A Twist of Hate (21 page)

              “Great, psychoanalyze
me
, Mom. This is about Camden and Michael. Not me. Take another good look at Siobhan. See what being with Camden got her.”

***

              The elevator moved mercilessly slow and stopped on every floor, including the eighth. “Don’t you want to see Siobhan before we go?” Mr. Dougherty asked Camden when the doors opened.

              Camden had been eager to see Siobhan from the moment he woke up, determined to tell her what he hadn’t said last night. All he had to do was step out of the elevator and walk right, where Siobhan lay at the end of the corridor.

              He shook his head.

              He had no defense against any of Brian’s accusations because they were true, every one of them. Especially the one naming Camden as the link connecting Michael to his victims.

              Camden closed his eyes and tapped his head against the wall of the elevator. Between Brian’s fury at him and his mother’s refusal to come home, Siobhan had more reason than anyone else to hate him. And that was something he just couldn’t handle.

              The elevator doors slowly closed, sealing Camden in with strangers and the pain of guilt.

Chapter Eleven

“The one thing he chose to destroy was the one thing I couldn’t live without.”

—Camden Dougherty,
Newsline

              “Your roommate likes the
Price
,” Courtney remarked. She removed a large bouquet of carnations from a chair so she could sit at Brian’s bedside. “That must be nice, since you have to share a room.”

              Brian’s dark-eyed roommate had introduced himself to Courtney as “Ethan Hewitt, but everybody calls me Scotch.” A diehard fan of
The Price Is Right
, Scotch loudly guessed prices on refrigerators and living room sets and boisterously encouraged contestants in the Showcase Showdown.

              Two dozen floral arrangements brightened Brian’s side of the room. They were arranged two deep on the wide windowsill and occupied every flat surface. “Who are all of these from?” Courtney asked.

              Brian kept watching his own television, which was also tuned to
The Price Is Right
. “Strangers, mostly.”

              “Loser!” Scotch hollered from his side of the room. “You overbid on the motor home, lady.”

              “I called yesterday,” Courtney said. “A few times. Your mom said you were visiting Siobhan.”

              That name transferred Brian’s attention from the television to Courtney. “Have you seen her?” he asked.

              She nodded. The corners of her mouth sank. Her pert nostrils flared. Brian knew tears would soon follow. “I saw her yesterday, for a few minutes. I can’t believe this happened. It’s so strange, like it isn’t really my life.”

              “It isn’t,” Brian snapped. “It’s mine and Siobhan’s.”

              Color flamed in Courtney’s cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t get shot, too, Brian,” she said sarcastically, her voice rising. “I didn’t know that suffering was a private party that I wasn’t invited to. I saw him shoot her! I saw him shoot
you
! Do you think this is easy for any of us? I had to tell police officers and lawyers and school officials and news people what happened to my friends. That bitch Katy Odenkirk has been ringing my phone off the hook, trying to get me to talk about Michael and Siobhan. I wish I could make it so that none of this happened, but I can’t. Don’t close me out, Brian.”

              He spared a glance at her before turning back to the game show.

              “Haven’t you wondered if something went on that we don’t know about?” She lowered her voice. “Michael has always been high strung but he never went after anyone with a gun before. I keep asking myself what Siobhan did to make him flip out like he did.”

              Brian, his upper lip curled in disgust, slowly shook his head.

              “A lot of people are thinking the same thing,” she said defensively, “so don’t look at me like that!”

              He faced the television. “I don’t want to look at you at all right now.”

              “I’m not going to be in town for spring break.” She picked at a loose thread in the frayed knee of her jeans. “I’m going to New York City, to visit my grandparents. My mom and dad think it’s best for me to get away from all this for a while. My flight leaves tonight. I’m sorry I didn’t come see you sooner. My parents thought you needed some time alone.”

              “Other people are doing a lot of thinking for you lately.”

              “Are you mad at me because I’m leaving?”

              “Are you leaving because you’re mad at me?” he answered.

              She stood to leave. “I didn’t come here to be ignored or sent on a guilt trip.”

              “Why
did
you come here?”

              “I came to say goodbye,” she replied with a little too much finality. She snapped her leather coat over her arm and tossed him the paperback novel she’d purchased for him in the hospital gift shop.

              “
Paradise Found
,” he scoffed, reading the title. “Great. A romance novel. Just what I need.” He stared at Courtney, wondering exactly what went on in her expensively-coiffed head.

              Courtney hoped he would ask her to stay. At the very least, she expected him to apologize for being so rude.

              “Goodbye, Courtney,” he said woodenly. He returned to the television to watch the game show host console a woman who had just overbid on three fantasy vacations and a fully outfitted motor home.

***

              Awake, alert, and upgraded from serious condition, Siobhan was sitting up in bed when Mr. Cleese came to visit Monday afternoon. Pillows that were much too big and fluffy to have come from the hospital’s supplies supported her back and shoulders. Mr. Cleese entered her private room and had to pick his way through flower arrangements, balloons, stuffed animals, and packages that filled almost half of the big private room.

              Mr. Cleese set his gift of pink roses on top of a squat machine with three sets of wires, each connected to a different part of Siobhan’s chest and torso.

              He was her teacher, and a grown man besides, yet seeing the discolored, swollen landscape of her exquisite face killed a piece of his heart. Nothing in his professional training had taught him how to disguise his true reaction to this first sight of her.

              Siobhan gave him a bittersweet smile. “That bad? Really?”

              She hadn’t seen herself. Reactions from visitors and medical personnel told her the same thing mirrors would. Her father hadn’t looked her in the eye since she woke up from surgery. She saw only pity in Grandma Curran’s face. Courtney had burst into tears after a ten-minute visit. Brian constantly touched her, as if he could heal her with caring alone. And Camden…she hadn’t seen him since opening night.

              “Forgive me.” Mr. Cleese took off his glasses and rubbed the water from his eyes. “For once I’ve no idea what to say.”

              “Tell me I’m beautiful and kiss me twice,” Siobhan said, quoting Mr. Cleese’s favorite Italian actress.

              “You’re beautiful.” Mr. Cleese laughed softly, though he meant it dearly. He delivered kisses as light as the brush of a feather to each of her bruised cheeks.

              “It doesn’t hurt. I’m on some version of morphine.”

              Mr. Cleese took in all the gifts. “It appears you have something of a fan club.”

              “Most of this stuff came from strangers. My dad says it started arriving Saturday morning. ” She pointed to a two-inch stack of phone messages and telegrams. “Our little ol’ school shooting made the national news. Reporters are plaguing the hospital and Dad’s office. The charge nurse put me on the opt-out list. It’s supposed to mean that the hospital won’t say that I’m a patient here, but it’s not really working.

              “I’ve gotten marriage proposals from people who are probably in jail or the state hospital, and telegrams from guys offering to ‘take Littlefield out,’ and I don’t mean for dinner and a movie.”

              She slightly slurred her words. Mr. Cleese couldn’t tell whether it was because of the swelling in her lower lip or her pain relief meds. Aside from that, she seemed her usual self. Michael Littlefield had hurt her body, but he hadn’t touched her spirit.

              “Mr. Edwards has his hands full at Prescott,” Mr. Cleese said. “He’s spent the first day of spring break receiving flowers and well wishes for you and the other students who were injured. They’re flooding the place. ”

              “Poor guy. First Logan Maddox, and now me. The media might drive Mr. Edwards into early retirement. He should be okay for the rest of the school year, though. I mean, what could top this? Mass suicides?”

              “That’s rather morbid,” Mr. Cleese said reproachfully.

              “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She raised her hand to brush a stray lock of hair from her eyes. The alarm on her heart monitor sounded, scaring Mr. Cleese halfway out of the room. Siobhan struck the instrument with the back of her cast, silencing it. “It goes off all the time,” she said. “As you can see, I take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.”

              A nurse and Siobhan’s grandmother scurried into the room to make sure Siobhan’s heart was indeed still ticking. While the nurse checked Siobhan’s heart rate and took her temperature, Mr. Cleese introduced himself to Siobhan’s grandmother.

              “I wish we were meeting under different circumstances,” he said to the small woman who gave his offered hand a curt shake. “Siobhan is holding up rather well. More so than I, I rather hate to admit.” Grandma Curran crossed her arms beneath her ample bosom and glared at Mr. Cleese from beneath her furrowed brow. He grew more and more uncomfortable under her withering gaze. “Uh, it might please you to know that Michael Littlefield was arraigned this morning.”

              “Nothing about this situation pleases me,” Grandma Curran said.

              “Of course not,” Mr. Cleese stammered. “I meant only that, well—”

              “She knows what you meant,” Siobhan cut in. “She’s just being mean.”

              “Perhaps I’d best see to Brian,” Mr. Cleese said. He gave Siobhan another kiss on the cheek and made an expeditious exit.

              “Don’t disrespect me like that in front of a stranger!” Grandma Curran chided with a stern point of her forefinger. “I don’t care if you are laid up in a hospital bed, you’re not too big for me to take over my knee and—”

              The boisterous entrance of three more visitors abbreviated Grandma Curran’s threat. Siobhan smiled at the sight of the owners of one of her favorite restaurants. Scowling, Grandma Curran fled the room.

              “Darling!” Dill Reynolds squealed, his arms wide. He nearly tripped Siobhan’s heart into a genuine alarm. Dill always wore black, and with his platinum-blond curls, porcelain complexion, and tall lanky frame, he looked like a streetlamp in his turtleneck and skinny jeans.

              “Hey there, baby girl.” Fen Cooper followed close behind his twin brother. The men were identical from the eyebrows down. Fen’s hair was a tousle of sable curls, its natural state.

              “Since our favorite customer can’t come to us, we decided to come to you.” Pepper Cooper, Fen’s heavyset wife, lugged a giant wicker picnic basket. Her long black gypsy curls were piled atop her head and secured with four or five colored pencils, the very same ones she used to take orders in her restaurant. The heavy black frames of her glasses perched perilously close to the tip of her nose. She wore her hot pink Paper Moon Diner apron over a black cat suit that hugged every curve of her lush figure. Her crimson lipstick was a stark contrast to her olive coloring.

              “This is so nice of you guys,” Siobhan said. “Thanks for coming.”

              Pepper set the picnic basket in an empty chair and began unpacking it while Dill and Fennel crowded onto the bed with Siobhan.

              Dill, his green eyes narrowed, encompassed the equipment in the room with an extravagant sweep of his arm. “What is all this? Your room looks like the inside of the TARDIS.”

              “This is a heart monitor, this is the IV drop monitor, that’s the morphine feeding into the IV drip, this is a respirator,” Fen said, naming the machines for his twin brother.

              “Well, one of us has been overdosing on
The Medical Channel
,” Dill deadpanned.

              “I had a friend who died from AIDS-related pneumonia a few months ago.” Fen’s green eyes, exactly like his brother’s, sparkled with sadness rather than Dill’s mirth. “Visit a sick person often enough, you get real familiar with the machinery.”

              “Siobhan’s not sick, she’s fabulous!” Dill exclaimed. He bounced his eyebrows. “Do you have a big scar? Can I see?”

              Pepper stopped spreading olive and roasted red pepper tapenade on a triangle of toasted garlic pita bread to smack Dill in the back of the head.

              “It’s okay,” Siobhan said, effectively preventing the slap fight that was bound to erupt. “There’s no point in not talking about the elephant in the room.”

              “The little maniac is going to be in jail for a very long time,” Pepper said. “KYNN televised his arraignment. That kid’s a real zero, sweetie. He said he was flattered that his bail was set at a quarter of a million dollars. His parents won’t pay it and his grandfather went on the air saying he can’t. The old bastard started an online campaign to raise money to hire some high-priced lawyer from South Carolina.” She rolled her eyes. “Hate is lucrative these days. He’s already collected more than ten thousand dollars.”

              “Ten grand?” What little appetite Siobhan had disappeared. “People are donating their hard-earned money to defend someone who shot me for no reason? Am I that hated?”

              “No one hates you, sweetie,” Pepper consoled. “There are just some very stupid people in the world.”