I quirked one back. I could play this game all day. Guess Casper and I weren’t that different after all. The surest way to get me to do something was to tell me I couldn’t. “You know there is nothing you can do to stop me. Not really.”
“You’re going to have to kill him.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” she pressed.
“I do,” I insisted, even as my eyes strayed in his direction. “Someone has to bell the cat, right?” I added, throwing her words back at her.
“Yes, they do,” she agreed. “As long as they remember who’s the cat and who’s the mouse.”
“Of course…” I grinned before spinning around on a sneaker and walking back out of the room. “Except I’m both.”
Vee tried calling after me, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t listening anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PATIENT 899: AGE 11 YEARS, 5 MONTHS
“Hurry the fuck up, Hot Wheels!”
Laurence Parsons. Guy was a fucking prick but he was one of the few people who didn’t think my chair was contagious, even if he made fun of it every chance he got.
He turned back to look at me over a shoulder and grinned. “Can’t that thing go any faster?”
Like I said, a fucking prick.
“Maybe if the wheels weren’t practically rusted through,” I grunted.
Briarwood may have looked pretty on the outside, with all the fancy carved statues and white pillars and fresh paint, but that was only to cover all the corners they cut on the inside. Most of their equipment was older than I was.
“Where the fuck are we going anyway?” I called out to him.
Lint-licker Larry—he looked like the kind of freak who’d lick anything—didn’t bother looking back at me this time. He just shrugged a shoulder. “You’ll see. But keep it down, will ya? You’re going to get us caught.”
I rolled my eyes.Caught by who?The nurses were short-staffed today, like most days. Didn’t even have anyone stationed on this floor. Guess they figured us invalids couldn’t get very far if they took all the walkers and chairs and crutches with them. I knew where to find a spare and I wasn’t above crawling to get to it.
The fucker in front of me could have helped. But he’d rather watch. And Iwas abovebegging.
He didn’t stop sprinting down the hallway until we got to the staff elevator. Then he pushed the button, shoved his hands into the pockets of his white pants, and waited for me to follow him inside.
It wasn’t easy guiding this rickety piece of shit over the lip and turning it around, but I did it without help. Not that the lint-licker woulda done it even if I asked. Had a sadistic streak, that one.
I guess I did too or I wouldn’t have made friends with 'em so quickly.
He tapped his hands against the metal railing the entire time the cable car creaked its way down. Floor after floor. They also put the most crippled of us on the highest level—now tell me that wasn’t intentional either.
I side-eyed Larry, who just continued to grin. “Where we going?” I tried again.
“The basement,” he hummed like he knew something I didn’t. Which he did and it pissed me off.
“What the fuck we going to the basement for?”
“You’ll see,” he repeated just as cheerily.
The elevator finally stopped moving when it couldn’t move anymore, and Larry stepped out into blackness. He didn’t pause to see if I’d follow him. He knew I was too nosey not to.
Fucker could be leading me to my death for all I knew. Smelled like death, that was for sure. Like piss and rotand something else… The only light coming off whatever was flickering in the distance. It was clear none of the bulbs had been replaced in ages.
