Heartless (14 page)

The string attaching the note to the rock was basic, everyday twine. I’d seen string like that at Eli’s before. He and his roommates used it to tie up collapsed cardboard before their monthly trips to the recycling center. I knew I couldn’t untie it, not with my fumbling fingers anyway, so I stood up and walked to my desk.

I had a pocketknife in the top drawer, given to me by father before I headed east the year before. “You never know when you’ll need a knife,” he’d said.

“Thanks, Daddy,” I whispered as I slipped the blade out and locked it into place. I set the rock down and ran my fingertip over the blade to test its sharpness. The blade slid right into my finger, without hesitation, and I dropped it.

“Jo,” said Eli, his voice muffled through two thick doors. “Are you doing okay in there?”

“Never better,” I called back, a reflex-reaction, as I stared at the clean line etched into my fingertip. The cut went deep into the pad, and when I pulled the skin back, I saw the white, parched muscle below. I felt no pain as I stared in silent sadness.

“I miss having blood,” I whispered to myself, staving off the urge to pop my injured finger into my mouth. That gesture wouldn’t be necessary anymore.

Then I nodded to spur myself back into action. “I’m opening the note now,” I called, picking the knife back up and slicing through the thin twine. I unfolded it, my fingers shaking, and glanced at the contents. “It’s….um….they have really bad handwriting.”

Eli burst back through the door. “That’s all you have to say about it?”

Lucy followed. “What does it say?”

“It says you’re in danger. It says you should go now.” I dropped the note on the desk and went back to my bed. Eli and Lucy ran to where I’d left it. I let them read. It would only take a second.

For there, scrawled in handwriting barely legible, in a thick, coppery ink that I wasn’t convinced wasn’t blood, was a cheap joke, a kick in the gut while I was already down, and a threat against the two people who were trying to help me survive:

I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little friends too.

“S
crew ‘em,” said Eli.

Lucy took the note to our bathroom and burned it in the sink, setting it on fire with the same matches she used to relight the scented candles in my room.

“But that was evidence,” I said, weakly, while I sat in my bed, too overwhelmed with grief and fear to move.

“Evidence of what? Of their sick sense of humor? Or of their intent to get Eli and me, too? Either way, I’m with him. Screw them. Let’s get back to work.”

So that’s what we did. We searched hundreds of real estate records for the mountains surrounding campus, but nothing looked familiar to me. Hours later, without having made any actual progress, Eli left, promising to return in between classes the next day. Lucy, looking deflated, headed through the bathroom into her room. They were tired, I could see that. I was, too, on some level. Tired, frustrated, angry. But my body and mind, even after lying still and unplugged for hours, refused to rest. It just kept on ticking. Chugging. Thinking. Working. No matter how much I wanted to sleep, it didn’t happen.

I tossed and turned. I read a bit of
Romeo and Juliet
—required reading for Professor Lewis’s class that week—but then I went back to the computer, staring blankly as I flipped from house to house to house.

Finally, around five a.m., I gave up and got out of bed. In the flickering candlelight, I pulled off my clothes and stood naked in front of the mirror. The flames cast shadows against my body, adding dents and dimples to my already mottled frame.

The day’s activities had been unkind to me. The staples on my stomach tore away from the skin in some spots, and two in a row had pulled completely out near the bottom, opening a gaping hole in my lower abdomen. The bandage around my electrical cord was dingy and gray, fraying around the edges. I yanked it off, disgusted by the sensation of crust detaching from skin, and then I grabbed a nearby coil of gauze and started to cover up the hole in my stomach.

When I was done I stared some more. My arm hung at my side, splinted but still crooked. The fingers on my right hand were black, ugly. On my left hand, one finger was attached by duct tape, thanks to Lucy’s clumsy handiwork. And everywhere, my skin was gray and hard, like marble. I hadn’t lost weight since the morgue, but I looked skinny and malnourished as my body began to collapse in on itself. And my eyes were the worst: white where they’d once been blue, pupils dilated and vacant, obvious even in the dull candlelight.

I was dead. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me that.

What I needed to find was someone to help me. To fix me. That was all that mattered.

Because I wasn’t ready to be dead. Not then. Not yet. And since my friends were sleeping, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Slowly, in the dancing candlelight, I pulled on a pair of baggy sweatpants, roomy enough to accommodate my bandages and cord, then a T-shirt and hoodie. I slid my feet into a pair of boots, and left my room.

Let Lucy sleep,
I told myself, glancing at her door as I slipped in silence down the long hallway and headed for the stairs.
She needs the rest.

Outside Calvin Hall, night sat heavy atop the snow. The moon was set, but stars danced in the clear black sky. The whole campus was asleep. I passed Strong’s police car, parked in the fire zone in front of the dorm. The car was running, puffing plumes of exhaust behind it like a sleeping dragon, and he sat inside. His head was tilted back against the headrest and his mouth hung slack, a tiny pool of drool glistening in one corner. As he breathed, deep, heavy breaths, the puddle wiggled, dangerously close to spilling over his bottom lip. I stood and watched, entranced for a moment, until the mountains beckoned.

Come here
, they said in voices deep and dreamy. The voices of those who came before, I thought. Our forefathers.
Come here and we’ll take care of you. We’ll show you the way. Let us help you.

I wanted to believe. I trudged through the snow in the direction from which I’d come the day before: down the hill, behind the English Department, then back out into the wilderness. It was nice, feeling neither cold nor fatigue. I was a machine. So long as I was properly charged, I could keep going and going and going.

So I did. Alone in the dark, I was no longer afraid. I walked slowly, methodically, carefully retracing my steps, but taking time to look around me. I absorbed the dark, the wild beauty of the mountains around me. I would accomplish everything.

I climbed to the top of a hill a mile away from campus. Though I was surrounded on all sides by mountains, I had an unparalleled view of the sunrise. I froze, gazing out over the mountain ranges. The sun’s fingers were a thousand shades of yellow and pink and gold as they reached through the deep blue sky between snowy mountain caps. I could see for miles, and the vastness of the world reminded me how far I’d run on that first night in the mountains. The memory of that night suddenly felt freeing; I could have gone anywhere, done anything. It seemed, in retrospect, that I wasted the night that never ended. I huddled in a cave instead of drinking in nature. I could have been drunk with beauty, but instead I cowered. As I looked around, I realized I never needed to be afraid again. Not when the world was so beautiful and fresh and welcoming.

I was exhilarated. I raised my arms to welcome the coming dawn, and drew back my lips in a cry of joy.

But then my thoughts went dim. My body grew heavy. In an instant, I felt it: I was running out of power.

I didn’t have a lot of time. This shutdown was coming on faster, fiercer, as though it wanted nothing more than to rob me of the fleeting joy I’d felt. I fell to my knees.

I need help.
I pulled my dead cell phone from the pocket of my hoodie and held down the power button. Nothing happened. Though I’d charged it for hours after we returned home from Eli’s, it stayed dead. Cold. Destroyed by the winter weather.
Come on, come on…START.

Nothing.

As fog clouded my dying brain and fear set into my absent heart, I had an idea. I unzipped my hoodie with fingers grown thicker and clumsier as my body shut down. I lifted my shirt.
Please work.

I held the phone tight, and I touched it to one of my metal nipples.

Sparks lit the air and sizzled when they touched down amid the snow. In my hand the phone clicked, and vibrated, and then, miraculously, it booted. But it was slow, so slow. Just like me.

“Call Lucy,” I croaked, as soon as my phone would accept a voice command. My cold fingers were ineffectual on the smooth touch screen. The ringing was music in my ears.

She picked up immediately and her voice sounded, muffled and sleepy. “Hello? Hello?”

I tried to talk, but nothing came out. “
Call Lucy” might be my last words.

“Hello? Jo? Is that you? Jo?” I heard a door slam. “Jo, why aren’t you in your room? Where are you?”

Save me, Lucy. I don’t want to die.

I moaned. My brain shouted words in my head, but my vocal cords couldn’t form them.

The last thing I heard before my power went off was Lucy. “Jo, where are you? Never mind. I’m coming. I’m coming!”

Above me, the sky burned with the colors of a wildfire as I closed my eyes.

T
he next thing I knew was warmth flowing into my body. My eyes fluttered open, and the faces of Lucy and Eli slowly came into focus. We were in my room again. I was in my bed. I saw my remaining curtain billowing in the breeze from the open window.

“Look, look, she’s waking up!” Lucy’s eyes were red and tearstains striped her cheeks, cutting white, freckled paths through a thick layer of grime. “Oh, thank God, she’s waking up. Jo? Jo? Can you hear me?”

I tried to respond but couldn’t quite move my mouth. I blinked.

Lucy sighed as if she’d held her breath for hours. “She blinked. Jo, if you can hear me, blink twice.”

I blinked twice.

“Hooray!” Lucy said, then leaned over and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I think you’ll make it. You just lay still and keep charging.”

As if I had any choice.

They moved out of my line of sight, but they spoke about me as if they thought I couldn’t hear them. I heard every word.

Eli’s voice had a knife-sharp edge to it. “Okay, so she’s awake. I’m out of here. You two are on your own for the rest of the day. Think you can stay out of trouble?”

“Come on,” said Lucy. I couldn’t see her, but I knew the look on her face. Her eyes would be big, her cheeks flushed pink. She always looked like that when she was begging. “Don’t be like that. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“She left her room in the middle of the night,
by herself
. I don’t care what she meant by it. She was stupid. She could have
died.
I mean, that’s what got her into this situation in the first place, right? And now, well,
I’m done wasting my time on someone who keeps trying to get herself killed.”

“Eli!”

“Besides, it’s not that she
could
have died. It’s that she
is
dead. We know this. Nothing we do now is going to change that.”

“Eli! She can hear you!” Lucy’s voice was thick with tears again.

“So what if she can? It’s time she knows the truth.” The door opened. “And anyway, we broke up the night she disappeared. She only came back to me because she needed something. I can’t keep wasting my time on a girl who walked out on me.”

“Come on, stop it,” Lucy said. “You know Jo loved you, and you know this isn’t ending here. Maybe someone can help her, fix her. Change her back, even. But that won’t happen if we don’t help her. Come on, Eli. Please don’t go. Not like this.”

“No one can fix her.” He was quiet for a moment, but then he spoke in a louder voice that reminded me of the fight that had started my journey. “Listen, don’t call me later, okay? I have exams, work, and now I have to do it all on two hours of sleep. Thanks a ton, Jo. For nothing.” He slammed the door.

Lucy appeared back in front of my face, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Don’t listen to him, Jo, okay? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And maybe he’s wrong. Maybe if we find who did this, they
can
fix you.” She laid her head down on my shoulder, but sat up quickly again. “God, you stink. It’s not like anything I’ve ever smelled before.”

Lucy sat on the edge of my bed, wiggling until her back was to me, and all I could see was her wild, tangled ponytail, bobbing as she spoke. “He’s just mad, Jo. He didn’t really mean those things. You scared him, that’s all, so that made him get mean. I wish you’d seen him when we were looking for you. He was like a machine—so intense, so determined. He loves you, Jo. If you had seen him, you’d know exactly how much. And so don’t listen to those mean things he said. They’re not true.” She sighed a deep, shuddering sigh. The bed shook as she reached up to stifle a sob and also to wipe her own tears away.

“God, Jo, I don’t know the last time I’ve cried this much in the same twenty-four-hour span. I hate it.” She sniffled, and it was wet and thick. Snotty. “I’m done crying now, Jo. You hear me? I’m done. Because I don’t accept that we won’t figure this out. Together. Only us if it has to be that way, but I know Eli will be back too. He loves you. And this story will have a happy ending. Do you hear me, Jo? Happy. So remember that.”