Time moves sluggishly. I imagine Mama leaning over me, a familiar pucker of concern in her forehead. Anytime I was sick, Mama would become inconsolable. She’d hover over me like a dragonfly, flitting around my bedside until I was all better.
Jesse returns between one blink and the next. “Good. You’re awake,” he says. He sets a white kit next to my leg and bites his bottom lip. I’m unduly fascinated by the action. “I’m gonna need to cut off your pant leg.”
“Okeydokey,” I say, yawning. Wasn’t I sad a minute ago? What was I sad about? I’m too tired to remember.
The scissors neatly slice the denim, exposing the weeping wound on my thigh. Jesse sucks a breath in sympathy. He removes a syringe from the kit. “Some local anesthetic. I have to suture this.”
I start to drift. Jesse flicks my knee. “No sleeping. Come on, tell me about your new and improved graduation speech. Tryouts are coming up.” He maneuvers me onto my back, brushing aside the curls crusted to the blood on my temple. “Or maybe you want to talk about prom. Did you end up finding a dress with your friends?”
The cloth he wipes against my forehead comes away red. I stare at the ceiling. My thoughts drift, flakes in a snow globe the world won’t quit shaking. “Don’t make fun of me, please,” I whisper. My nose tingles, the telltale warning of tears. “I know I’m not going to make it to graduation. I probably won’t even survive until prom.” The dance is this weekend. Four days away. A lifetime in curse years.
Jesse’s incensed face fills my vision, looming above me. “You’re gonna read your speech to that panel in two days because youwillbe at graduation. Where’s your prom queen spirit?”
“Homecoming queen.”
“For now. I doubt this bruise will be gone by the weekend, but you’ll still get your crown, even after ten rounds with the dearly departed.” Jesse dabs at my temple, cleaning it for the gauze. He’s so meticulous, so careful.
Wasting more of his effort on another lost cause.
After he finishes, he ties off a trash bag and pauses. “I’ll be back. Don’t go to sleep.”
I grunt. Whether or not I go to sleep is beyond either of our control at this point.
Jesse disappears outside. My head settles deeper into his pillow, and I breathe in the scent of his shampoo and fresh detergent. Closing one eye at a time doesn’t count as going to sleep, right? They’re just so heavy.
Voices filter from the hall. “You can’t come inside. It’ll possess you the minute you’re alone with her.”
“Then come with me,” says a brusque, irritated male voice. My eyes fly open. Elias Talbot. “She needs professional care. She’s probably got a serious concussion.”
“I can take of her myself,” Jesse answers. I almost smile. Always so stubborn. “Besides, the thing doesn’t care if I’m in the room, too. I’m an exception.”
A long pause. “The ‘thing’? I thought you said it was a curse.”
A shiver races down my aching body at the ice in Mr. Talbot’s voice. “You’ve got a girl bleeding in your room right now. The damn high school homecoming queen. Do you understand the danger you’ve put her in? As soon as you realized she had a problem, you should’ve alerted me.”
“I didn’t need your help.”
“Clearly,” Mr. Talbot seethes.
“Dad—”
“No! This isn’t your job, Jesse. You’re going to get yourself killed protecting the neighbor’s daughter. We’ve given up too much for you to treat your life so carelessly.”
When Jesse speaks, it’s quiet. Almost inaudible. Craning to listen helps ward away the sleep creeping up on me. I’m eavesdropping purely for my own health. “I didn’t ask you to give anything up. You and Mom made a choice. All my life you’ve been making my choices for me, and I’ve let you. Mom decided she would rather I be born without a soul than not born at all. You decided we would live in this nowhere town and try to fit in with people I can barely stand. But you can’t convince me to trust anyone else to protect Mina Mansour. Not this time. Not her.”
“Ah, so that’s it. You think helping her will earn you your soul.”
“It’s not about that anymore.”
What?
Mr. Talbot sighs. “What is so special about this girl?”
I prepare for Jesse’s glib remarks on my dance prowess or the unstable social hierarchy at Canyon High.
“Do you remember when we moved to Ward? No one in town would talk to us. They were afraid, and rumors followed us everywhere. But our second week here, I looked out my window, and I saw Mina mumbling under her breath outside our fence. She was holding a tray of homemade baklava and trying to figure out how to open the latch without putting down the tray.” Jesse’s soft laugh is music to my ears. “Eventually, she just used her nose to push the latch up. Anyone else would have given up or just put the tray down. She didn’t stop until she was at our door, baklava in tow. And when she knocked, I didn’t answer.”
He was in the house? I remember the day clearly. Nosing the latch open like an overeager puppy and tiptoeing up the dodgy porch steps. Rocking on my heels as the doorbell echoed inside the house.
