“Wait, wait, hold on one flaming-ass second!” I get off the edge. “You’re telling me your boyfriend kissed me?”
“I don’t know, did he?” She cocks her head to the side. “I trust Avery’s word, even if she is unforgiveable, but I trust your memory more. You should try to get it back. Then we’d both know the truth.”
“If he kissed me, you should…you should just break up with him! He’s a scumbag! And don’t even talk to me again. I’m even more of a scumbag.”
Sophia laughs, and gets off the edge, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. How could you know he had me? You were new, and he doesn’t talk about me a lot.”
My skull suddenly throbs, the pain imploding along my forehead. I gasp and massage my temples as a jumble of memories come flooding back. Jack’s face, going soft when he talked about Sophia. A cigar box. A letter with her signature. His anger at me for snooping and trying to get to know Sophia - so palpable and cold I felt frozen down to my lungs. Something that happened in middle school. A baseball bat. A kiss. Someone kissing me (Jack?), and the realization he had Sophia ringing through my head the entire time.
“Are you okay, Isis?” Sophia asks gently. I grip her hand and clasp its slender frailness between one of my own.
“He talked about you,” I say. “I remember now. Jesus, he didn’t talk a lot about you, but when he did…he was so overprotective. So thorny. He wanted to make sure no one hurt you. He wanted to – he wanted to keep you safe. Once, I tried to read a letter by you, I mean, I broke into his house to do it, but it was with good intentions, I promise. He keeps them all in his Dad’s cigar box in the dresser. They’re all neat and you can tell he – he cares for those letters more than his life. And he found me reading one, and he was so mad, I thought he was going to literally axe me. Axe me a question. And that question was ‘do you want to die quickly or slowly’.”
Sophia’s face flares pink, and she looks at the ground.
“He loves you, Sophia,” I say slowly. “Don’t ever doubt that. I mean, I can’t remember most of him, but there’s a sliver of him I remember now, and my gut tells me he loves you, without a single fricking doubt. My gut isn’t wrong. Except when it has diarrhea. Then it is very, very wrong.”
Sophia looks up, her deep blue eyes welling with the softest of tears. She chokes back a laugh.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you – or anyone. I just…sometimes I’ve been with him for so long, it feels like I can’t tell anymore. And ever since you transferred to his school, his letters –”
She looks my face over, like she’s searching for something in my expression. Then she shakes her head.
“I’m sorry. Nevermind. Thank you.”
Before I can say anything more stupid, she walks through the door and takes the steps two at a time, leaving me to the wind and the birds.
I look down at my hands. The memories were so vivid. The smell of stir-fry Jack made. His mother’s face, his mother’s painting. Their dog, Darth Vader. Jack’s room – the smell of sleep and boy and honey and mint, a smell so familiar it comforts me.
Comforts?
I make a face and throw that trash-thought in the brain-trash. The dude is clearly an ass**le. He kissed me when he had a girlfriend! Me! I’m not even kiss-worthy! Not compared to someone like Sophia. He had Sophia and he kissed me, so he clearly must be a blind idiot as well as an ass**le.
I take the stairs two at a time. I don’t see Sophia anywhere in the lobby, so I go back to my room, turning over the semi-what-the-fuckery I’d just encountered. The memory of that Jack-smell hits me again when I turn a corner for no reason. I furiously shake my head. Nu-uh. Whatever I had with him is over. As soon as I find out the details, the past is going in a vault and never coming out again. Sophia is too nice. And she’s my friend. Sort of.
And Jack is the only thing she has left.
“Besides, I don’t even like him. I don’t even know him. How can you like a carbon-based cootie-machine?”
“Who’s a carbon-based what?”
I look up to see Wren standing by my bedside, holding a stack of papers. His green eyes shine behind his horn-rimmed glasses, his floppy hair even floppier. The second I register it’s him I open my arms and run towards him, but when I spot the papers are math worksheets, I back up to the wall.
“What are those?” I whisper accusingly. He blinks.
“Your make-up work for Algebra II?”
I hiss and arch my back. Wren sighs and puts the papers on my bedside table next to a vase of wilted sunflowers my mom got me.
“You have to do them sometime if you wanna graduate with the rest of us.”
“Yes well, in case you haven’t been paying attention I’m not one to follow the conventional traditions of the masses. Also, there are roughly four hundred people in our graduating class and I like maybe three. You being one. Kayla being the other.”
Wren looks expectantly at me.
“And Knife-guy.”
He exhales. “Still not fully recovered, I see.”
“Actually! I am. So now I can ask you!” I grab his collar. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jack?”
Shock paralyzes his face for a second.
“You seemed sort of traumatized, Isis! How could I tell you when you were lying in bed with that huge blood-stained bandage around your head? I was just happy you were alive! We all were!”
“Yes, I appreciate being alive and well and all, except you forgot the I-love-my-brain-and-would-like-to-know-what’s-going-on-with-it-at-all-times-jerkwad part!”
“Look, I’m sorry, alright?”
I back up. Wren takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes.
“It’s my fault. I’m…wary of girls in fragile states. I don’t know how to help them. I’ve never known how to help them. All I do is hurt them. And with Sophia here in this hospital too, I’ve just been on eggshells. I’m sorry. I was wrapped up in my own head, and I forgot about you.”
I feel the anger drain out of my body when Wren grins sheepishly.
“You’ve really…I haven’t told you how much you’ve helped me. But you have. You really have. Before you came, I just stayed friends with people on the surface. I didn’t feel comfortable getting to know people for who they really were. I was fine with them just liking me superficially. But then you – I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. So I didn’t tell you. I should’ve. I’m sorry.”
There’s a terse quiet. Finally, I lightly punch him. In the ear.
“C’mere, you piece of shit!” I yank his head under my arm and noogie him. “You think you’re so cool, worrying about everyone else like a dumb worry warty ass. I’ll show you –”
“Ahem.”
I look up. Sophia stands there. Wren goes white down to his roots and pulls out of my headlock all in a split second.
“S-Sophia,” He stammers.
“Wren.” She smiles. “It’s good to see you. Tallie misses you. So do I. But Tallie misses you the most.”
Wren’s white face gets green-tinged as he struggles to speak.
“I’ve been…busy.”