“You can?”
“Sure I can. You’re not asking me for my autograph, right now, are you?”
God, did people actually do that in situations like this? The way he said it suggested they did, but she found it hard to imagine. He was practically dead on his feet, and when he sat on the couch it was really more of a slump. He didn’t even seem able to take off his jacket. He just batted at it ineffectually then gave up.
You’d have to be insane to have autographs on your mind. All she could think about was the state he seemed to be in, closely followed by slightly weird but largely practical thoughts like,I wonder if he’s going to need me to cut that coat off.
“Well no...but I’m hoping that’s not a good indicator.”
“The way you seem is a good indicator.”
“And how do I seem?”
She was almost afraid to ask, and the long pause he took before answering didn’t help. It gave her a chance to imagine a million things, and all of them were horrible and hideous. Some of them were memories of paintings in fairytales, of evil hermit trolls who didn’t like people and got their comeuppance in the end.
Though none were as frightening as the one he actually went with.
“Like something out of a dream,” he said, so soft and strange she could nearly feel it herself. Everything seemed to waver and drift, and that was before he added more faintly unsettling things. “Man, those eyes of yours.”
“What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“They remind me of an eclipse.”
She knew what he meant immediately. She saw it in the mirror every day—those two empty holes in her head. Once she’d been her Mom’s black-eyed girl, but over time they’d turned into something else. They’d turned into the dark side of the moon.
And he’d noticed.
“You’re probably just not seeing things right.”
“Probably.”
“My eyes are plain old dark brown.”
“Right,” he said, but he wasn’t really agreeing.
He was just nodding off.
He was nodding off, after an overdose.
“Don’t go to sleep, Holden, okay?”
It was the first time she’d said his name aloud. The first time she’d thought of it, without seeing it in lights. Now he really was just some guy who might still be in trouble, slumped on her couch.
And she was just a girl who had no idea what to do.
“I won’t.”
“Maybe I should call a doctor.”
“No, no. Seriously, I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine then stay awake. Okay? Stay awake.”
He opened his eyes, but in a lazy way. A way that showed more of those incredibly long and incredibly black eyelashes than it did anything else. She could just about see the blue between, but only because that blue was so damn incredible.
“I’m awake.”
“I should have kept you walking. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
