AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Lani!” I slap a hand to my chest, feigning shock. “Whoareyou? I’d never have had you pegged as such a wanton—”
The door to the nurse’s office swings open and a young girl clutching a rag to her mouth scurries out with tears in her eyes. She sobs when she sees me and Lani, then bolts down the hall.
“What the—?”
“Miss Voss?” Nurse Riley’s mousy brown hair is braided into pigtails today; there are little pink plastic flowers attached to her hair ties. She looks like she’s going to try and give me a lollipop. She won’t be grinning at me so broadly when she realizes why I’ve come to see her—promiscuous teenagers without a lick of common sense don’t deserve candy at the end of their visits. For now, she beams at me. “Come on in, sweetheart,” she says.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” Lani asks.
“You know the rules. Only the patient can come into the office,” Nurse Riley says. “But don’t worry, Lani. I’ll have Sorrell back to you in a shake of a rabbit’s tail.”
I follow the nurse inside and sit down on the exam table as she directs me. Nurse Riley hums as she heads to the tall filing cabinet in the corner of the room and opens it up. She flicks through a row of files, finds mine—it’smassive—and then takes it out, sets it down on her desk, and begins tapping into her computer.
“Why is my file so big?” I ask, breaking the awkward silence.
“Hmm? Oh!” Nurse Riley turns that million-megawatt smile on me. “Yeah, it is big, isn’t it! When a new student arrives at Toussaint, we have to gather all of their medical records from their previous doctors. We need hardcopies of everything on file, y’know. The weather’s so bad up here that the system goes down all the time. If you have an emergency while we’re stuck in the middle of a power outage, we still need a fully comprehensive record of your medical history to hand. Wouldn’t do to give you medication that you’re allergic to now, would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“And I remember, getting all of your records was a bit of a nightmare,” she laughs, wagging a finger at me. “You moved around a lot when you were little, didn’t you?”
I just stare at her. “I was in the foster care system.”
Her smile dims. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I remember now. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“So, what brings you in today?” She swiftly changes the subject. “That head bothering you some?”
“No. That’s not it.” And I was right. Indeed, her smile vanishes altogether when I explain the reason for my visit.
I leave, not only after taking a Plan B pill in front of Nurse Riley, but with a prescription for the pill, which I politely declined but she insisted I take. I’d have to fill it off-site, she informed me, but she wouldn’t feel comfortable issuing the emergency birth control to me without ensuring I had measures in place that would prevent me from requiring it again in the future. It didn’t matter to her that I was leaving in a matter of days. She was firm, wasn’t budging, and I needed that Plan B. So I took the prescription, and she gave me a fucking Tootsie Roll on my way out of the door.
Four hours later, I’m so nauseous and miserable from the meds that even getting out of bed feels like a monumental task. This is why I yell, “Go away!” instead of answering the door when someone knocks, after eight.
The person does not go away.
The person, who is Theo, lets himself into my room with no trouble whatsoever, even though the damned door was locked.
I throw myself back into my freshly changed bedsheets, groaning theatrically. “Urgh! This is like some kind of bad joke that keeps repeating itself, dude. I hide in my room. You show up at my door. I tell you to go to hell and you ignore me. Aren’t youboredof all of this?”
Entering, Theo doesn’t bother to look at me at first. He spends a moment surveying every other element of the roomexceptme—the fake pictures of my fake family on top of the dresser; the concert tickets and movie stubs tucked into the frame of the mirror; the Polaroids that Gaynor expertly mocked up, depicting me with a crew of smiling friends I don’t know; the little stuffed teddy bear on the bedside table; the earrings, necklaces and bracelets draped over the jewelry tree that I’ve never worn. All of it false. All of it a lie.
Dressed head to heel in black, his dark hair tumbling into his savagely beautiful face, Theo looks like a haunted wraith as he peruses the fiction that Gaynor curated for me, observing each little detail with a fierce intensity. He picks up a gilded silver photo frame of a younger me, photoshopped next to a pretty middle-aged woman with open, clear blue eyes and long dark hair a similar shade to mine, and a tall, intelligent looking man wearing glasses, whose nose bears the same gentle upturn as mine at the end. Gaynor did a great job of finding images that I would blend into all right.
“Tell me about them,” Theo says.
I almost choke on laughter. He knows why I came here. He knows all about Ruth and Falcon House. Why bother indulging this nonsense? I groan, throwing an arm over my face, wanting to block him and the rest of this bullshit out. “Last night doesn’t change anything, y’know.”
He's quiet for a moment. The bed dips next to me; he’s taken a seat, uninvited. What a surprise. “Doesn’t it?” he asks softly.
“No.”The word comes out hard. “It doesn’t change a thing for me.”
“Has it occurred to you that it might change things for me?”
That really is rich. I lower my arm, propping myself up on my elbows. The room sways, my head pounding, nausea cycling around my gut, but the effects of the contraceptive I swallowed in Nurse Riley’s office are secondary to my spiking temper. “Oh? What has it changed for you, Theo? Have you decided that Rachel meant nothing to you now? That you’re in love with me instead?You don’t fucking know me,”I spit.
He remains calm in the face of my fury. His expression is difficult to read, really, but for the life of me I think I see a brief moment of sadness chase across his features. “How can I? You don’t even know yourself.”
