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Chapter17
Itore my body away from Nicole despite the pain that threatened to blind me every time I jostled my wrist.
“Let go,” I said, grunting against her grasp.
Nicole growled. “What is wrong with you? I’m trying to help you!”
I collapsed on the ground after pulling hard enough away from her arms.
“Fine, you know what. Act crazy,” she hissed under her breath.
Causing a scene didn’t fit with Nicole’s style…hell, it didn’t fit with mine. But if I walked any farther away from the spot where I fell, it’d be impossible to find what I was looking for again.
And what are you looking for Cora?a prissy voice chided in the back of my mind.
I didn’t need a delusion, I needed something real. And I hadn’t imagined it. I couldn’t have.
“What’s going on in there?” a man’s voice bellowed, echoing into the cell around us.
That was when I realized that maybe Nicole’s hissing had nothing to do with drawing attention and everything to do with her having heard a commotion coming from the guards and didn’t want to be associated with me.
“I tripped, that’s all,” I shouted out, raising my arm up in the air.
The guard spit on the ground. “Keep your mouths shut.” He slammed his hands against the cell bars, startling some of the newbies. “And watch your step, you filthy feeder.”
I grimaced at the derogatory way he threw the insult out. Not that the words meant much to me, but the tone was enough.
A few of the others inside the cell watched me, eyeing me like they were trying to place me. It amazed me that I worked in the same place as all of my fellow cell mates and yet had no idea who most of these women and men were.
I crawled forward with my wrist tucked against my body as tightly as I could manage. I winced and inhaled sharply as I positioned myself on my knees and inched forward slowly, running my good hand around on the cool stone ground.
“Cora,” Nicole’s voice barked from above me. “What is wrong with you? You snapped your wrist, get up and breathe for a sec, won’t ya?”
I shook my head fiercely. I realized that I probably looked insane what with the lack of amenities like a shower or even a comb down here. Crawling around on my knees with a limp arm tucked to my chest would lead most to believe I’d snapped.
“When I tripped, something moved,” I said, nodding excitedly as if that would make Nicole look at me less like I was crazy. “Nicole, a stone moved.”
“Probably a pebble, Cora. And you’re going to injure yourself more.” She crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. She was calculating something, maybe whether to encourage me or not, but I didn’t care.
I scooted around on the floor again, running my hand around the stones more and more frantically. “It was enough to trip me up. It wouldn’t be a pebble. And I’m going to take anything I can get at the moment.”
“Of all the stupid people to spend time with here, I picked you,” Nicole’s grumbling continued, and she called me stupid a few more times. But she was down on her knees joining me in the next moment, using both of her hands to feel around on the floor.
“What are they doing?”
“Come to the other side.”
The others, who either weren’t paying attention to my explanation to Nicole or who didn’t care about loose stones, were murmuring about me.
But again, I didn’t care.
Keep looking, I told myself. There’s something here.
I must have fallen right here though. And nothing. I moved my head back and forth attempting to estimate where I’d actually tumbled versus where I’d been moved to as I fought against Nicole’s efforts to help me up.
I sighed and leaned forward, reaching out slightly farther and slowly scooting my knees along to catch up.
My hand banged into a loose, solid stone.
