The air is suddenly heavier somehow, and I stumble back assaulted—the squishy forest floor, the groans entangled with my pleas, the broken trust, the hurt. It hurts so much.
Clutching my stomach, it twists and churns into knots so tight it feels like someone fists my insides. Heat prickles at the back of my neck, sweat forming in the onslaught of memories, and bile threatens to climb from my belly into my dry throat.
I gasp, throwing myself into a run toward the single stall bathroom at the very back of the diner. The waves of nausea toss and dip—blunt nails digging into my wrists, the chill of the crispair against my stripped body, the jingle of a belt buckle coming undone.
My stomach lurches, and my knees collide with the yellow-tiled floor as I claw at the toilet seat, fumbling to get it open. Shaking, my hands slip once, twice, before I manage to lift it.
The nausea crests and I heave, my body curling over the bowl as bile sears the back of my throat. Tears sting my eyes, blur my vision, and the ragged retching sounds echo off the closet-sized bathroom.
For a moment, I grip the porcelain, forehead pressed to the cool rim as the sick worry subsides. Slumping over and leaning against the wall, the quiet heavy breaths over the line ebb and flow. I shift, but I’m wrung out, limp, and my damn neck. The muscles feel stretched too tight, radiating from the base of the skull to my shoulder. The twinges cause fiery soreness in my dry mouth, but I’m too weak to pull myself up for water. Too weak.
I can’t stop the barrage of thoughts and making excuses for them. It was a prank call and I’m just too damaged to comprehend that. Or maybe there was a bad connection, and the person was speaking on the other end—I just couldn’t hear.
Damn it!
I bang my head on the stone wall. This can’t happen and there must be an explanation.
There must.
Interlude
I didn’t know
when you said you liked art
that it’d be on my body
deep purples
midnight blues
fading at the edges
as if your hands brushed the canvas
vivid pigments seep beneath my skin
painful
fragile
slowly dissolving
but lingering
long after the color is gone
—watercolorby Lily Parker
Chapter 8
Lily
Bright streamers—blue, orange, and green—twist over and between tree branches, the ends fluttering in the warm breeze. Sweat rolls down my back as I lug another plastic crate of diner supplies from Mitch’s van.
“Tag! You’re it!” someone yells, and a pack of unruly boys bolts across the park’s well-manicured grass.
I could be halfway up Ridge Trail right now. Instead, I’m two towns over from Pinebrook—which apparently is in an entire other tax bracket. What in the imported hedges is this? I swear they tried to shape these bushy things into animal shapes.
