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Hazel takes her time in the shower, her mind swirling with anxieties while she cleans herself as thoroughly as she can.
It was so much easier when she didn’t question things.
Life was…fine.
But it’s as if someone finally opened her eyes to the injustice that’s happening in front of her.
She can’t get the children’s faces out of her mind.
Lincoln Elementary expected her tolieto them, when she knows full well Connor isn’t fine.
How can she live like this?
When she exits the bathroom in just her towel, Ava is finishing up the last of her dirty dishes.
“You didn’t have to do allthat,” Hazel insists to her friend.
“I didn’t have to. I wanted to,” Ava quips back. “Get into some comfy clothes and relax.”
After dressing, she joins Ava on the couch, who hands her a small bottle of pills. “Take them, Hazel.”
She tilts the bottle in her hands, staring at the label. “What if I don’t want to?” she mutters, feeling like a scolded child.
Ava sighs. “Then you’ll go through withdrawals, and, eventually, I’ll call an ambulance and they’ll force you into a Heat in the hospital. Is that what you want? Do you remember the last time you tried that?”
Hazel has always had a bit of a self-destructive streak, and it last appeared a few years ago, when she turned twenty-one.
It was before she took up her teaching job and found a reason to exist.
“Yeah,” she mutters, turning the bottle around in her hands. “I do.”
The Heat was the worst of her life. It wasn’t pleasurable; it was traumatic, and she sobbed the entire time, aching for something that wasn’t there. No number of luxurious blankets or lavish nests could help her. The doctors were kind enough to sedate her; but it only quieted her body, not her mind.
There was just loneliness, soul-shattering and wretched, coupled with a despair so deep that she didn’t stop weeping for a full week.
It felt as if something wasmissing, and she vowed to never stop her suppressants again.
With those memories in mind and terrified to have another hospital stay, she takes her dose, washing it down with a glass of water that Ava placed on the coffee table. After her friend’s insistence, she takes a few spoonfuls of the soup that Ava prepared, then sprawls out on the couch.
“Where are your nesting blankets?” Ava asks her softly.
“Closet in bedroom,” she mumbles, turning on the television and switching to a news station.
“Can children show signs of presentation? Scientists at research centers across the country are collecting blood samples of children ages five through seventeen and studying them for genetic mutations—”
She changes the channel, the soup in her stomach threatening to come back up.
“What if Connor isn’t there?” she asks quietly as Ava returns with her hands full of blankets.
“Huh?”
“What if they’re experimenting on him?” Her voice wavers as she speaks. “What if—”
“Playing ‘what if’ games won’t help,” Ava sighs, dumping the pile of blankets on Hazel’s head, effectively blocking her view of the television. “Stop watching the news. You’re only going to psych yourself out.”
Hazel grumbles and pulls a comforter off her face. “No,” she says stubbornly. “I want to know where he went.”
“And there’s a way to go about doing that.” Ava is incredibly patient. Hazel knows she’s lucky to have her as a friend, but sometimes, she just wants to throw all rational thinking out the door and act on instinct.
