Milayna's Angel (17 page)

Boys. Dressed in all black. The knife.

I searched the hallway for the group of boys
or the lady in the Hawaiian shirt, but there were too many people
filing by for me to see, so I stood on the bench and strained to
see over people’s heads.

Purse. Screaming. Stabbing. Blood.

I was frantic to find the woman. Jumping off
the bench, I stood in the middle of the aisle. People pushed and
shoved their way past me. Some yelled at me to get out of the way.
Others just brushed past, bumping into me. I stumbled backward, but
stayed where I was. I wasn’t moving until I saw the woman or the
group of guys.

Then I saw them. The group of boys walked
toward me. I looked over my shoulder. The woman walked toward me
from behind. I watched as the two came closer and closer to each
other.

I tried to make eye contact with one of the
guys. If I could create a bridge, I might be able to figure out
what they were planning, but without it, there was no way for me to
zero in on their thoughts. There were just too many people around
for me to pick out one person’s thoughts.

I turned and jogged to the woman. Keeping
pace with her, I put myself between her and the boys who headed
straight toward us. I watched the boy closest to me. I saw the
lights glint off the metal weapon he held half in his hand, half
stuffed up his shirtsleeve.

When we passed the group of boys, I watched
the one with the pick lunge toward the woman. I shoved her out of
the way.

I didn’t move fast enough. I felt a stinging
in my side, looking down, I saw blood seep across my blue T-shirt,
turning it a deep purple, and I had the stupid thought that it was
a pretty color.

I held my side with my hands, blood smeared
across them. The sight made me nauseous, and bile rose in my
throat, stinging it. I stumbled to the wall and leaned against it.
The group of boys ran through the crowd, which kept moving past. No
one realized what happened except the woman in the Hawaiian shirt.
She screamed for help. People stopped and stared, but no one did
anything. They just watched as my blood dripped on the dirty, tiled
floor.

13

Muriel and Drew rushed out of the store when
they heard the woman’s screams. Muriel saw me slumped against the
wall and ran to me, while Drew dialed 911on his cell. I heard him
tell the operator there had been a stabbing at the mall, and I
wondered who’d been stabbed.

Me? Is that what happened?

“Milayna? What happened?”

“A group of boys,” was all I managed to
say.

It didn’t take long for the EMTs to get
there. They loaded me into the back of the ambulance and rushed,
sirens blaring, to St. Mary’s hospital. Drew and Muriel followed in
Drew’s car.

“You were very lucky,” the doctor told me
three hours later. “The knife didn’t hit any major organs.”

The knife pierced right through my side.
Going in the front and exiting the back. It was far enough to the
side that it missed everything important. It just caused a lot of
blood, making it look much worse than it really was. Than it could
have been. However, it did hurt like a mofo.

I was required to spend the night in the
hospital for observation. After my parents and Muriel and Drew made
sure I was fine, they left so I could rest. The painkillers the
nurse gave me made me feel woozy, and my head spun like I was
riding a tilt-a-whirl. All I wanted to do was sleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I slept. When I opened
my eyes, it was dark outside. A single nightlight shone in my room,
just enough that I could see him slouching in the chair across the
small hospital room.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“I should have been there.” Chay scooted his
chair closer to the bed. He laid his head on the bed and held my
hand to his mouth. His lips tickled my skin when he spoke. “Do you
need anything? Are you in pain? Should I get the nurse?”

“I have what I need.” I reached out and
pulled him to me by the collar of his shirt. He kissed me softly,
holding back like he was afraid I was going to break. I pulled him
closer, deepening the kiss. It made me feel heady, alive. The room
tilted and spun.

He leaned back and looked at me. “They said
you’re going home tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just a little sore, but the
painkillers here are out of this world, wicked good.”

“What happened?” Chay cupped my face with his
hand and rubbed his thumb over my cheek.

“A vision.”

“You know, you’re supposed to keep the people
safe, but then you’re supposed to get out of the way, too.” He
grinned.

“Yeah, I’ll remember that the next time
someone tries to shank me.”

His grin fell away. He looked miserable. “I’m
so sorry, Milayna.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

He shook his head. “I could have been there
for you. I wasn’t.”

I heard someone at the door clear their
throat. “Am I interrupting?”

I pushed the button on the bed to turn on the
lights. Squinting against the bright light that pierced through the
darkened room, I saw him. He stood in the doorway with a large vase
of roses and an obscene number of balloons.

Xavier.

“No,” I said.

Yeah, you are.

“Yes,” Chay grumbled. I pulled him to me for
another kiss. That seemed to placate him.

“I’ll just drop these off and go. I wanted to
see for myself that you were okay,” Xavier said, looking at me.
“You look pale.”

“It’s the lovely gown. Pea green isn’t my
color.” I picked at the hospital gown and frowned.

“You can pull off any color, Milayna,” Xavier
murmured.

Chay shot him an angry glare.

“Visiting hours are over, gentlemen,” a burly
nurse said, walking by my door.

“I guess that’s our cue.” Xavier hesitated a
moment before smiling. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.”

He walked out the door with a backward glance
toward Chay, who’d already moved in to kiss. He didn’t seem too
worried about the end of visiting hours.

***

I’m running. He’s back there; I can hear his
footsteps. They’re getting louder, closer.

“
Milayna,” he taunts. “I’m coming for
you.”

His footsteps grow faster. I push myself to
keep running. My breathing is heavy, my legs rubbery. My heart is
pounding a painful staccato against my ribs. I need to stop. I
can’t. I don’t.

He’s here to kill me.

Running into my house, I slam and lock the
door behind me. I stare at it… waiting.

The door handle rattles, and my stomach
drops. I need to call the police. Turning to grab the phone, I
stumble backward. He’s looking down at me. A sneer mars his
otherwise perfect face.

Jake.

He jabs something at me. I look down and see
the metal handle of a knife sticking out of my stomach. Blood seeps
around it, dripping a steady rhythm on the toe of my white tennis
shoe.

He jerks his arm back, and I feel the blade
slice through my flesh a second time as he rips it out of my body.
I cover the wound with my hand, staring at the blood oozing between
my fingers. Red and warm, it stains them.

Shocked, I look up. He stands in front of me,
smiling, the bloody knife dangling from his fingers. Not Jake.

Chay.

I screamed and kicked my legs to free them of
the sweat-soaked bed linens tied around them. My arms flailed.
Something held them back, something pinned me in. I pushed against
the metal bars.

“Milayna,” an unfamiliar voice called, and I
shrunk away from it. “It’s okay. You’re at St. Mary’s Hospital.
You’re safe.”

The hospital? I remember.

I stopped struggling. I wasn’t tied down. It
was my IV and other medical equipment strewn through the room.

A cord wrapped around my finger, monitoring
who knows what. A cuff around my arm that measures my blood
pressure. Bet that’s outta sight right now.

Feeling liquid seep onto the sheets, I look
down. I was sure I’d ripped a stitch or two and would see red blood
staining the bedsheets, but the liquid was clear.

“Oh, you’ve pulled your IV out.” The nurse
grabbed the IV tube and pinched it off. “Maybe the doctor will let
us keep it out and we won’t have to stick you again.”

“That’d be good.”

“I’ll be right back.” She was an older
grandmotherly type, and I liked her. But she hovered. Well,
fluttered would be a better description. She darted like a
hummingbird from here to there, fixing this, checking that. It
exhausted me.

She was back flying through the room within
minutes. “Here you go,” she said in a singsong voice. “Swallow
up.”

I did as I was told. It wasn’t until the
pills were down my throat that I thought to ask what they were.

“One is a painkiller and one will help you
sleep.”

Great, something to keep me asleep so I can
relive the nightmare over and over.

She gathered up the IV and put a bandage on
my hand, patting my arm and telling me to get some rest. It didn’t
take long before the combination of painkiller and sleeping pill
made my eyes start to droop. The next thing I knew, I was waking up
to my parent’s faces and the smell of powdered eggs.

“How do you feel?” my mom asked.

“Sore. Tired.”

“Do you want to eat?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Is that smell my
breakfast?”

She looked at me and nodded. “I’m afraid
so.”

“I don’t think I’m that hungry.”

She laughed. “I don’t blame you. Anyway,
you’re getting sprung. We’re just waiting on the paperwork, and
then you can go home. I’ll make you something there.”

“Okay.”

It took three hours before the doctor signed
off on all the paperwork so I could go home. “I can walk,” I
complained when the nurse made me ride down to the car in a
wheelchair.

“Hospital policy,” she said.

The ride home was… painful. The painkillers
the hospital gave me to take home weren’t nearly as fun as the ones
they gave me the night before. My side felt every bump, shimmy, and
pothole.

“Where’s Benjamin?” I asked on the way
home.

My mom angled herself so she could look at me
in the backseat. “He’s home with your grandma.”

“Come here, child, lemme have a look at ya,”
my grams said as soon as I walked through the door. “You look a
little green around the gills. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, Grams, I’m feeling just great.” I
rolled my eyes but smiled at her.

“That’s what I thought. They didn’t feed you,
did they?”

“They tried to give me something that smelled
too vile to be legal. I decided to wait until I got home to
eat.”

“Hi,” Benjamin said.

“Hey, Frog Freckle.”

“Can I see the hole?” He was a typical
seven-year-old boy.

“Well, it’s all bandaged up right now, but
later, when Mom puts new bandages on it, you can look at it,
okay?”

He nodded. “Wanna play video games with me
since you have to stay on the couch anyway?”

“Sure.” I hobbled into the family room and
eased down on the couch, getting comfortable. Benjamin handed me
the controller for the video game and stood in the middle of the
room, staring at me.

“What’s wrong, Ben?”

“Why’d they do that to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sucks the royal weenie.” He looked down
at the floor. “I’ll let you pick the game since you’re hurt and
all.”

“Thanks.” I picked his favorite game.

I spent the rest of the day playing video
games and getting fed by my grandmother.

I never heard from Chay.

***

My phone rang early Monday morning; the sky
was still gray.

“Hello?” My voice was gravelly from sleep,
and my head was fuzzy from the pain medication I’d taken during the
night.

“Hey, beautiful.”

“Chay, what time is it?”

“Early. I’m getting ready for school. I
wanted to talk to you before I left.”

“Where were you yesterday?” I was hurt that I
hadn’t heard from him at all, not even a text message.

“I thought you’d need to rest.”

“I didn’t need to rest that bad,” I
complained.

“I’m sorry. I just want you to get all the
rest you need so you’ll heal,” Chay murmured. His voice was like
velvet, soft and smooth. It made it hard to remember why I was
supposed to be angry with him.

“You’ll come over after school today?”

“You can’t keep me away.”

It was the longest day in history. I tried to
read and work on the homework my mom picked up from the school, but
I couldn’t concentrate. I was anxious to see Chay that afternoon.
He’d been acting weird the last few days. I wanted to see him and
make sure things between us were okay.

Finally, I heard the doorbell ring. I started
to get up to answer the door when my mom shooed me back on the
couch.

“But it’s Chay.”

“I don’t care if it’s the pope. You need to
stay put. I’ll get the door.”

A few seconds later, Chay walked into the
room. He looked amazing. I was sure I looked like something out of
a zombie movie.

“Hey.” I sighed.

“How are you feeling?” He sat on the floor
next to the couch.

“Bored.”

He laughed. “Already? Geez, you should be
enjoying watching soap operas all day.”

“My mother was kind enough to go to the
school and pick up my assignments for the week. She’s banned all
soap operas until she knows I’ve done my schoolwork.”

“Bummer.”

“That’s what I said. I mean, really, I was
stabbed. Can’t I get a free pass for a soap opera or two? What’s
the world coming to?”

He laughed and nodded. The sunlight streaming
through the window danced off his hair and his blue-green eyes
twinkled. “I agree that you’ve earned a day or two off. It’s good
to hear you joking, Milayna.”