Page 78 of She’s a Doll

“You’re the worst,” Nicola muttered as she stumbled back toward her car, moving as fast as her too-big boots allowed. “The absolute worst.”

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Nicola put me in the passenger seat, clipped the seat belt over my lap, then drove to the nearest Macca’s, where she bought a strawberry milkshake that smelled so sugary I wished I had a stomach so I could hurl. Have you considered eating real food?

“Have you considered that you’re still on thin ice, you porcelain piece of shit?” she said, exhausted and without venom.

Please.

Nicola rolled her eyes but cycled back through the drive-through a second time to pick up a burger and some chips. There was a single leaf of lettuce in the burger, which (if the dim achiness of her skin was any indication) might have been the healthiest thing she’d eaten since I’d left. And she did eat it. Sitting in the parking lot overlooking the highway, she ate quickly, desperately, as if she’d been starving but had only realized when the food touched her tongue.

Are you OK?

“No,” she said around a mouthful of chips. “No. I . . .” She swallowed. “It’s been a shit few weeks, Lu. A real shit few weeks. The worst I’ve ever had.”

Those words sank into me, cold, ugly, and sharp all over.

I’m sorry.

“You keep saying that.”

I am sorry.

“I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you to be on my side.”

I am on your side.

“Right.” She took a massive bite of her burger, did a distressingly cursory chew, and swallowed loudly. “Sometimes you are. When it suits you.”

That’s not⁠—

“And you know what the worst thing is? I get it. I do. I know you’re the star of this unholy shit show, Lu. I know that. This is your revenge, and I’m trying to help, I’m trying to do the right thing, be a good Robin to your Batman, but⁠—”

Wait. You think you’re the sidekick?

“You’re not going to sit there and pretend that if we were characters in a comic book, it’d be my name on the cover.”

No, I said. But that’s because superheroes never use their true names. It was a corny line, so corny it ran the risk of disrupting the whole corn industry, but it seemed to work. The furrow between Nicola’s brows eased; the hard line of her shoulders softened.

“You’re such a fucking nerd.”

I know, I said. And I know I fucked up. But I’m on your side, Nic. I am. I never didn’t want to be on your side.

“Huh,” she said, and took another bite of her burger, chewing a little more thoroughly. “So,” she said as she swallowed. “I’ve got to ask, now that we’re on each other’s side again . . . did you send anyone else a message?”

No.

“Are you sure? It was only Krissy you messaged? Not anyone else?”

I didn’t have your phone for long.

“Is that how you did it? With my phone?”

And your spare hearing aid. I put it back in the drawer.

“I thought so.” She frowned down at the scrappy remains of her burger. “Honestly, the only thing I couldn’t figure out was how you’d got a battery into it.”

I stared at her. Say again?