Part 23 (2/2)

A syringe, a stethoscope, and electrocardiograph displays in a white room that smells of loss and antiseptic.

These things happen.

And then . . .

C H A P T E R S E V E N.

Snakes and Ladders I'm going to fall forever, Daria thinks. I'm never going to hit the water, but then she does, and it's like hitting a brick wall. Not what she expected, but then few things ever are, and at least the pain only lasts an instant, less than an instant, as the cold waters of the bay close mercifully around her shattered bones and bruised flesh, accepting her, promising that there's nothing left to fear. Nothing ahead that's half so terrible as all the trials laid out behind her; she wants to believe that more than she's ever wanted to believe anything.

And she's certain this is real, because no one ever dies in dreams. If it were only a dream, she thinks, she'd have awakened in that final, irredeemable second before the long fall ended. That's what she's always heard, and she's never died in a dream. No one dies in dreams.

In another moment, you will not even feel the cold, the ocean whispers, as the southbound currents wrap kelp-slick tendrils about her broken legs and pull her down and down and down. Drawing her towards the black and silty bottom, away from the comfortless oyster light of the moon s.h.i.+ning so bright that she can still see it through the s.h.i.+mmering, retreating surface of the bay.

The light at the end of the tunnel, near-death or afterlife cliche, but she has no use for light anymore, and she's 210 grateful that soon the moon and the sun and all light will be lost to her forever.

Was it like this for you? she asks, and the shadows swarming thick through the water around her sigh and murmur a thousand conflicting answers. So she takes her pick, choosing at random because she can't imagine that choices still matter. No, Niki whispers. It's different for everyone.

Daria stares up at the rippling moon growing small, hardly a decent saucer now when a moment ago it was a dinner plate, and she tries hard to remember if she's sinking or rising, if she's getting farther from the moon or it's getting farther away from her. That doesn't matter, either, the bay rea.s.sures her. Don't even think about it, and so she doesn't. She can see the inky cloud of blood leading back the way she's come, a blood road back to the moon, but Daria knows the bay will take care of that, as well, and soon there will be no evidence whatsoever of her pa.s.sage.

A loose school of surfperch sweep hurriedly past, their mirror scales flas.h.i.+ng the moonlight because they have no light of their own, and Daria knows exactly how that feels.

Never any light but what she stole, never her own soul for a lantern, but only for cloudy days and shuttered rooms, closets and nights without stars.

That girl in Florida, the moon calls down to her with its silken, accusing voice. Old Becky What's-her-name. You think that's the way she felt? You think that's what she heard when she listened to your songs? And then it begins to whistle the melody of ”Seldom Seen.”

You leave me alone, Daria calls back at the moon. I'm going down to Niki. It's not my problem anymore.

The moon stops whistling, and Ohhh, it purrs, pretending to sound surprised. Was it ever? Weren't you the lady that couldn't be bothered?

Don't start listening to that old wh.o.r.e, the bay whispers.

She steals her light, too, just the same as you and those fish.

And the water presses in on her, something that would hurt if she could still feel pain, an unfelt agony of pressure 211.

stacking up above, pounds and anamnesis per square inch, and maybe it will finally crush her so flat that the moon won't be able to see her, and she won't have to listen to it, won't have to think about all the questions she's never known the answers to. There's a final rush of air from her deflating lungs, and she watches indifferently as the bubbles rise (or fall) like the bells of escaping jellyfish.

You can't follow me, Niki says, her voice drifting up from some place so deep and black that Daria has never even dared imagine it, some endless, muddy plain where there's only night that runs on forever in all directions. A silent wilderness of fins and spines and the stinging tentacles of blind things, the rotting steel and wooden husks of drowned s.h.i.+ps, and countless suicide ghosts mired in the ooze and labyrinths of their own condemning thoughts.

You can't stop me, Daria tells her.

It's all a dream, Daria. It's only a bad dream.

And now there's something floating towards her, a paler sc.r.a.p of night dividing itself from the greater darkness, and at first she thinks it's only a curious seal or maybe, if she's very lucky, a shark come along to finish what she's started.

But then she can make out Niki's face, the empty sockets that were her eyes before the hungry jaws of fish, her hair like seaweed strands swaying gently about her gray and swollen cheeks.

Not what you think, Niki mumbles, her clay-blue lips and a flat gleam of beach-gla.s.s teeth; where her tongue should be there are only the nervous coils of a tiny octopus nestled in her mouth. You can't find me here. I didn't mean for you to follow. Then the tattered girl holds out her right hand, and the ball bearing glimmers faintly in her ruined palm.

I'll never find it, Daria thinks. Not after ten years. I'll never find it again.

Not if you don't try, the octopus in Niki's mouth replies, and then her body comes apart like sugar in a cup of tea, dissolving back into the night and the bay, and Daria is alone again. She tries to remember a prayer she knew ages 212 and ages ago, when she was a child and still thought someone might be listening, but suddenly her memories seem as insubstantial as the vision of Niki, and the fleeting, slippery words remain always just beyond her reach.

And the moon is growing larger again.

And has turned the color of a drowned girl's skin.

Daria opens her eyes and blinks at the warm late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the hospital room's window, a pale yellow-orange wash across the rumpled white sheets of her bed. The window frames a western sky that is broad and turning brilliant sunset shades of violet and apricot. And the dream is right there behind her, still close enough that she thinks it might continue if she'd only shut her eyes again and let it. Right there, so at least she's spared any sudden, startling disappointments when she remembers exactly where she is, and what's happened to Niki, and why Alex is sitting here watching her and trying too hard not to look worried.

”Hey you,” he says, and there's the faintest suggestion of a smile to warp the corners of his mouth, but the smile gives up and becomes something else.

”f.u.c.k,” Daria whispers, and turns away from the window and Alex Singer and the setting sun.

”Would you like some water?”

”Unless you've got vodka,” she replies, and licks at her chapped lips, her throat so dry it hurts, and she lies still and listens to the sound of him pouring water from a plastic pitcher into a paper cup.

”I talked to Marvin again,” he says. ”He rang, just before you woke up,” and Alex holds the cup to her lips and supports her head. She only drinks a little, because it's warm and tastes like chlorine, then pushes his hand away, and he sets the cup down next to the blue pitcher on the table beside the bed. He presses one hand against her forehead like someone checking to see if she has a fever.

”I don't want to start crying again,” she says.

”I know, love. I know you don't.”

213.

”I told her I was coming, didn't I? I f.u.c.king told her I was on my way,” and Daria stares at the IV tube rising from the soft inside of her left elbow, a couple of strips of tape to hide the needle, to hold it in place, and she lets her eyes follow the tube up to the bag of clear fluid suspended from a metal hook beside the bed. ”When are they going to stop pumping me full of that s.h.i.+t?” she asks Alex, and nods at the IV bag.

”I don't know. You were awfully dehydrated.”

”Alex, you were sitting right there. You heard me tell her I was coming home. I know you heard me.”

”Yeah,” he says, ”I did. I heard everything you said,” and then he moves his hand from Daria's forehead to her right cheek. His skin feels cool and dry and familiar, his rough fingers to remind her of so many things at once, things that didn't die with Niki, and she turns away from the IV bag and looks up into his gray eyes, instead. Those eyes the first part of Alex Singer that she fell in love with, even before his music, eyes like smoke and steel, and she knows that she's going to start crying again, and there's nothing she can do to stop it.

”You can't start blaming yourself for this.”

”Yes, I can,” she says, and the tears cloud her vision and leak from the corners of her eyes. ”I left her there. She begged me not to go and I went anyway.”

”You did what you had to do. Niki was very sick, and you did everything you could to keep her safe. You p.i.s.sed away the last ten years of your life trying to keep Niki safe, and it's almost killed you.”

”No, that's not true. I didn't do everything. I was always too afraid to listen-”

”Stop it,” Alex says, pulling his hand away, and he takes a quick step back from the edge of the bed. The anger in his voice like straight razors beneath worn velvet, and his gray irises spark with something that Daria doesn't want to see, not now or ever, so she closes her eyes. She tries to wish herself into the dream again, down to the freezing, silent wastes where no one will ever find her, that night 214 without mornings or horizons and only the blind, indifferent fish and Niki's fraying ghost for company. But it's deserted her, left her stranded here in this white antiseptic place choked with sunlight and people determined to keep her alive.

”You almost died on that G.o.dd.a.m.n plane,” Alex says.

”You heard what the doctor said. Your f.u.c.king heart stopped beating, and you were real f.u.c.king lucky that they didn't have to take you straight from the b.l.o.o.d.y airport to the morgue.”

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