Page 96 of She’s a Doll

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I staggered out of the construction site, my phone clutched tenderly in my claw. I was covered with mud and cement dust, my joints stiff from it. The color had been scraped off my metal limbs, and my screws wobbled, frayed and loose.

Time was still slow, but even if it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have had the energy to do anything about it. It took all I had just to walk across the lot, climb out through the hole in the mesh fence, and totter into a small, scrubby patch of brush, thick with wild blackberries and spiderwebs.

I collapsed, my remaining legs bent, broken, and rattling. I couldn’t stop shaking. I wanted to scream. Perhaps I was screaming. Perhaps that was what the deafening ringing echoing through my skull was. A howl, raw and raging, terrible and triumphant.

I’d won. I’d done exactly what I’d sworn I’d do, sitting on the shelf in my grandma’s workroom. It didn’t feel like I’d thought it would. It felt better. It felt worse. It felt like there’d been a sword through me, cutting deeper and deeper, and now I’d finally pulled it out, was finally free, finally bleeding out.

I thought of Grandma as she’d been when I last saw her, pale and worn. Then I pushed the memory down and replaced it with one of her singing in the kitchen, glasses foggy, voice high and happy.

I thought of Cookie barking through the walls. I swapped it out with a memory of him snoring loud enough to shake the curtains, paws twitching as he chased a rabbit in his dreams.

I thought of Nicola.

I thought of the way she’d looked at Ginger’s tea party, half hidden behind a curtain of hair, freckles poking through her foundation, eyes sleepy and playful and curious all at once. I thought of how she’d looked at Trash N’ Treasure, the red of her uniform faded from one too many washes. I thought of her smile, the one she’d shown me when we sat out by her letter box, toothy and cheeky and wildly beautiful.

I thought of her getting back to an empty house and knew with gut-kick certainty that I couldn’t do that to her, not again. She’d done so much for me, and I’d done too much to her. I’d won. I’d fulfilled my promise. But I wasn’t abandoning her. Not again.

I flipped open my phone and dialed her number from memory, the press of my claws scratching the buttons on the keypad. I hadn’t wanted to use the contact list in case something went wrong, in case someone found the phone. As the phone rang, I felt a corkscrew of uncertainty worm through me. What if I’d gotten the number wrong? What if I couldn’t call her? What if⁠—

“Hello?” Nicola’s voice crackled out of my phone, distant and confused.

“Hey,” I said, breathy with relief. “It’s me.”

“Oh shit. Lu. Hi. You OK?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Right. OK. I’m driving Ginger home now. Will be home in about⁠—”

“I’m not at your house.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m sorry. It was crazy. I didn’t think it would work. And then I was going to walk back, but it’s late and I just didn’t . . . I didn’t want you to get home and it be empty again and . . .”

“Where are you?”

“I’ve done something really stupid.”

“Where. Are. You?”

“I’m at the construction site. I⁠—”

Time swirled forward, so sharply, so suddenly, that I jerked back in shock, the phone sliding out of my claw. The roar of the nearby road became a high, angry whine. The moon raced gleefully up the sky, a puppy with a broken chain.

Numbly, I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d been slowing down time all night, pushing back, keeping it contained. Eventually, it had to push back. The dam was breaking; I was breaking. I felt weak and wrung out, small and threadbare.

With a shaking claw, I picked up the phone and held it up. The call timer was whirling upward, higher and higher. Twenty minutes. Thirty. Forty. Nicola didn’t hang up. If she was saying anything, I couldn’t hear it.

A short, high-pitched sound prickled in my ears, repetitive and persistent, like the chirping of a fire alarm or the buzzing of an alarm clock. It took me a moment to realize it was a voice, a human voice, calling my name over and over again, relentless and angry. “Lu! Lu! LUUU!”

Nic?

Instantly, she was there, kicking down the blackberry bush in a blur, seizing me in long, sweaty arms, and crushing me to her chest, as soft as a brick wall, as careful as a plane crash. Her heart buzzed hot and frantic against my porcelain cheek, her breath blasted against my limbs, fast, and furious. Words tumbled from her lips, too fast for me to follow as her fingers scrubbed over what remained of my head, finding the new cracks and turning painfully gentle in an instant. I wished she wouldn’t do that. I wished she’d hug me tighter, tight enough to crush the atoms between us, to suffocate all the feelings smashing and screaming inside me.

Her face swam into view, bathed in yellow light. She said something else, voice like electricity, still too fast to understand.