“Yes,” he says, and points angrily at Jing. “I hope Jing gets a fungus on his foot, then his legs, then his whole body. I hope his skin rots and falls off his body!”
“I hopeyouget fungus!” Jing shouts at him.
“I already have fungus!”
“Elias,” says Ian, exhibiting remarkable restraint. “You still seem to be harboring frustration toward Jing after last week’s incident. Let’s solve to resolve this.”
Jing begins to protest, but Ian holds up a hand. “Jing, you’ll have an opportunity to respond in a moment. Elias, go on.”
“He stole my slippers and still denies it!” Elias says, standing. “I have a fungus on my foot! All of my foot is fungus! I hope he gets my foot fungus and dies of fungus!”
Ian nods. “Okay. These kinds of elaborate visualizations can be useful, helping us process anger in the safety of our imaginations. I hope saying it out loud helped exorcise some of that emotion so that we can begin to move past this. Jing,” says Ian, turning. “How does that make you feel?”
“The Reestablishment killed my family!” Jing cries, lunging for Elias.
I sit back in my chair, looking around the room.
If you’re smart enough, the agent had said to me,you’ll see it coming.
The group does not react to Jing’s absurd outburst, making me think it happens with some frequency. As if on cue, Jing’s sponsor appears, conjuring a band of electric light with her hands. She uses this light to lasso Jing, who’s still shouting at Elias, and drags him away on a veritable leash, muttering an apology to Ian. Ian looks tired.
“Anyone else?”
He waits another minute, making eye contact with each of us before finally concluding the interminable session.
There’s a slight lift in mood as the sounds of movement susurrate through the room. Ian is loudly encouraging everyone to journal,talking over the din of dismissal. “Tomorrow we’ll be discussing survivor’s guilt,” he says. “Think about what you want to bring to the group, okay? I’m sure we’ll all have a lot to discuss.”
I drag myself upright, my patience for this spectacle already thinning. I can’t believe I’ll be forced to endure this over and over again. I can’t believe I might, at some point, be forced to participate.
It almost makes me miss my time with Soledad.
In the proceeding moments we gather up our journals and head to our respective sponsors, like children being returned to their parents. The sponsors follow us around everywhere, hovering nearby at all times. Listening. Watching.
I haven’t been assigned a permanent sponsor yet. So far I’ve been shuttled around by an interim attendant named Agatha, a petite woman with a neat Afro and an affinity for turquoise, who sat me down last night and told me that true courage was saying yes to life when it offered you a hug, but if I tried anything with her she’d melt my mouth off with her hands. With a sigh, I scan the room for her, coming up short at the sight of a familiar face.
At once, my body flushes with heat.
It’s automatic, instinctive, and unprecedented. I’m not this kind of person. I have never physicallyreactedto another human being before, and right now I feel as if someone has flipped a switch inside of me, flooding my veins with light. It’s so foreign a sensation I have the sudden desire to examine it,to search inside myself for the cause and kill it.
James is standing by the exit.
Rosabelle
Chapter 27
He’s leaning against the doorframe in a black T-shirt and technical pants and that’s all it takes for my heart to start racing. It’s the shock, I realize, of his physical presence; there’s something staggering about his beauty. The wry smile on his face makes me irrationally angry. His arms are casually crossed, drawing attention to his muscular build, his strong forearms. His hair is a little wet—darker than usual—as if he might’ve recently taken a shower. His blue eyes are cold, closed off. He doesn’t seem happy to see me, and this disappoints me even as I can’t conjure a single reason why the sight of me should please him. After yesterday, I didn’t think I’d ever see his face again. I thought I was finally done with him.
I’ve been trying not to think about him.
I’ve been trying not to remember the panic in his eyes. The way he’d grabbed my wrists and apologized, over and over, for trying to feed me. I’m suddenly terrified that I’ll never be rid of him; that his voice, like Clara’s, will live on in a loop in my mind forever.
Where’d they take your sister? The asylum, right?
But, like, how do we get there?
“Hey,” he says, tilting his head. “You coming?”
But, like, how do we get there?
