Part 24 (1/2)

”She's dead, Alex.”

”Yeah, Daria, she's dead. She jumped off a f.u.c.king bridge, and if you'd been there maybe it wouldn't have happened, maybe she wouldn't have killed herself until next month, but you weren't there, and now she's dead, and that's something you're going to have to find a way to get through.”

”You're a son of a b.i.t.c.h,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut tighter, tasting her own hot tears leaking into her mouth, salt and snot and stingy drops of herself her body can't spare. Alex has started tapping his fingers hard against the side of the bed or the table with the blue pitcher, and she wants to scream at him to stop, to f.u.c.k off and let her be alone.

”Right. Maybe that's exactly what I am,” and Daria thinks he doesn't sound half so angry as he did a moment before, that he sounds more like someone who only wishes he could stop talking before he makes things worse. ”Maybe I'm a son of a b.i.t.c.h, and I'm sorry as h.e.l.l about what happened to Niki. But you didn't kill her and I'm not going to let you lie there and convince yourself that you did.”

”You don't know,” she says. ”You don't have any idea,”

and she opens her eyes, is about to tell him to please stop tapping his f.u.c.king fingers when she sees the white bird perched on the windowsill. It pecks at the gla.s.s with its beak, three times in quick succession, tap-tap-tap, then stares at her through the gla.s.s, its tiny, keen eyes the color of poisonous berries.

215.

Do not fail her.

The Hierophant will need you, at the end.

”Oh G.o.d,” she whispers. ”Turn around. Turn around and tell me that you see it, too.”

Alex doesn't turn around, but he glances over his left shoulder and then back at her, and she can tell from his expression that he doesn't see the white bird, that he doesn't see anything there at all.

”What is it?” he asks. ”What do you see?” and How am I supposed to pretend there's nothing there? she thinks, unable to take her eyes off the white bird. How can I pretend there's nothing, when it's right there, looking in at me?

”Daria, tell me what's wrong.”

”A bird,” she says, ”a white bird,” and he glances at the window again.

”I don't see a bird. I don't see anything.”

”I know,” she whispers, and the bird pecks at the gla.s.s.

Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

”I saw it on the plane, after Niki came to me, right after the pain started.”

Alex rubs at his furrowed eyebrows and sighs. ”That was a dream. You know that was a dream. I heard you tell the doctor-”

”Maybe I only thought it was a dream,” she says and wipes her nose with the back of her hand, speaking as softly as she can because she's afraid of frightening the bird away. Or she's afraid it will hear her, and she's not sure which. ”Maybe I was wrong.”

”There's nothing out there, Daria,” and he turns and walks across the room to the big windowpane, stands silhouetted against the garish Colorado sunset and raps hard on the gla.s.s with his knuckles. The white bird doesn't fly off, but it glares up at him and ruffles its feathers.

”What if you're not supposed to see it?” she asks, and the bird looks away from Alex and goes back to watching her. ”Maybe it's only here for me, so I'm the only one who can see it.”

Tap-tap-tap.

216.

”Jesus, it's right there.”

”Screw this,” Alex mutters. ”I'm going to get a nurse,”

and he starts for the door, but she yells at him to stop. On the windowsill, the bird blinks its red eyes and c.o.c.ks its head to one side.

”You're sick, and you're very tired,” he says, and she can hear the strained, brittle force in his voice, a thin disguise for exasperation and his own fatigue; he shakes his head and rubs at his eyebrows again. ”You're hallucinating. It might be a reaction to the medication, or even DTs.”

”I don't have the f.u.c.king DTs.”

”How the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l do you know that? You're an alcoholic, and you haven't been really sober since G.o.d wore diapers. How long's it been since you had a drink? h.e.l.l, must be coming up on at least ten or eleven hours now, right?”

”Alex, I'd know if it was DTs.”

”No, you wouldn't. That's why they call it bleeding delirium.”

Daria looks back at the window, and the white bird is still there, head c.o.c.ked, its white feathers tinted ruddy by the fading day, its eyes so fiercely intent she knows that she'd go blind if she stared into them too long. And maybe, she thinks, she has gone crazy, and that's her punishment for all the years she spent denying the things she saw in Birmingham, that terrible, impossible night in Spyder Baxter's old house on Cullom Street. Her punishment for the lies she told Marvin and Dr. Dalby, for the way she treated Niki, and it would serve her right if she spends the rest of her life locked up somewhere, babbling about white birds and ghosts and the nightmares she's kept secret for almost a decade.

”If you get a nurse, I'll just say I didn't see it. I'll tell them I don't know what you're talking about.”

”If it's a reaction to the medication-”

”Then I'll get better, or it'll kill me. Right now, I don't really care, either way.”

The bird taps impatiently, insistently, at the gla.s.s, and 217.

Daria shuts her eyes, trying to remember everything that Niki said to her on the plane. All the parts she's already told the doctors, because they wanted to know everything that happened to her, everything she felt, and all the parts she held back. Niki in her blue coat, asking her to make promises she couldn't keep, Niki frightened and desperate and rambling on and on about breakfast at a truck stop with jackalopes and something that she'd buried in the ground on a cold December morning ten years before.

”I don't care what you tell them,” Alex says. ”You can tell them the Pope's joined the bleeding C of E for all I care, but I'm going to get a nurse.”

”Fine,” Daria replies. ”It's just as well,” and she peels the two strips of tape off her skin and yanks the IV from her arm. There's only a little blood, not as much as she expected, and the trickle of saline from the hollow stainless-steel needle.

”What the f.u.c.k do you think you're doing now?” Alex demands, and the bird caws and taps approvingly at the thick gla.s.s.

”I'm getting out of here. So you go and find that nurse.

Or a doctor. I'm sure there's going to be an a.s.sload of pa-perwork.”

”b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. You had a G.o.dd.a.m.n heart attack. You're not going anywhere until-”

”I don't believe that you or anyone else can stop me. Not unless the laws in Colorado are a h.e.l.l of a lot different from the laws in California, and I don't think they are.

Where did they put my clothes?” And Daria sits up, one hand covering the puncture in her left arm, and she swings her legs over the side of the bed. But then her stomach rolls and her head spins, and she has to sit still and wait for the dizziness and nausea to pa.s.s. From the window, the white bird spreads its wings wide, flaps them a few times, then starts pecking at the gla.s.s again.

”Look at you. You can hardly sit up straight, and you think you're well enough to leave.”

”I don't know whether or not I'm well enough to leave.

218.

I just know there's something I have to do, something for Niki, and I can't do it lying here.”

”Niki is dead, ” Alex growls, and then he's standing directly in front of her, his strong hands on her shoulders like he means to hold her down if that's what it takes. ”There's nothing else you can do for Niki. Right now, the only person you have any chance of helping is yourself.”