Jenn
I couldn't believe, as I watched Kim's girlfriend - fiancée, whatever - walk out of the precinct, that Kim didn't follow. I couldn't conceive how you could say you loved someone, talk about marrying someone, and then let her walk away when she's standing there telling you that she's ready to be put first.
Grace had never been first for Kim, but until now, she'd been able to settle for second. And Kim didn't seem ready to move her up the list any time soon.
"Are you going to go after her?" I questioned in total disbelief.
"I'm going to let her cool off."
"You're making it worse. She wants your attention and you're still refusing to give it to her."
"She's not the victim this time around, Carver. Everyone's at fault."
"It doesn't matter if she's the victim. She's your fiancée."
"You're making it sound like she's yours."
I sighed heavily, and deciding that at least someone had to do the right thing in this situation, I followed Grace out the door. Kim didn't try to stop me, not that I hadn't expected as much.
"Hey," I tried saying once I was outside and getting rained on. "She really does love you, you know."
"I'm sick of being played, Jennifer," she said. "I've been competing with her for the past two years, and I will be for the rest of my life."
"With Kim?"
"With Carrie."
I laughed slightly because I didn't know what else to do. "We're all competing with Carrie, but she's generally harmless."
"Harmless?"
"Well, you know, she has her days, but..."
"She tore apart my relationship once, and now I wonder every single day if she's going to do it again. That's not healthy, Jenn."
"Tore it apart?"
"You don't know?"
My blank expression was answer enough.
"Oh my God," she said, completely incredulously. "She never told you."
"Told me what?"
Her face read indignation, like her words were some last ditch attempt to hurt Kim, or maybe to hurt Carrie, the way they both had offended her. When she spoke, she spoke quickly, sharply, like she had to get them out fast or she'd lose the nerve.
"They used to sleep together."
I felt like all at once all the air outside had been taken away and I had to find some alternate way to breathe. The previous night I'd fractured bones and this still hit me harder.
"At least for you it was before you were in the picture," she continued. "I'd already fallen in love with Kim when she decided she'd rather be with her."
"She chose you," I tried justifying.
"She chose me out loud," she corrected. "Inside, she chose Carrie the day they met. And I've known that for a long time, and I've just been telling myself that I'd won. But I never did."
"Grace..."
"So that show I just put on in there? I hope you understand where it came from. I don't like to fight with her, but I can't help myself. When you're face to face with the person who has the only thing you ever really wanted, it's a little bit difficult to try to make friends."
"She wasn't doing her part either," I felt the need to apologize for the woman who was no longer considered my girlfriend.
"What is it about her?"
"I...what?"
"What does she do? What's her appeal? This hold that she has on Kim, and that she has on you, where does it come from?"
I laughed slightly, and given my fresh wounds related to the subject, took the easy way out with the simple answer.
"Do you have eyes?"
"That's not it," she challenged.
"I know," I agreed. "But look, Grace, I know she seems like she has it all together, but Carrie isn't a god. A demigod, maybe, but..."
"Not helping."
"She has problems, just like you," I tried. "In a lot of ways she's broken inside, and when it comes down to it, she's not out to ruin your day, or your marriage, or your life. What she's not advertising is that when she snaps at you, it's because she's tired and she's jaded and she's too old and too smart to pretend to give a damn when she doesn't. She's not trying to be your friend or your enemy. At the end of the day she's just trying to put bad guys in jail and make the streets safer. So you have to bear with her because she is a good person, if a little too blunt. I know that's not exactly the answer you wanted, but I'm trying to be objective here."
She threw her head back, indicating that this was indeed not the answer she was looking for.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You can do what I've done for the past year and continue handing out chances," I suggested. "Or you can do what I did earlier this week and decide that the chances are up. But if you're going to walk out, you know, you should do it in, like, a fiery blaze of break-up. Just saying."
"I can't," she said. "I love her."
I nodded profoundly as the rain finally started to let up.
"I know the feeling," I said.
***
Carrie
It fell dreadfully silent as I stood in that squad room alone with Kim and her partner who was trying hard not to laugh, harder than he'd ever tried at anything in his life, I was sure. Kim looked defeatedly at the door, then back at me, then finally at the floor, and just exhaled, which pretty much said it all.
I looked awkwardly at the ceiling. I didn't feel bad and I had no reason to. Grace had come out swinging at me and I'd held my ground, and really, what else could Kim expect of me? I just really didn't want to be berated, not by Kim, not again, and I knew it was a bright and shining possibility, given the fact that Grace was so feeble and ostensibly defenseless that she could make any dispute look like an attack on herself.
The silence was doing an adequate job of speaking for itself until Clapp lost his capacity to stifle his amusement and began to give this quiet, half-suppressed laugh that became the only noise in the room.
"Something to say, Detective?" I finally said, becoming the first one with the balls to speak.
After that he didn't bother trying to hide it and instead broke into laughter as he repeated, "What was your college major?"
I shut my eyes in a God-give-me-the-strength expression when, belying her vexation toward the both of us, Kim started to laugh too.
"Doesn't she know better than to pick a fight with a lawyer?"
"Don't make me comment on that."
"What am I going to do?" she wondered out loud. "We live together and she's pissed at me."
"You're on round-the-clock," I reminded her. "Give her some space."
"Okay, what about tomorrow, when Griffin gets his mind back and sends us home?"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "Give her the apartment, and you can stay at mine."
"Yeah, that's a great idea."
"Hey," I shrugged. "It's my birthday."
***
Kim
I think that no matter how much we complain about getting old, we all secretly like our birthdays deep down because, when all is said and done, it's a day that's all about you, and that's pretty great. So we all pretend not to like the attention, not to like getting older, not to want the gifts and the parties, but I could never fully believe people when they said they didn't like their birthdays.
The exception to that rule was Carrie.
Carrie wanted nothing to do with her birthday because she had no need for one. Carrie had no need to set a day aside to be all about her, because every day was all about her. The words "because it's my birthday" carried no weight because she could just as easily say "because I said so" and it worked just as well. It was the age old question of how she had so much power and entitlement and didn't even see it as an anomaly. But she really was just getting older, and there's nothing particularly fun about that. Not when you're in your thirties.
I called anyway. She answered several rings in.
"Don't say it."
"Say what?"
"Don't mention my birthday."
"Oh shit. It's your birthday?"
"I abhor you."
"I adore you too, Car. What are we doing tonight?"
"We?"
"Am I not invited?"
"Okay, sure. You're invited. I hope you like drafting motions."
"Is that how you're celebrating with your lawyer friends?"
"No," she said very seriously. "My lawyer friends actually listen when I tell them that I firmly wish to pretend that it's not my birthday. My lawyer friends respect me."
"I respect you," I pledged. "I just don't care what you have to say."
She sighed, audibly.
"Drinks after work," I tried.
"Kimberly," she said flatly. "You and I both know that drinks after work are a bad idea for us."
"What harm can a couple drinks do?"
"A lot of things can happen after a couple drinks," she said. "We happened after a couple drinks."
"We can behave."
"Last time," she had to remind me. "We couldn't."
"Last time I wasn't engaged."
"Are you still engaged?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "I think so. But Grace has kicked me out of the apartment for the time being, so I guess we'll see how it shapes up."
"Well if you do make it to the altar and this repeats itself several weeks down the road," she suggested, "My sister is a fantastic divorce attorney. She can make sure you keep the apartment next time."
"She'd make a better divorcée," I said under my breath, though I could have said it out loud and Carrie would have agreed. "Anyway, I don't think Grace has any legitimate ties to the apartment. She just thinks she's entitled to take custody of it because the fight was my fault. It's not legal logic or anything, just girl logic."
"The fight wasn't your fault," Carrie tried. "It was my fault. Well, okay, it was her fault, but if we're competing for second place, that title belongs to me. Not to you."
"Well, not to her. She has her own account of how things went down. You know what goes on in her mind."
"I sure do," she said. "Nothing."
"Car--"
"Don't say my name in a disapproving voice like you always do," she cut me off. "It's my birthday."
"You're allowed to make fun of Grace three more times before your birthday's out, then you're cut off."
"But you're mad at her," she complained. "It should at least be five."
"I'm not mad."
"You're getting good at that line," she noticed. "You'll make a great wife."
"You're already good at that line," I quipped. "What does that make you?"
"A fantastic liar," she said. "Which also makes me a fantastic attorney. Is the ME's report back on Saenz?"
"Well, with one detective too beat up to do anything but paper work and phone calls, you'll have to ask Carver," I said. "Which means you'll have to speak to--"
"I know what it--"
"I don't want to be the liaison."
"I didn't ask you to. I'm actually not thirteen anymore. I can handle getting along with someone I'm not seeing eye to eye with."
"Still, it has to be a little awkward. I mean it's one thing not seeing eye to eye, but you're also no longer seeing tongue to tongue."
"How would one see with--"
"Don't do this."
"Whatever," she withdrew. "Then I will see you at work."
"Are you going to call Carver?"
"Yes, Mom."
"Are you going to get your copy of the ME's report without fighting?"
"Kim," she said. "We're two professional women in our thirties. We can handle a legal transaction without a petty altercation."
"Okay," I said, only wishing I could believe her. "I'll see you at work."
***
Carrie
She was at my office, ME's report in tow, only moments after I'd arrived myself. So no points for rationality, but for punctuality, certainly. Anyway.
"Happy birthday," she said cordially.
"Thank you," I said in the name of being civil.
"All the results are in there, but it's pretty much what we thought," she said, handing me a beige envelope. "No injuries of a sexual nature, COD is blunt force trauma..."
"Yes, getting shot in the head at close range usually does induce death," I said, which was a normal comment for me, but given the way things were between us right now it probably wasn't too bright to revert to the usual sarcasm. I considered that reality too little too late.
"Anyway," she said, sounding a little frustrated. "That copy's yours. In case you need it for discovery."
"Everything's in here? Toxicology?"
"That's actually what I wanted to talk about. It was positive for benzoylmethylecogine."
"Okay," I said, wondering why she couldn't have just said it. "Crack."
"Most likely adulterated with levamisole and PHT."
"Okay," I said again. "Cheap crack."
"Yeah. I guess. But the ME says that the phenytoin used to cut the cocaine, which is pretty rare, by the way, could have led to PHT toxicity. She attributes the death to the shot, I mean, obviously, but the PHT could have caused tachycardia."
"But PHT treats arrythmia."
"In patients suffering from arrythmia," she reminded me. "Not necessarily in patients who are doing crack."
"Well, did he die of a heart attack?"
"The evidence is inconclusive."
"How is it--"
"Either one could have happened first."
"But wait," I said, though clearly no one was going anywhere. "Why cut crack with phenytoin? Isn't it a little difficult to get your hands on PHT? And it's not exactly cheap."
"I don't know," she said. "Bagley's going on day two with the neighbors, though, and I'm hoping they'll have some answers. Because to be honest, I've got nothing."
I leaned back in my chair, only able to think that this was too much thinking for seven in the morning.
"What a fucking mess," I admitted out loud.
"Mhm."
"Did the CSRU say anything of note?"
"The crime lab is still running tests," she said. "I've called a thousand times but they refuse to give anything up until they've done all their homework, I guess."
I quite audibly groaned in frustration. "I hate it when they keep things from us."
"Yeah," she said, her expression changing. "I hate that too."
Why the hell was she glaring at me like that?
"Am I missing something?"
"What?"
"Why do you look so pissed all of a sudden?"
She sighed. "I so hate that nothing gets past you."
"What are you--"
"Fine, you know what? I didn't want to do this here, not on your birthday, but it's killing me, so I just need to know."
"Oh God," I said. "This should be interesting."
"Why didn't you ever tell me you slept with Kim?"
I breathed out, as though I were deflating. Of all unexpected questions, that topped the list.
"Allow me to answer your question with a question," I said finally. "How did you find out that I slept with Kim?"
"Last night, Grace was really pissed off and she was complaining about how she always feels like she has to compete with you. Apparently, lo and behold, she really does."
Of course, I thought.
"I can always count on Grace."
"It's not her fault," Jennifer tried defending her. "She didn't know I didn't know, I mean, it's not like she planned this."
"Oh, no, of course not," I agreed. "She's mentally incapable of planning anything, except the shotgun wedding of her dreams."
"Can you answer my question now?"
"I'm sorry, I've lost focus. What was the question?"
"Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"Is that a serious question?"
"Yes," she persisted. "Why?"
I rolled my eyes. "You don't want to do this."
"I don't want to fight," she lied. "I just want answers."
"Answers to what? You want to know specifics? Should I walk you through it?"
"No," she said. "No. Please, no."
"Then what?"
"Why did you lie to me?"
"I never lied. I never once told you that we didn't have a history, and you never once asked."
"Because I trusted you, Carrie," she exclaimed, throwing her head back and looking to be on the verge of tears. "I thought I had a reasonable expectation that this wouldn't be the kind of thing you'd keep from me. I gave you two years. I thought there were no secrets."
"You're not being fair to me," I said calmly, which only made her more hysterical in turn.
"Not being fair? Me?"
"Yes," I said. "Think it through, Jennifer. There's not a person in this world that would want to date a woman who has a sexual history with her best friend. You wouldn't have stuck it out with me. It would have destroyed us. Look at them. Grace knew, and she can't be in the same room as the two of us without causing a scene. So yes, we hooked up, okay? But I want you to understand that if I were to advertise that on every first date, I'd be single for the rest of my life. Besides, I'd place money that there's something in the past two years that you've kept from me."
"You know I used to smoke?"
"Thank you," I said. "No. I didn't."
"I quit."
"I should hope so."
"It wasn't easy."
"So I hear," I said. "Where are you going with this?"
"For smoking now, they have the patches, and the gum, and all sorts of expensive therapy, right? But being addicted to something and trying to quit, it's like you're not allowed to drink water or breathe oxygen anymore, and that doesn't get easier. The only way I could quit was, every time I wanted to pick up a cigarette, I had to remember that I was killing myself. That this was something so bad for me, that it was such a risk to my health, and I had too much to lose. And then I would put it down, and that's how I quit."
I blinked several times. "Okay..."
"I just wish I could do the same with you. You keep hurting me, but I don't know how to quit you."
Were we really doing this?
"I think you did."
"No, I didn't. Even if I'm not calling myself your girlfriend anymore, I'm still letting myself get hurt, and I don't know why. I don't know how to stop feeling this way, but it's killing me."
I bit my lower lip, trying fruitlessly not to let my rage come through because I didn't want to stand here and cut her to shreds, not now, not here. For Christ's sake, it was my birthday, and I wasn't planning on the iconic Carrie-and-Jennifer blowout before I'd even finished my coffee. Even still, she infuriated me. And I wondered how we'd gotten to the point where every day, every damn day, we found a way to infuriate each other.
"Well I'm out of ideas," I finally said. "Do you know what it's like when apparently you're always doing something wrong? I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, I am always on your bad side. I'm always heartless, I'm always insensitive, and even when we're broken up, apparently I'm still subconsciously finding a way to hurt your poor feelings. Do you think I plot all day, sit there and conspire and think up grand schemes to upset you? Because this vision of me that you've drawn up recently, this fallacy in which I'm forever on the offensive and you're forever the martyr, I'm sorry, but it's all a pathetic, skewed delusion of grandeur."
She laughed then, completely mirthlessly, in disbelief. "You want to talk delusions of grandeur, Carrie?"
"Go ahead, pontificate about how I think I'm perfect," I said lifelessly. "That's one I've never heard before, it'll really hurt."
"Thinking you're perfect isn't the problem," she said quietly, standing up. "The problem is, you believe it so fully that you made me believe it too."
***
Kim
Despite her protests and her pragmatic suggestions against it, I picked Carrie up at nine. I was still in the doghouse with Grace, with whom I had barely spoken all day, but since we weren't speaking, I didn't have to explain my whereabouts, and that was quite the relief. It meant I didn't have to lie.
Though I had lied to Carrie and told her I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, when in reality I'd invited the entire sex crimes unit of the PD to meet us for drinks. At her behest, we were going somewhere upscale where you could actually hear your company speak, which was not my usual scene, but whatever. It wasn't my birthday. I'd even invited Carrie's intern along when I stopped by the DA's office the previous day. I didn't invite any of Carrie's fancy lawyer friends because I didn't know or like them. I'd have preferred to fill up a fancy tavern with decidedly un-fancy cops, so that's what we did. The only one I didn't invite was Carver because I had half a brain and didn't want gunfire on Carrie's birthday.
I parked at her apartment, the plan in place stating that we would walk over from there so that we wouldn't have to make the difficult decision of whether we were too inebriated to operate a motor vehicle, or discern which of us was a better drunk driver, or rack up DUI's as two respected law enforcers. I felt like I was her date for the night, waiting for her to come down the stairs for me to take her to the senior prom.
Carrie Chanel came out in one of her idiosyncratic little black dresses, of which I could have sworn she had an infinite supply. It seemed like if she wasn't at the office, she was wearing a black dress she'd never worn before, and the new one always fit her better and supplied more high-toned, classy sex appeal than the last. I knew I was one of the very few that was ever able to see her as a flawed human being and not an immortal - that club was a party of two whose only other member was Jenn Carver - but still, I admired her smooth ease and grace when she wasn't being a neurotic nutjob.
Of course that was only about twenty percent of the time. If I'm being generous.
I didn't want to tell her she looked fantastic because she already knew and she would have taken it the wrong way anyhow.
"You look," I'd begun before deciding against it. Instead, I settled on, "Classy."
"I am classy," she said.
"Okay," I said, pulling out of her building's lot. "I mean you could have just said thank you, but you know, whatever."
"It was implied."
"You're full of shit."
"Yeah, probably."
"Did Carver ever bring that report by?" I wondered out loud after several minutes of us bickering like children.
"And how," she said.
Her voice only said one thing to me; she'd broken her promise.
"Did you fight?" I asked, knowingly.
"Fight isn't the right word. But hey, when you see your wife again, make sure to thank her for me."
"She's not my wife," I unnecessarily corrected before realizing that wasn't the point. "Thank her for what?"
"Well, you see, after our little dispute last night, she must have realized that I really just need a little more fun in my life, so she was kind enough to let it slide to Jennifer that you and I used to fuck. Sweet, right? I swear, Kim, she used to be second on my hit list, but George W. Bush is just going to have to wait."
"Jesus Christ," I groaned. "She is going to be the death of me."
"Oh, yes, this is such an inconvenience to you. How about all the damage control I had to do explaining this one to Jennifer?"
"At least you were already on the outs," I threw out there.
"Yes, thank the powers that be that we're broken up," she said bitterly. "And yet here you are, still betrothed to a conniving, vindictive--"
"Alright, you're getting a little extreme."
"Am I?"
"She was hurt," I tried to rationalize. "She didn't know she was causing all that trouble."
"Kim, there are a lot of things she doesn't know, but that wasn't one of them."
"Okay, that's one," I reminded her. "You have two more shots at her before midnight."
"She's unbelievable," Carrie continued to fume. "Really, truly, unbelievable."
"She made a mistake."
"You're indiscriminate!"
"And you're pedantic," I pointed out. "See, I can use big words too."
"I'm not a pedant."
"Really? It's enamored of."
"My seven year old niece knows what preposition to use with the word enamored."
"Your seven year old niece was raised by wolves."
"High-brow wolves."
"Your point?"
"I've forgotten it. I'm ready to drink."
"I hope you don't mind," I said as we approached the destination. "I invited the guys."
"The guys?"
"You know, your real friends."
She blinked twice. "Right."
"I also invited Maggie."
"Who?"
"Your intern."
"My intern?"
"Maggie."
"Margaret."
"She prefers Maggie."
"You don't know her," she said haughtily. "And I trained her to hate you."
"To hate me? What did I ever do to you?"
"Again, I've forgotten. I was mad about something. And this was even before your wife ruined my life."
"She's not my wife and she didn't ruin your life."
When we walked in, the whole GFPD was seated at a round booth - Clapp seated cozily next to Maggie, true to form.
"Matthew," I said, taking a seat next to Carrie. "Step away from the underage girl."
She laughed, throwing a package of pens at Carrie for reasons unbeknownst to me. "I'm twenty five. Happy birthday, Carrie."
"It's not my birthday," she reminded us all. "But I'm touched that you remembered."
"Happy Thursday," Maggie amended. "Take the gift anyway. You need it."
"If anyone would be happy about getting pens for her birthday, it would be Carrie," Clapp said.
"Well all of hers are run out," Maggie informed him.
"That was so thoughtful of you," he said. Who was he, really?
I felt the need to fill the awkward silence that followed.
"If you're being held against your will, blink twice."
"Kim," Carrie chastised. "Leave them alone."
"Yeah, Kim," Clapp joined in. "Listen to your mistress."
"Her what?"
"Just ignore him," Griffin said. "He's trying to impress his jail bait."
"Hey, we all have fetishes," Carrie went on brusquely. "Clapp likes little girls, Kim likes women that act like little girls..."
"That's two."
"While we're at it, Jennifer likes S&M," she threw out there.
"She does?" Oliver asked.
"No, not really," she said. "But I'm not above spreading that rumor because I'm mad at her."
"That's not a good idea," Bagley warned. "If you say she likes it, that only means that you at one point or another went along with it."
That made me laugh. "Sex with Carrie is always S&M."
She made a face. "Thanks, Kim."
"Don't act like I've said something shocking," I muttered. "You're extremely violent."
This made all the guys laugh, and Maggie extremely uncomfortable.
"Is that right, Carrie?" Oliver pressed for details.
"I'm not violent," she countered, as though suddenly no one else was in the room. "I'm assertive, and I'm fantastic."
I laughed. "Right."
"Sounds like you're denying it, Hayden," Clapp said to cause trouble.
"She's trying not to remember what she's missing out on," Carrie said, before quietly tacking on, "I'm the best she ever had."
"Excuse me," I challenged.
"What, Kim? It's no longer confidential information, considering your wife decided to broadcast it to all the local law enforcement personnel."
"She's not my--"
"Are you going to buy me a drink, or what?"
I rolled my eyes. "I thought we were pretending it's not your birthday."
"We are," she agreed. "You can still buy me a drink."
I stood up because I'd accepted a long time ago that giving in to Carrie's demands had become a natural part of my life. "What do you want?"
"You know what I like."
"Well now thanks to Kim," Oliver jeered, "We all do."
***
Carrie
"Hey," I said to Kim on a more serious note after the company had dispersed. "I'm not trying to create problems, but I hope you know I was making a genuine offer last night. If Grace is still laying claim to the apartment, you know you're always welcome in mine."
"Thanks, Car," she said. "But I'm a little bit drunk and that's probably a terrible idea."
"You don't give yourself enough credit."
"Well when I get drunk I get horny," she said. "Like just now, when you said that thing about I'm always welcome in your apartment and you touched my shoulder like that as you said it, even that was too much. Oh, and also when I'm drunk I tend to overshare."
"Quod erat demonstrandum. How are you going to get your car home?"
"I was going to drunk drive it there."
I sighed profoundly.
"I'm kidding. I'll call a cab."
"You work for the state," I said. "You can't afford a cab."
"More accurately," she corrected, "I just bought Carrie fancy wine. I can't afford a cab."
"Yes, by all means, attribute your poverty to my sophisticated palate."
"I can't believe I'm friends with a wine drinker."
"It's an acquired taste," I recognized.
"I know," she said. "So are you."
"I will not argue that. Let me pay for your cab," I offered.
"No way, you are not paying for my cab," she argued. "That is ruining the point."
"Well you're running thin on options here, Kim."
She exhaled, like she was looking over all the aforementioned options in her mind, and she had to agree that there weren't many.
"We can handle one platonic night, right?"
"I can," I agreed. "But I'm not that drunk."
"I mean, I can take the couch, right?"
"Oh, no. No, spooning or nothing."
She laughed, pushing me a little too hard, given her strength which she didn't seem to realize she still had when she wasn't on the job. "You don't even spoon people you are seeing."
"I'm a personal space enthusiast," I said as we stepped onto the elevator in my apartment building. "Crucify me."
"You're so negative."
"At least I don't parade myself around otherwise," I noted. "I don't go around acting all full of sunshine then get so paranoid I ruin lives when my oblivious girlfriend turns her back. I'm sorry. Was that not vague enough?"
"Okay, I know Grace made a mistake," she said once again. "But she's always been this vindictive. She never claimed to be that nice, and she definitely never claimed to be an optimist."
"Well sure," I agreed. "But that's because she thinks an optimist is the person who gives you your eye exams."
"Okay, that's three."
I began the search through my bag for my apartment key then, having accomplished all I'd set out to accomplish - including three well-positioned snarky remarks - and was ready to call it a night, reveling in the fact that I'd made it through my birthday relatively unscathed and tomorrow was just another day.
When I walked in, all the lights were off as I'd left them. I heard the door shut. In an apartment where nothing was ever out of place, I never saw it coming when the next thing I felt was a hand on my face, and the next thing I heard was a voice I wasn't sure I recognized.
And the only thing it said was, "Don't scream."