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Her eyes opened sluggishly. Like trying to force open a rusty hinge when it had been shut for decades. “What are you doing here?” she rasped. “I’m too tired to fight you today.”
She looked horrendous. Her skin was pale, her face puffy from all the tears. Her hair was matted around her face. She looked like she was on the verge of dying too.
“I’m not here to fight you,” I murmured softly, moving further into the room. She seemed to relax slightly.
“Did they find your mom?” She struggled to sit up, but her limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
“No,” I shook my head, moving to sit on the edge of the bed and help her. “When was the last time you ate or drank anything, Cait?”
She frowned, reaching up with aching slowness to rub her forehead.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “What day is it?”
Now that she mentioned it, I realized she was wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing at school several days ago. She even still had her shoes on. Like she’d come up here and collapsed and not moved since.
“It’s Sunday, Cait. Have you really not eaten or drank anything for two whole days?” I was horrified. How could I have let this happen to her? Bree and Dad were too lost in their grief to even notice she was gone… and I… I’d just assumed someone else would be looking after her. Now I realized she didn’t have anyone else.
She gave me a half shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to live anyway,” she sighed, nestling back into the pillows. Under her head was an old t-shirt, I assumed her father’s.
“You want to die?”
“What’s the point in living? I have nothing… no one.” Her voice cracked as it trailed off, and she let out a couple of coughs. She really was dehydrated. “Just leave me here to die.”
“Well, I could. If that’s really how you feel…”
“It is.”
I sighed, shifting closer to her. “I know it feels like that now… but one day soon, it won’t. Your parents wouldn’t want you to waste away, would they?”
“They don’t want anything, anymore, Aidan. They’re dead,” she said dully, but I didn’t miss the pain in her tone when she said the word ‘Dead’.
“I know, and I’m really, really sorry.” I reached out, smoothing the matted curls back off of her face. She peered up at me, but there was no life in those blue eyes anymore, and that hurt me way more than I’d thought it would.
Cait was one of the most cheerful, lively people I knew, when she wasn’t threatening me with violence anyway. She had this vitality about her that made it impossible to feel like shit in her presence, and that had always annoyed me. I had shit in my life that she would never understand. My world wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, but every day she’d shown up with her smiles and I’d wanted to shake her. My family killed people for a living… she was naïve. Plucking clovers and wishing on dandelion clocks like they were suddenly going to change the world she’d been born into. It was pathetic. And I was jealous of her faith.
Perhaps that was another reason I’d enjoyed torturing her. It brought her under my cover of clouds, even if only for a second.
She’d been pure energy, but now she was barely a flicker.
“Let me at least get you some water. You don’t want to be all wrinkly and dehydrated when you die, do you?” I wasn’t sure if now was the time for jokes, but something seemed to spark inside her.
Her hand flashed to her cheek.
Cait wasn’t vain, not in the way some people were, but I knew she liked to take care of her appearance. I knew it would bug her that the fresh glow she worked so hard to achieve with all the cucumber water she slogged down every day (and hated every single drop) had disappeared.
I offered her a small smile. “There she is.”
I stood, trotting down the stairs to find a glass.
My nose wrinkled at the molding dishes in the sink, but they could wait. I had to stop Cait from wasting away first.
I returned to her minutes later with a glass of water. She was sitting up, staring at the foot of the bed, lost in thought.
“Here.” I passed her the glass, and she took it, but turned her nose up at it. “Just a sip. Please.” I held my palms together like a prayer.
She deliberated for a minute, her eyes giving me an accusatory glare, then took a sip. She swallowed, then moved to set the glass on the nightstand. In the same moment, she reached for one of the coasters, stopping herself at the last second. Then, she let out a harsh barking laugh.
“I guess it doesn’t matter if I forget a coaster now… they’re dead.” She was laughing, but there was no amusement in it, and a few seconds later, she dissolved into tears. Well, there would have been tears if she wasn’t so dehydrated.
