25 #2
My heart was racing faster than my mind, and I swore the colors were flourishing around me from the rush to my head.
I looked up to John, his chest rising and falling with the same labor as before.
“What did you do to him?” Rebecca came to his side.
“He was already having respiratory difficulty.” I rose to my feet. “Did none of you see he wasn’t well?”
“He blamed it on the caffeine,” Mary said sternly, but it couldn’t hide the tinge of guilt and excuse.
“What happened?” Phoebe barked from the door. She glanced from me to the others before rushing to John. “Jesus,” she breathed. “Sidney!” she shouted over her shoulder.
The tall gentleman and a couple of the staff gathered around John to help him to his feet. He was clammy, his breathing so labored it hurt my own chest.
After they left, all eyes turned to me.
It didn’t look good for me, I admit that. Disheveled, running around with needles, and my bite soon to be revealed as the cause.
My head lowered, staring at the beading of Phoebe’s skirt.
Some of my hair was pulled out of place, the pins holding my hair up had been lost somewhere on the floor. My feet were bare, shoes scattered in the hallway. And in my hand, the needle.
“My venom. There was a reaction—”
“Everyone leave.” Phoebe’s voice was so direct I hardly recognized it.
Typically she avoided such demands of others, always with a smile and light sensibilities.
“Do you not hear me?” She raised her voice at them as she pulled at her own earlobe.
“Leave! Go!” Her voice harsh as they scattered like ants.
Rebecca walked past me, her dark eyes glowering my way after saying something to Mary out of the corner of her mouth. Mary’s deep blue eyes only fluttered in my direction a single moment before entirely focusing on Rebecca.
Soon, it was only me and my dear friend.
Phoebe was shaking, her hand bracing her temple. She stared down at the floor, chewing her lip.
“It was my fault.”
“Oh? You think?” She laughed, but not out of lightheartedness.
“I had to think quickly. I fixed—”
“Can you manage to not make a scene while you do this quick thinking?” she nearly spat. “You’re a clever woman, but you have no perceptual consciousness.”
“I was helping.”
“You’re always helping!” she exclaimed, gesturing around her. “Helping, helping, helping! Yet the best thing you could do is to stay still for once while we deal with everything else.”
“It was my venom,” I admitted, but her words settled on me a bit slower than I thought, and I lost the motivation to explain myself.
“You said that.” She stared at me, chewing at her nailbeds. “What about your venom?”
I nodded. “Paralytic.”
She looked at me as if the hydra had sprouted from my decapitated head.
“I didn’t know.” I swallowed thickly, rubbing my arm. “How could I have?”
“Oh, Alina.” Phoebe’s voice softened.
“I shouldn’t have woken up.” My lip trembled. “It seems I am only built to suffer, if not to cause suffering from the mere desire to eat.”
“Come here,” she sighed, hugging me close. Her grip was tight, angry, but that didn’t overshadow her empathy for me, it seemed. “Who knows?”
“Luka.”
“That’s all?”
“And you.”
“We will say he had a heart complication,” she said, quick to dismiss my mistakes.
“Is that such a good idea?” I leaned back to look at her. “Do you think it’s worth hiding?”
“Not hiding, just not telling.” She rubbed my arm in reassurance. “How you feed is none of anyone’s business, and live feeding isn’t the only way to do it. Our only focus should be getting you to eat at all.”
“So we will lie about what happened to John.”
She nodded.
“I think John has a right to know.”
“You can tell him then, but there is no telling how many people may turn their back on you when they realize you’ve harmed one of our own, even by accident,” she said bitterly.
Her eyes were intense, demanding of attention.
“He may forgive you, but others will not be so kind. They will look for the next reason to run you out.”
“A lot of that lately.”
“Your finest pardon?”
“Lies,” I said pointedly. “I suppose we all are cursed to repeat the systems that we so crave to destroy.”
“You have no ground to stand on without the people who try to help you,” she warned, “for your own sake, please tread carefully. But I cannot help you if you won’t let me.”
Her face was tense, so strained with concern that even in her angriest moments, she couldn’t hide the way she felt.
“You care so much about how things look, but have you considered how you look to me?” I said steadily. I was beyond angry, so much so that I was calm. Like the tide dragging out before a seiche.
“How do I look, then?” she taunted. “Forgive me for caring.”
“All you care for is control,” I said plainly. “I have been patient, painfully so, with both you and Luka. I am tired being told what to do.”
“Spoken like a child.” She shook her head. “Is this it? The mighty hill you must stand on? How do I look to you, then? Go on.”
“An egotist.”
“An egotist? For caring?”
“About yourself,” I finished for her, “for caring for your own self-image, not mine.”
I recognized that look again, it must be hereditary. The look of being metaphorically cut open with your organs on display, the deeper parts of her on display. Could she deny it? Or is she in shock I said anything at all?
Phoebe cleared her throat, looking away from me as she held herself together.
It was like I turned her off with the flick of a switch.
She turned her back to me, a bit hesitantly before she fully began walking away.
To me it was like I opened a wound that she had no choice but to cower from as she left.
Once again, left alone.
This time the abandonment was undeniably my fault, but I cared very little at that moment. I was paralyzed with whether or not I should give up for the day and retreat to my rooms.