Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (8 page)

And she was kissing
him.

January 10
^th
, 2014

4:24 p.m.

Author’s
Update

I can’t believe I actually
finished writing Part 2 before the weekend! I stayed up all night writing, so
I’m way ahead of schedule now.

And a few of you actually messaged my Twitter account
this week! I REALLY want to thank everyone so much who’s written to me with all
the encouragement. It means a lot to me.

I actually have to say how I was able to post Part
2, because it was kind of crazy this time.

So, my dad—he’s, like, really strict—found
out that I’d stayed up all night finishing Part 2. Or, he sort of found out.

His rule is “lights out” at 10:30 p.m. I’d turned
my bedroom light off by then, but I ended up staying up
much
later than I’d planned writing in bed on my laptop. I really
wanted to finish the draft.

My dad always gets up for work at 4:30 a.m., and I
didn’t even realize how late it was. He must have heard me typing or something,
because he knew right away that I’d been up on my computer all night. He
doesn’t let me have a lock on my door, so he can just open it. When he looked
in, I didn’t have time to close my laptop or pull my covers over my head. You
know, I’m really lucky that I always keep my Facebook page up, because at least
I had time to open my web browser as fast as I could before he looked at my
screen and saw what I was really working on.

My dad doesn’t really know what Facebook is or how
it works. I kind of lied and suggested I’d been on Facebook all night. He got
all pissed, and he gave me this lecture about how important it is for me to get
sleep, and how all my friends and me are addicted to the
internet
.

So, for my “punishment,” he turned off our
internet
connection. I know it’s stupid, and it doesn’t
really make sense, but that’s what he did, because I “need to know that there
are consequences” if I “choose to stay up all night on Facebook.”
Blaaghh
.

But, luckily, Kyle totally saved me (“Kyle” isn’t
really his name, just like “Bailey Simms” isn’t my real name, but I kind of
have to keep all of this private so I don’t get caught). He’s this really sweet
guy in the class ahead of mine. He’s not exactly my boyfriend, just this really
nice, really good guy I sort of grew up with. Ever since I’ve had to stay home
from school for my treatments, he’s been like my best friend, even if we mostly
just talk on the phone and text.

Anyway, his parents just got him an
iPad
, and it has this hotspot thing where you can use it as
a Wi-Fi router. I told him my dad turned off our
internet
,
but I didn’t tell him what I needed it for (I haven’t told a single person that
I’ve started this blog). I only told him that I had a bunch of Facebook
messages to respond to, which I did, but really I mostly wanted to post the
next part of my novel.

He’s so
sweet,
he didn’t
even ask any questions. He just drove up to my house and parked his car across
the street. He knew he wouldn’t be able to see me. He just called me from his
car and told me he would sit there with his
iPad
hotspot
turned on as long as I needed to use the Wi-Fi, and then he gave me the
password. I never expected he would do anything like that.

So, anyway, I just wanted to say thank you,
“Kyle.” You’re really the best. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you.
It’s the best part of my day when you call me. I know you won’t read this
because I haven’t told you about this novel or my blog yet. But without you, I
wouldn’t have been able to publish this installment at all. So this one’s for
you.

…Okay, I better hurry up and post this so he
doesn’t have to sit out there forever waiting for my slow ass to finish using
his hotspot. As always, thanks for reading! I’m @
BaileySimms
.
Tweet me! I’m actually
kinda
nice!

xxBailey

January 20
^th
, 2014

2:11 a.m.

Going
Down Six Feet Under

I held my hand up in front
of my face. I moved my fingers.

I couldn’t see
anything at all. Nothing. I couldn’t detect the slightest hint of movement. The
darkness surrounding me was perfectly complete.

I tried to keep my
breathing under control. The faster I breathed, the more oxygen I’d use up, and
the less time I would have to live.

That’s what I’d
heard
about being buried alive, anyway.
I didn’t see why it wouldn’t be true.

Not that it really
mattered whether I’d have just a few minutes to live or an hour. One way or
another, this was it. I tried hard to accept that I was going to die soon, that
my life was going to end, that I was already beginning to suffocate. But it
just didn’t seem like it could be real, no matter how hard it was getting to
breathe.

I reached out and
touched the rough wood only a few inches in front of my face. I could feel its
raw, grainy texture. The scent of freshly cut pine was overwhelming.

This was real.

When I was a kid I
used to think that being buried alive would be the most horrifying way to die.
Worse than drowning, worse than getting killed in a car accident, worse even
than being burned to death. The pain of burning would be unimaginably
excruciating, I knew, but the horror wouldn’t quite compare to suffocating inside
a narrow, hot box beneath six feet of heavy dirt.

I even used to promise
myself that I’d never get close to a coffin as long as I lived. Inviting even
the remote possibility of ending up trapped inside seemed like a stupid risk to
take.

And yet somehow, here
I was.

I felt around for my
cellphone and clicked it on. The screen’s dim light glared.

The battery was now
almost completely dead. I’d lost count of how many times I’d tried checking my
phone for a signal. Nothing had changed—there was no service this far underground
and there wasn’t ever going to be.

I clicked off the
screen.

Once again, I was lost
in darkness.

* * *

It all
started two days earlier, when Morgan fell into a coma.

I don’t know if it was
because her mind just shut down from the trauma of being attacked by Mr.
Hershel, or if it was for some other reason that I didn’t fully understand. But
right after I saw her curled up in Ian’s lap in my car—his arms holding
her tightly and their lips pressed together—Morgan convulsed briefly and then
collapsed.

Ian tried to wake her.

“Morgan?” He shook
her, and when she didn’t wake he lightly slapped her face. “Morgan? Sweetheart,
you need to stay with me! Morgan!”

But she wouldn’t wake
up.

I threw the spare
clothes I’d grabbed into the back and squeezed in beside Morgan, who was now
lying slumped and unmoving in the passenger seat.

Ian raced us back to
my parents’ house. All the way there I did my best to keep talking to Morgan
and calling her name into her ear, like Ian told me to do, but it was no use. Every
time I gave her another series of brisk slaps, her head only rolled back down
against her shoulder.

In the middle of all
this, Ian tried to explain what I’d just seen going on between them.

“I don’t know what
happened,” he said. “I don’t understand. I was trying to comfort her and
suddenly her hands were all over me. And then she was kissing me. After
everything she just went through…” He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t know
why she would do something like that.”

Everything about Ian’s
tone should have told me he was telling the truth—that Morgan had just
pressed her body against his and started kissing him out of the blue—but how
could I be totally sure? The Ian I knew was an extremely honest person, but
that didn’t mean he was incapable of lying to me. I wasn’t naïve. After Morgan
told me at the fair that she was cheating on Jason with someone she couldn’t
name, and after I’d found Ian’s hoodie and gun in my car where Morgan had
slept,
and
after I’d just watched the
way she’d been kissing him… Well, I couldn’t shake the idea that Morgan and Ian
had been secretly sleeping together before all of this even started.

For now, I tried not
to think about it. Somehow I’d find out the truth, but not now. Now, more than
anything else, I was terrified that Morgan might die. She still wasn’t waking
up.

When we reached my
parents’ house, Ian carried Morgan upstairs to my old bedroom. I pulled back
the covers and helped Ian lay her limp body in my childhood bed.

Most of the blood that
had spread from her face to her pubic hair was now dry and hardened. I ran
downstairs to get a mixing bowl to use as a washbasin.

“What on earth is
going on?” my mom called out.

“It’s Morgan,” I said
as I hurried by the living room. “She’s hurt.”

I grabbed a washcloth
and filled the mixing bowl with soap and warm water. I could tell my mom was
totally confused about everything that was happening, but she didn’t ask any
more questions.

While Ian kept watch
of Morgan’s pulse and the rate of her breathing, I did my best to clean the
blood from her body. I washed her face, her breasts, and her tummy, and then I
began gingerly cleaning her pubic hair and around her vagina, part of which had
actually been torn a little and was a source of some of the bleeding.

“Oh, Morgan,” I
whispered, but I had no hope that she was able to hear me.

Almost as soon as I'd
begun cleaning the blood off her tangled pubic hair, Morgan began to whimper
even though she was obviously still deeply unconscious. It was almost like she
was dreaming. The sound that came from her throat, though, was definitely not
one of pain or fear.

Somehow, it was one of
pleasure
.

Still totally
unconscious, she began grinding her pelvis, pressing against the washcloth and
my hand as I did my best to clean the blood from between the folds of her
vagina without hurting her. The whimpering started to grow into rhythmic moans.

“Morgan, sweetie,” I
whispered. “What are you doing? Stay still, sweetie. Please wake up. Wake up.”

Ian touched my arm.
Morgan was as cleaned up as she was going to be without putting her in a bath.
I pulled the warm washcloth away from between her legs. Right away, her moaning
subsided.

“What the hell
is
this?” Ian took Morgan’s pulse once
again. “Her heart’s racing,” he said. “She’s also burning up." He gave me
a confused, desperate stare. "I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Together we dressed
her in sweatpants and a T-shirt,
then
covered her with
the sheet.

“We have to take her
to the hospital.” I looked at Ian. He was standing over Morgan, folding his
arms, staring at her. He wasn’t meeting my eye. “Right?” I said. “We have to
take her to the hospital.”

Morgan lay almost
totally still now. Other than her swollen eyebrow, she appeared to be sleeping
more or less restfully. Ian placed his hand on her hot forehead yet again. It
was like he was trying to solve a puzzle, but was missing some essential piece.

“The hospital isn’t a
good idea,” he said. It was almost as though he was talking to himself. “Not
now. I don’t know how safe it is there.”

I remembered what Ian
had said about the armed guards surrounding the room of the girl who had been
attacked at the fair. He’d told me they wouldn’t even let the parents in to see
their daughter. Now that Morgan had been attacked, too, would they do the same
to her at the hospital? Would they take her away and lock her in some medical
facility to run who-knew-what kind of tests? Or worse?

“Okay,” I said. “I
understand.” Or I thought I understood. I tried to trust Ian’s instincts.
“We’ll keep her here.”

“No one can know where
she is.” Ian gave me a look that told me just how important this was. He was
dead serious. “No one,” he repeated. “This is the safest place for her. But you
have to tell your family not to tell a soul she’s here. You don’t have to say
why. They trust you. Tell them that someone burgled Morgan’s house, beat her
up,
then
killed Mr. Hershel when he tried to protect
her. That’s the story.”

I nodded again.

Ian rubbed his eyes.
He looked totally exhausted.
And scared.

“Stay here with
Morgan,” he said. “Give me a call from the land line if she wakes up or if
anything changes. I have to go take care of Mr. Hershel.”

* * *

Only a
minute or two after I heard Ian’s SUV pull out of the driveway, someone knocked
on the bedroom door.

It was Shawn.

Before I could stand
up from the bed, my husband had already opened the door and stepped inside the
room. He’d been sleeping on the couch, and he was in the sweats and the T-shirt
he used as pajamas.

“What is going
on
?” He was furious. “You have to tell
me what’s going on!” He stepped directly in front of me as if trying to block
me from running away. “Tell me now.”

I put my hands on his
chest as calmly as possible and gently pushed him a step back.

“Just...” I began,
trying to figure out what to say and how to keep him in a reasonable state of
mind.

This is when Shawn
finally glanced at Morgan. Her right eye was now completely swollen shut. Her
breaths were coming a little more quickly than normal.

“Oh God,” he mumbled,
turning away. “Ashley, what the
fuck
is going on?” He was no less upset, but now at least he was whispering and
speaking a little more pleadingly.

“She was…raped,” I
whispered tentatively. “And beaten.” I lowered my voice even further. “She
won’t
wake up
.”

I hoped this
information would give my husband a sense of perspective. I hoped it would make
him feel a little compassion for Morgan. But it had the opposite effect.

“Didn’t I tell you it
wasn’t a good idea to keep hanging out with fucking Morgan?” he snapped. “What
if it was you on this bed?” Indignantly, he added, “And why did you bring her
here
?”

Years ago, Shawn never
would have acted like this, but ever since he’d rolled his pickup and spent all
that time in the hospital recovering, something had changed. I don’t know what
exactly, but he seemed more fearful. And after everything that had happened in the
last twenty-four hours, his fearfulness was coming out in ways that were
starting to frighten me.

“She’s staying here
because Ian thinks it’s safest,” I said, gathering myself. “There’s a lot of
shit going on, Shawn, that nobody understands.” I told him the story that Ian
had given me—how a burglar broke into Morgan’s house and killed Mr.
Hershel. “That’s it," I said. "That’s all I know.”

“Mr.
Hershel
?” Shawn looked at me like I was
crazy. “Mr. Hershel’s dead? Ashley, what are you
talking
about? Mr. Hershel? He isn’t dead.”

But even as my husband
denied it, I could tell the truth was starting to sink in. He was starting to
see that things were going bizarrely wrong. His eyes were beginning to tear up.
I could tell he was struggling not to cry.

“I don’t give a fuck
about Mr. Hershel!” he burst out. I flinched. I hadn’t expected this. “All I
care about is what’s been going on with you! And where you’ve been! And who the
fuck you’ve been
with
. You were gone
all night
. You’ve been gone for hours—all
fucking day. I’ve been worrying my fucking ass off! Tell me
what the fuck is going on!
”

I sat down on the bed
beside Morgan. For some reason I felt safer being close to her. Shawn had never
hurt me, but, for the first time, I was afraid that he might try.

“I’ll tell you
everything in the morning,” I whispered. “It’s not what you think.”

I said this, but whatever
happened was probably more or less exactly what Shawn suspected. The problem
was that
I
still didn’t even know
exactly what I’d done last night, so I had no idea what I was going to tell him.
I tried to keep my focus on Morgan.

“Right now, Morgan
needs help,” I said. “A lot of help. She’s in trouble. She’s hurt—bad.
She’s not even fucking
conscious
,
Shawn. Do you understand? She may be in a coma for all I know. And I think
she’s getting worse.” My voice started to crack. I took a breath and forced
myself not to break down as long as Shawn was in the room. “And there’s nothing
you
can do to help! Is there?” I
snapped. “Right now, you’re only in the fucking way.”

I could tell this
stung. But I wanted it to sting. Shawn gave me a hurt look I’d never seen
before. His face darkened.

He clenched both of
his fists and stepped toward me, putting his face right next to mine. He was
breathing hard. He was furious.

He lifted his right
fist.

I didn’t take my eyes
from his. I forced myself not to look away. If he was going to hit me, there
was nothing I could do about it. Instinctively, I grasped for Morgan’s limp arm
and held it tightly.

Shawn sobbed.

He didn't hit me.
Instead he stepped away and a huge tear slipped down his cheek. He just shook
his head back and forth, still furious.

He knew I must have
betrayed him. And it was true. However badly he'd been acting lately, I
had
betrayed him. I thought about the
old Shawn and how we used to be together when we were younger, and I felt sick.
Then I thought about the old
me
, and
how I'd changed, too. Whatever I'd done last night, I'd done it—there was
no taking it back. And right now, I couldn't afford to let myself feel guilty about
anything, even if I deserved to. All that mattered right now was keeping Morgan
alive.