The Freaks

chapter four

"Serena—wait!" I say loudly as she passes the doorframe. She stops and doesn't bother to hide her smile as she turns back around to face me. I breathe in deeply and fight off my own smile as I say, "Will you please help me clean up my wounds?"

She comes back into the room, closing the door behind her. "Since you asked so nicely." She lightly moves me out of the way when she reaches my bed, crouching down to pull a box from under the frame. She heaves the thing onto my mattress, sitting on the edge of the bed. She taps the covers twice and says, "Let's get started."

I watch as she removes the items from the medium-sized box as I sit down, placing them between us on the bed. "Why don't you use your power to do all this?" I ask as she drops the medical stuff with her hands. "It would be so much easier."

She doesn't really look up at me, but I can tell she heard my words. She furrows her brows like she's trying to figure out why she isn't using something of hers that's so helpful. But then her face relaxes as she says, "I only use it when necessary." She lifts one side of her mouth as she raises her head to look at me. "The power tends to drain my energy a lot."

I always feel the same way. It mostly drains my energy when I use my original ability. I felt like I could have just dropped onto the floor after Nox shared his ability with me. In fact, now that I think about it, I hardly saw the Freaks use their abilities when I first arrived here, except the few in the main room. It must affect them like it does us.

I want to ask Serena if they have any healers around, so she wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of cleaning it, but I stop myself. To have the ability to heal is very rare. In all the time I've been a Freak—six years to be exact—I have never met a Freak with the ability to heal wounds. To heal, full stop. They are not the norm around here.

So I keep my mouth shut and continue to watch Serena. She raises her head again when she is finished but doesn't smile. "Do you happen to be wearing trousers under that uniform, by any chance?" she asks, her eyes trying to fight off an emotion I can't quite place.

I look down cringe at the memory of the Soldiers forcing me to change into this uncomfortable piece of clothing. "No, just my boxers," I reply quietly.

Her shoulder slump, but the emotion in her eyes doesn't disappear. "Yeah, I was afraid of that." She bites her lower lip in concentration as she looks at the uniform, finally settling on a solution as she says, "Okay—instead, just unbutton the top half and roll the sleeves down your shoulders."

I do as she says, fiddling with the medium-sized buttons until I reach my waist, shrugging the tacky material away from my skin, over my shoulders and down my arms. With the material bunch up around my waist, I immediately turn around, exposing my scarred back to Serena, even though I have a continuous itching feeling of needing to keep them hidden forever.

I carefully turn my head to look over my shoulder at her, listening to what she's doing. "How do you know what to do with this stuff?" I ask to distract my mind, nodding down at the medical supplies, the only things separating us.

I can tell she doesn't look up at me, because her next words are directed at the bed. Quiet. "My mum was a nurse before all of the radiation took over. She would treat people with burn marks along their skin almost every day since it started..." Her voice trails off for a moment, the words lying heavy between us. "She used to teach me how to wrap wounds and clean cuts—nothing major. Just the easier stuff."

I slowly turn around to face her, my eyes searching around her face until she decides to look up at me. "You miss her," I say quietly.

She nods her head, something shining in her eyes as she presses her lips together tightly. "Every minute of every day."