Chapter 77
Quill
Consequences
Restless Spirits
Gustavo Santaolalla
As the hot water washed over me, I turned around in the shower, closed my eyes, and imagined Davian standing behind me, pressed tight against me, running his hands down my body while planting those intoxicating kisses on my neck.
I knew he was packing his things for work right now, most likely already on his way, but if he came back tonight, I would be waiting for him in his study so that he would have no choice but to pick up right where we had left off.
Sex with this man was a drug I shouldn’t have tasted, and I completely pushed aside the fact that this couldn’t last, because whenever I let those thoughts get closer to me, I saw the length of their sharp blades.
It would kill me.
With tears in my eyes, I turned and reached for the shower gel, but missed as a dizziness threatened to overwhelm me.
I tried to reach for it again, blinking with heavy eyelids, lost my balance, and slid against the loudly rattling shower door.
A pain shot through my back.
My vision blurred and flickered, and no matter what I reached for, I couldn’t grasp anything, sliding roughly down onto the shower floor.
Suddenly, everything went black before my eyes.
“Quill?” a voice reached me from afar. Then a loud rattling sound.
“Quill!”
The words were too distant.
I wanted to reach for them, but they sounded so far away. Too far away…
“Quill! What’s going on?!”
Rain was all I could feel.
My body moved rhythmically.
“Quill, damn it, come on!”
Hands. There were hands somewhere on me, but they, too, faded into the background.
“Quill!”
I heard my name so many times, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Where was I, anyway?
I blinked.
Had the rain stopped?
Davian was looking down at me.
“Oh my God…,” he whispered before he leaned toward me from the bathroom wall he was resting against. “Quill. What’s going on? What happened?”
Longing
Gustavo Santaolalla
Tears burned in his eyes.
What should have...
Why was I even lying here?
My gaze drifted toward the shower, but everything was spinning in my head.
“I started feeling dizzy…”
Davian had wrapped a towel around me. I was lying right in front of him.
“And I just… fell over.”
I turned my head toward him, feeling that he had placed a towel beneath it.
“Three minutes and forty-two seconds,” he whispered breathlessly.
I tried to make sense of his words. To no avail.
He slid onto his knees, leaned down toward me, and rested his head on my chest, inhaling deeply.
“That’s how long you were unconscious.”
Unconscious…
He pulled away from me, wanted to help me up, but my knees were too shaky, so he wrapped the towel around me, picked me up, and carried me to my room, where he laid me down in my bed and covered me up.
“How are you feeling right now?”
He climbed over me, lay down next to me on his side, and I looked up at him, exhausted, as he leaned over me and placed a hand on my neck, letting it wander up to my face, where he gently ran his thumb over my cheek.
“I’m tired…”
That was the truth.
This tiredness was so overwhelming, yet I was afraid to fall asleep.
What was wrong with me?
I had never passed out before in my life. My circulation had always been stable and…
“That goddamn pill,” Davian muttered, his jaw clenched.
I raised my eyebrows, but the next moment, what he was suspecting made sense.
“I should never have put you in this situation.”
“Davian… please.”
He furrowed his brow and shook his head slightly.
“No. I was careless.”
I reached for his hand. The other one was too far away for my heavy limbs.
“Both of us…”
He pressed his lips together, stared at me, and I longed to know what was going through his mind right now. It was as if I could sense something brewing inside him that had the power to hurt both of us. And it scared me.
“Don’t you have to go to university?”
He quickly shook his head. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Your lecture…”
“Can be cancelled today.”
The shock still lingered in his eyes as he continued to caress my neck.
“You know this pill won’t kill me, right?”
I forced a smile, but he didn’t return it.
“You were just gone. For almost four minutes. If I hadn’t been there, you’d still be lying in that shower.”
There was frustration in his voice, anxiety… despair.
I was too weak to protest, unable to find reassuring words in my cluttered mind.
My eyes closed again and I felt Davian slide closer to me, pressing his soft lips to my forehead.
A door slammed shut and I flinched, snapping my eyes open.
Davian looked as if he had seen a ghost, staring at the door.
“Who is it?” I whispered quietly, dazed.
“Dad? Quill? Is one of you home?”
Davian jumped up as if struck by lightning and slid off the bed before rushing out of the room.
Then my eyes slipped shut again.
She Might Be Scared of You
Luke Richards
When I opened my eyes again, it wasn’t Davian but Lara who was placing a cold, damp cloth on my forehead.
Startled, I sat up, but she pressed me back into the pillow.
“Calm down. You should rest when you have a fever.”
“Lara?”
My tiredness had completely vanished.
“Surprise.”
She grinned widely.
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in D.C.?”
For a whole week.
Lara sighed.
“Some idiot didn’t lock the bus with all the camera equipment and parked it in a public lot. This morning everything was gone, and the professors had to cancel the whole trip. Monica picked me up from campus earlier and told me you weren’t feeling well.”
“Oh…”
Wait, what did she just say?
“This morning? What time is it?”
Lara glanced at the leather watch with the little golden pumpkins on the watch face on her wrist, which Monica had given her the other day.
“Three o’clock.”
What the…
Had that pill really knocked me out that badly?
Someone entered the room, dressed in black pants and a white shirt under a thin navy blue sweater.
“Davian…,” I whispered before I could even think straight, and Lara immediately looked at her father.
He stared at me with an unreadable expression, then at Lara.
“She’s awake,” she said after hesitating briefly, then looked back at me and smiled, though something about her smile was different than usual.
She… knew things.
Was she suspecting something? Or had she still not processed my words – or even suppressed them – to keep our friendship intact?
Pain flooded my chest, and I felt reality threatening to overwhelm me, knowing I would never be able to escape it.
Only now did I realize what all of this meant.
My time with Davian was over.
He stared at me, but then tore his gaze away and began pacing the room.
“You’re not going to Maplecrest this week.”
What?
I wanted to sit up, but I was still naked under the blanket, covered in pale ink, so I merely propped myself up on my elbows.
“But I’m already feeling better.”
The cloth slipped from my forehead, and I cursed myself inwardly for not being able to remove it, since Lara would otherwise see my arms. Fortunately, she reached for it and took it away.
Davian spun around to face me.
“Quill, you’re staying here.”
He stared at me demandingly. His concern was impossible to miss.
Seconds passed before Lara cleared her throat and spoke up.
“Dad, if she’s already feeling better… It’s just a fever. And it’s up to her.”
He looked at Lara as if he wanted to say something, but instead pressed his lips into a thin line, until a muscle in his jaw twitched, before turning away, taking a deep breath, and then leaving the room.
If Lara hadn’t known, it would have been obvious by now at the latest.
We both listened to his hurried footsteps on the stairs.
I sank back into the pillow, sighed, and stared at the ceiling.
When Lara still didn’t say anything, I looked at her.
She was staring at me.
“You actually matter to him.”
I looked at her apologetically, reached for her hand on the edge of the bed, and she immediately looked down at it, clearly holding back tears.
I never wanted any of this.
“What did you two do?”
Under Questioning
Luke Richards
It was so quiet that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly.
“What?”
She looked up, looking lost, so I began to stroke the back of her hand with my thumb.
“What did you two do this weekend?”
Nothing had prepared me for that question.
“Nothing special, we…”
“I’m not stupid, Quill.”
She yanked her hand away from mine, but immediately reached for it again and pushed the blanket aside until we were both staring down at Davian’s writing on my arm.
My heart gave a startled jolt.
“I saw your shoulders. And the skin above your breasts.” She lifted my hand. “And this.”
I swallowed.
Her eyes grew more and more glassy.
She should never have seen this…
“One question.” She took a breath, her chest rising heavily. “And you have to answer honestly, because it’s been on my mind since Sunday night.”
The knot in my stomach was back. And this time, someone was pulling on both ends of the rope. Mercilessly.
“Did you two…”
Lara didn’t finish the question. She didn’t have to.
And I didn’t have to answer for her to know what her gut already seemed to have known before it had even happened.
“Oh my God…”
She laughed quietly.
“Oh my God.”
Lara stood up, wrapped her arms around her upper body, and paced across the room, not without closing the door.
“I can’t believe it…”
I sat up straight, pulled my knees to my chest, feeling at the mercy of this situation.
Apparently, she had really tried to push it out of her mind.
“I’m sorry…”
“No.” She raised a hand, shook her head, and turned to face me. “No. You shouldn’t be. I’m sorry I asked.”
She sounded like she was about to lose it, and it scared me.
“Oh my God…”
Lara started pacing back and forth.
“My dad is sleeping with my best friend. He’s actually sleeping with a girl my age… My dad is sleeping with my best friend…”
“Lara…”
I sounded more desperate than she did. And it tore me apart.
There was so much to explain, so much to clarify…
But I didn’t even know what exactly to say, which words were appropriate, which were right.
My decisions had left a wound, and every word burning on my tongue – with which I wanted to try to close that wound – felt like it was only tearing it deeper.
“Lara, please…”
She spun around to face me.
“Those words there…” She pointed her finger at my body. “I should never have read them.”
More tears welled up in her eyes.
She had read them…
“Because they make something seem natural and right that is neither natural nor right.”
The knot inside me threatened to burst under all the pressure, but it didn’t, and it choked the air from my lungs.
“Lara. I’m sorry.”
“I want to believe it’s a midlife crisis and that you’re just Quill doing crazy things. But deep down, something tells me there’s more to it, and I don’t know if I’m ready to know.”
“If you want, I’ll leave town. I’ll disappear and leave you and Davian alone.”
My vision blurred.
I pressed my own weapons against the backs of my knees, ready to do the right thing for once for this friendship.
“No.” She shook her head, stepping to the foot of the bed. “You’re staying here. You’re part of this family.” She looked away, into nothingness. “Whatever that means…”
Tears ran down my face as I stared at her in confusion.
She confused me.
Why was she clinging to me so desperately? Why didn’t she confront her dad? Why didn’t she ask me to stop? What was going on inside her?
Suddenly, she spun around and left the room, leaving the door open.
Only now did I realize how she’d tried to speak quietly, how silently she’d walked away down the hallway. As if this weren’t my secret. But hers.
With a growing sense of hopelessness in my chest, I stared around my room.
Davian should know that she knew. But it would unsettle him even more than he already was. He would end this. End us. And I wouldn’t want to stay here any longer, because having to endure his presence without being allowed to be close to him would be the death of me.
But I was no one anymore without him. No one I wanted to be.
There was only one way. Endure this, get through it, push it aside. Just as I had done my entire life.
I dreaded what would happen once the ground was pulled out from under my feet.
I would fall.
And this time, the free fall would come to an end.
Our fate pulls at our thread,
as if it were fond of the color blue.
So much so that it made me forget
what color this thread was
before it cut into our skin.
– Blue