Chapter 21
Phantom. Now.
It’s been seven hours and thirty minutes since the Seekers Club Valentine’s Day invite went out. Already, multiple people have responded.
None of them are Ophelia.
I pull the screen down with my thumb and refresh. Over and over. Waiting for her name to pop up in the RSVP’d list.
Why the hell hasn’t she responded?
I check her social media page to see what she’s up to. Pictures of her at Dorian’s bookstore. Pictures of her with Spud. Pictures of her with him. I scroll past the pictures of Brody, to the before times. The Ophelia-that-was-mine.
Nothing but memories here. The night we went out for her birthday.
The day at the Bronx Zoo. That red dress—I cut that red dress off of her.
Right before I dipped melted candle wax patterns down her back…
her ass…her thighs…while she whimpered and thrashed, her wrists and ankles chained to the table…
These memories make my chest tight, my head light, and my blood rush south.
“How do you do it?” Monique asks. We’re in the lull between calls and she’s parked the ambulance underneath the 7 Train; the above-ground subway line provides small shelter from the rain pelting down.
“How do I do what?”
“The hard calls.”
Monique, I realize, has been incredibly quiet since our last call—an overdose.
We Narcan’d the patient and got him to the hospital, but the call has clearly been weighing on her.
I, selfishly, haven’t noticed because I’ve been in my phone, refreshing, looking for Ophelia’s message, getting lost in my own memories.
I put the phone face down on the dash and engage with her.
“You can talk about it, if you want.”
Streetlights and headlights bath Monique’s face in flashes of red and white. I see the muscle in her jaw clench, locking.
Another thing the two of us have in common: we don’t talk about our personal lives.
I clear my throat. “You know, back in the day, before we had,” I lift my phone and give it a shake, “these things to tell us when to wake up, what to do, how to get where we’re going… people used to navigate using what was around them. Stars in the sky, for example.”
“Mm. Are you about to tell me a, in my day, we used the northern light to get to school story?”
“A little before my time. But the principal still stands. Everyone needs a north star. A fixed point. So when you’re walking through hell, you can still look forward and see that beautiful star ahead of you and you can remind yourself, Okay. I can keep going.”
Monique stares at me. “What’s your star?”
I turn my phone on its back and tap the screen. My lock screen pops up—the picture of Ophelia, all warmth and smiles.
“If I’m have a rough call, all I have to do is glance at my phone, take a breath, and I’m good to keep going.”
Monique thinks about it. “Any objection to me taping a picture of Zazie Beetz to the dashboard?”
I snort a laugh. “Knock yourself out.”
Monique tilts her head. “You should bring her by the station some time. Little Miss North Star.”
“Yeah. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “What’d you do?”
I exhale a deep sigh. “How long have you got?”