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“You didn’t . . . ?”
“I couldn’t.”
He laughed again. His head broke the surface and he took a deep, life-giving breath.
“I couldn’t.”
40
THE ROOM WHERE she lay was colder than a walk-in freezer, and Evan was sitting up now, watching me as I walked in. A pillow on the floor where Ben had dropped it, and me picking it up and sitting at the foot of Evan’s bed. Our breaths congealing and our hearts beating and the silence thickening between us.
Until I said, “Why?”
And he said, “To blow apart what remains. To break the final, unbreakable bond.”
I hugged the pillow to my chest and rocked slowly back and forth. Cold. So cold.
“No one can be trusted,” I said. “Not even a child.” The cold bored down to my bones and curled inside the marrow. “What are you, Evan Walker? What are you?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I told you.”
I nodded. “Yes, you did. Mr. Great White Shark. I’m not, though. Not yet. We’re not going to kill her, Evan. I’m going to pull it out, and you’re going to help me.”
He didn’t argue. He knew better.
Ben helped me gather the supplies before he left to join the others in the diner across the parking lot. Washcloth. Towels. A can of air freshener. Dumbo’s field kit. We said good-bye at the stairway door. I told him to be careful, there were some slippery rat guts on the way down.
“I lost it back there,” he said, lowering his eyes and scrubbing his foot across the carpet like an embarrassed little boy caught in a lie. “That wasn’t cool.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
He smiled. “Sullivan . . . Cassie . . . in case you don’t . . . I wanted to tell you . . .”
I waited. I didn’t push him.
“They made a major mistake,” he blurted out, “the dumb bastards, when they didn’t start by killing you first.”
“Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone’s ever given me.”
I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth.
“You know,” I whispered, “a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that.”
He shook his head. “Not worth it.” And, for one–ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.
“Get out of here,” I told him. “And if you let anything happen to my little brother, I’ll hunt you down like a dog.”
“I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”
He disappeared into the absolute dark of the stairwell.
I went back to the room. I couldn’t do this. I had to do this. Evan scooted back in the bed until his butt touched the headboard. I slid my arms beneath Megan and slowly lifted her, turned, and then lowered her carefully onto Evan, leaning her head back into his lap. I picked up the spray can of air freshener (A Delicate Blend of Essences!) and saturated the washcloth. My hands were shaking. No way could I do this. No way I couldn’t.
“A five-pronged hook,” Evan said quietly. “Embedded beneath the right tonsil. Don’t try to pull it out. Get a good grip on the wire,
make the cut as close to the hook as you can, then pull the hook out—slowly. If the wire comes loose from the capsule . . .”
I nodded impatiently. “Kaboom. I know. You already told me that.”
