Chapter 4
Clara
The water in the shower isn’t hot enough.
My skin might be splotchy and red, but if it can’t get hotter, how the hell am I going to warm up my frozen insides from whatever the hell just happened?
I can’t help but feel like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing away the blood on my hands that nobody else can see, but that’s not it.
There is no blood. Not from what I just did.
Any blood stuck to my skin is from saving a life, not taking one.
But the recoil did something to my nerves. Or my brain. Or it’s just the trauma of it coming out sideways.
Either way, my skin feels like there are spiders scrambling over it, tiny little feet tap-tap- tapping across my body, and I just want them gone.
The panic spirals, and I lean my head against the wall of the shower, forcing myself to go through the steps Maria taught me to keep control. To keep myself from passing out.
God, I wish she were here with me, whispering the steps in my ear as I try to stay with my body, with the ugly sensation of spiders dancing against my nerves.
I can’t follow the directions, but I let my mind wander, knowing that focusing on anything is better than falling into the pit my mind wants to tug me into. So instead, I drift to the first time I met her, finding exactly what I needed in the most unlikely of situations.
The crowds by the piers overwhelmed me the first time I got caught in them. Thousands of people trying to disembark their cruise ships at once, even if it was orderly, was more than my fragile nerves could handle.
I was sweating, shaking, hardly keeping it together.
And the guys had noticed. So, when I got separated, the crowd pushing my smaller frame ahead of them, I could hear them shouting from behind me.
But it didn’t matter. I’d tried to stop, but I was jostled just enough to trip on the cobblestones in the scenic old town, stumbling into the person in front of me.
A young guy, probably about the same age as me, had spun, catching my elbows in his hands, and I’d tried to pull away.
He’d held on, the scent of alcohol clinging to him as he laughed. “Hey, look at this fish I just caught.”
Two other men, just as drunk, circled me, boxing me in, as they peppered me with questions, inviting me to visit the town with them, to go to a bar with them, to hit up the onboard nightclub with them.
“Let me go,” I’d breathed out, the panic making my voice whisper quiet, too quiet for their drunk minds to register my protest as they’d dragged me farther and farther from the shouts of the guys.
It wasn’t until tears were drenching my cheeks that the idiots realized I had no urge to be caught, and after announcing that I was “No fun, and probably a shitty lay,” they’d left me, lost, alone, and so panicked my vision was turning black at the edges.
I’d rushed away from the crowds, getting lost in the winding old roads of La Merida, built not for cars but people, until I couldn’t run anymore, and I’d slumped into the shade of a deep doorway, the tears still falling, my breathing still ragged, my blood whooshing in my ears.
I have no idea how much time passed. The guys and I took a long time to find each other that day.
But a cool hand against my forehead had me blinking my eyes open, scrambling backwards out of the doorway, terror immediately spiking again.
A woman with hair in a cute pixie cut and big dark eyes behind thin wire glasses had held her hands up, backing up a step while I panted across from her, the cobblestones too firm against my palms.
“Sorry,” she’d said in Spanish. “I thought you were a lost drunk.”
It’d taken me a while to parse out her words over my panic, and she’d started to say the same thing in English when I pushed myself to a crouch. “No. Sorry. I’m not drunk,” I’d said in Spanish, forcing myself to my feet.
“Panic attack?” she’d asked.
I’d nodded, blinking back even more tears.
She’d inspected me, and had I been feeling less like I’d just drowned, then been left out in the desert sun for a week to dry, I would have left right then. As it was, I stood awkwardly in that tiny street, failing to force the tears away, my hands shaking with unspent adrenaline.
“Do you have a doctor? For the panic attacks?” Later, I’d figured out she’d placed my American accent and was choosing her words with care, hoping that I had enough experience with the language to get the gist of it.
I’d shaken my head, flexing and clenching my fists, my limbs still tingly and not quite my own.
“Are you visiting?”
I’d managed a few steps, so I could prop myself up against the side of the building. “I’m, well, I’m stuck. We ran out of gas,” I say, for once feeling safe to be perfectly honest.
“Where were you heading?”
“Away.”
She’d nodded, then, after a moment of hesitation, she’d stepped closer. “I’m a therapist. If, while you’re here, you would like some help with the panic, I’d be happy to squeeze you in.”
I’d dropped my head. “I don’t have money.”
“And I don’t need money. You’d just be keeping me from my paperwork, which would be a blessing, really.”
I’d laughed, and she’d seemed pleased that I could understand her well enough to get the joke.
“You don’t have to. I just thought I’d offer.”
I nodded without much thought at all. “Thanks. I think I might need to take you up on that.”
I had. And even when we had enough to pay her for her time, she’d refused to take our money.
Helping her niece get out of a similar situation to the one I’d been in a year ago was the smallest thing I could have done for her to repay her kindness.
It was all I could do when she’d repeatedly refused my crumpled cash.
For once, I could be fully honest about what I was going through, able to talk it through with someone who could actually help me.
Not at first of course, but eventually, when she’d proven herself safe with the worst of it.
She’d given me books for Trips, helped me understand Jansen was going to need more help than she could give, had worked with me to keep the panic manageable while also explaining that I might need medicine as well, if what we were doing wasn’t enough.
Tonight, it’s not enough.
My skin stings; the water is so hot I’ve probably scalded myself, and when I get out, I’m unwilling to look at myself in the mirror.
Who would look back at me?
I killed a man. A man who had wanted to kill me, a man I already thought I’d killed. In self-defense, then, but now, cold-blooded with chilling efficiency.
Maria had helped me process Smith’s death the first time. But now?
Now, I’m forced to process it while locked in my cage, painfully alone and worried about Jansen. About RJ and Walker. About Trips. Even about Mattie.
Will they hate me now? Am I beyond salvation?
I came back, knowing what I might have to do to break us free from Trips’ father. This was one of those things that I knew I might have to face.
But knowing there might be blood on my hands was abstract. Choosing to put blood on my hands without hesitation is concrete.
I should feel something besides the scrabbling of insects on my skin and a chill in my soul, shouldn’t I? Remorse? Anger? Disgust?
I’d researched what it might be like, to prepare myself, on those nights when sleep wouldn’t find me in the RV, when I wasn’t ready to sit with Trips’ silent self-contempt or Jansen’s manic midnight serenades.
Sometimes, even being surrounded by people I love can be too much. Sometimes, I need a moment to myself. And now I have too many moments to myself. Nearly all my moments are for myself, and I feel like I’m oozing out of the edges of my body, seeking contact where I know there’s none.
It turns out that my research into taking a life was inadequate.
This coldness in my soul isn’t what I’d thought would happen.
There’s only apathy about taking Smith’s life.
I can’t tell if I’m a sociopath or if my brain is trying to protect me from what I just did.
Maria would say the latter, but she’s not here. Nobody is here.
The ice is an unknown that I can’t parse, and I know if one of the guys, any of the guys, were here with me, they’d somehow break through the ice. There’d be an outlet for whatever this lack of feeling is.
Alone, I wrap myself in a fuzzy bathrobe, coat my hair in the collection of fancy products that came with the room, then plop the mass on top of my head.
With nothing else to do, I curl up under the blanket, folding it over itself so I’m twice as warm, so it’s twice as heavy, tucking myself in, pretending I’m surrounded by warm bodies and gentle touches.
Pretending that I’m not totally and completely alone.
Pretending that telling myself I had no other choice makes it true.
Smith wasn’t a good man. I know that if I hadn’t shot him, someone else would have. Or someone would have forced me to do it. I’m not sure how, but I also don’t want to know what other levers Trips’ father can pull.
I know that the only way out of here is through the maze of imperfect options and barriers that Trips’ dad will put in front of us. It’s all impossible.
Everybody says that the morning light is a new beginning.
But today, it was an end. I turned it into an end.
All my choices, all my plans, and here I am—a killer.
Phantom lovers aren’t real, and self-told platitudes do nothing to break the ice in my soul.
I stare at the unlit fireplace until my eyes are bleary, and wish that I were a wisp of smoke, pulled up and out into the sky above. Weightless. Unbound.
Free.