”
“Morrow thinks we’re in love, that we’d make beautiful babies, and he wants to make us both pull out our teeth to see who has a higher pain tolerance,” I say. “Which, unfortunately for you, means you’re going down.”
“Who here has lost a limb?” A lazy smile spreads across his face. “You think way too highly of yourself.”
I lower my voice into my best impression of him. “You won’t think so after I’m done with you.”
A pillow flies at my face.
Nico says maybe ten words to me in the next two days that aren’t direct orders.
We spend every second of the day together.
I argue with him every time I have to pee.
I probably shouldn’t have taken such a long detour that first time, because he’s taken to standing outside the door and will only let me out of his sight when it’s time for bed.
He even takes over my morning training.
“You need to start lifting weights,” he says one morning in the gym. “I don’t know why Griffin only has you running.”
“Probably because I couldn’t do cardio for shit,” I say.
“That much is clear,” Nico says. “Your running form’s all wrong, but you need to be doing more than cardio.”
He guides me through a lift more painful than any day I ever had at the construction site.
I’d thought that job had made me strong, but Nico quickly proves me wrong.
He looks annoyed the entire time, but his annoyed face is still somehow so impossible to look away from.
Combined with the tight black long sleeve he has on, which leaves nothing to the imagination and lets me see every muscle shift as he demonstrates proper form, it’s hard to focus on the reps.
I’m staring into the fridge a good six hours after we’re done, trying to decide whether I can stomach week-old pasta for lunch when I spot a whole mackerel wrapped in plastic on the bottom shelf.
Snatching up the fish, I turn to my reluctant shadow.
“I want to practice talking to Peggy,” I say.
The corners of Nico’s mouth tense. “Why?”
“She’s weaker than the Possessors, right? So, I should be able to maintain my walls more easily.” I hold up the fish. “I could come bearing gifts.”
He lets out a sigh that sounds more tired than annoyed. “Fine.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting cross-legged under a tree just beyond the property line with the fish in my lap and goggles strapped to my head. Late afternoon sun filters through the leaves, making everything look bluish green through the lenses.
Nico stands about fifteen feet away, leaning against a tree with a shotgun strapped across his back. He leans against everything. I wonder if it’s because the world has made him tired, if leaning helps take some of the weight he’s always carrying off his shoulders.
I wonder what it’ll take for me to stop being completely obsessed with him when even rejection doesn’t work.
“Peggy?” I unwrap the fish, and the strong, briny smell makes my nose curl. “I brought you something.”
Bare branches quiver in the wind. I squint at the iron posts stretching into the distance.
I drop my weight on one hand, twisting around to look at Nico. “What stops a ghost from going over the fence?”
“The fence is for people, both possessed and not,” Nico says. “A possessed person couldn’t touch it since it’s iron. The salt line is what keeps the ghosts out.”
I wait, holding the fish out until my arm starts to get tired. I’m about to ask Nico if this is usually how they get Peggy’s attention when the temperature drops.
“Is that for me?” a tiny voice says behind me.
I whip my head around so fast I nearly drop the fish.
A girl hovers a couple of feet above the dead leaves.
She looks no more than seven years old, with big eyes, a pouty mouth, and dark hair pulled into pigtails.
Her form shimmers in the shadows like heat coming off pavement, and I can see the tree trunk through her torso, but she’s not as bright as any of the other ghosts I’ve met.
She reminds me so much of Rosie that it’s painful to look at her.
Until she points at me with a translucent finger and says, “Shit on a fucking cracker. You can hear me.”
Kids dropping F-bombs has to be one of the funniest things in the world. I could watch videos of that forever.
“Yep.” I place the fish on the leaves. “I’m Eden.”
“Nico said he met a girl who could talk to me, but I didn’t believe the grumpy bastard.
” She floats closer, her eyes fixed on the fish with an unnerving intensity.
She crouches next to it, and I watch in fascination as her translucent fingers work at the scales, gripping one and yanking it out.
The scale drifts through her hand and settles on the leaves with no sound. “They look like fingernails.”
“I was hoping I could practice talking with you,” I say, bracing my elbows on my knees. “If you’re willing.”
“You sound like you talk fine already,” Peggy says, not looking up from her fish.
“I mean, talking to a ghost,” I clarify. “I need to practice keeping my walls up.”
“Nico is good at keeping his walls up now,” Peggy says. “We used to play a game where I’d try to get past them.”
I glance at Nico. I can tell he’s listening by the stiffness of his shoulders, even though he’s looking firmly at the trees.
“You did?” I ask Peggy.
“We don’t play that game anymore,” Peggy says. “He’s teaching me how to read.”
Getting rid of this stubborn longing inside me would be so much easier if Nico were a complete asshole, but he’s not. He’s good and kind in such quiet ways, like he doesn’t want to call attention to it.
Closing my eyes, I go to my stage and sit cross-legged, facing all the empty chairs. I stop imagining my family in the chairs. It’s easier to concentrate when I’m not trying to picture their faces.