Chapter 29
JESS:
Cold, was Jessabel’s first thought. I’m so, so cold.
She hadn’t always been cold. Her body had first been numb, so numb that she could scarcely remember what it had been like to feel anything but numb. It was as if she had spent the last century floating in mid air, unable to feel or move a single part of her body. The numbness had been startling, but soon Jessabel grew used to it, becoming familiar with the sensation of buoyancy. Slowly, slowly, she began to let herself go under.
Until she started to breathe once more.
Then her body felt starved – starved and crazed and desperate for any whiff of oxygen, wanting more and more and never being satisfied. Her once numb ribs arched into the air, almost trying in vain to reach the oxygen her lungs so badly needed. Her lungs began to ache. Everything began to ache. She inhaled frantically, her lungs making hoarse noises as she inhaled and exhaled, drowning in order to stay afloat.
And then she became hot. Very hot.
Fever wrecked havoc on her already damaged system, making each breathe as difficult as the last. Her body burned and sweated and trembled. She no longer felt numb – she could feel it. Feel the sensation of sand paper against sand paper whenever she swallowed, the blistering of her skin, the dizzy spells that knocked her out for what felt like years and years. The heat was unforgiving.
But all of that has passed. Now she was cold. Oh, so cold.
Pain stretched along her throat and into her lungs, and it was type of pain that varied each day. Will it swell up again anytime soon? Jess wondered. Or will it be bearable? Please let it be bearable. But she had no say in that, anymore than she had a say on why she deserved this.
Her thoughts and memories had been scrambled to the point where she could only remember names. Though she could never remember what memories were attached to those names, and why those names had been so important to her. Gwyneth, Nathan, Vera. James, and Vanessa, and Mei. Led, Baby Led. Kyle, Theodore and Renee.
Renee.
Somehow that was the most important name of all.
Jessabel had no concept of time whatsoever, so it might have been years or just a few minutes until she opened her eyes. She couldn’t keep them open for long, but just enough to note that the ceiling was white and that everything was beeping. A wave of narcotics hit her once again, lulling her into a state of unconsciousness.
The next time she awoke was due to shouting.
“No! You listen to me.” The woman’s voice was sharp and angry, and also undeniably familiar. But Jess had trouble attaching her voice to a name. “Do you see that girl lying on a hospital bed? Do you see her? Does she look ready in any way for your pointless questions?”
The voice of the answering man was like a growl – it rumbled out of his chest, deep and sharp. “I’m here to do my job, Ms. Griffin.”
That jolted her. Griffin was another name she remembered. A name attached to her own.
Mom?
“Can’t you come back in a few more days?” her mother snapped, more pleading than irritated.
Beep, beep, beep went the machines around her head. It reminded her, very briefly, of the time she had woken up in this exact predicament. Except it had been because of a shot wound caused by a monster.
But then again, all of her injuries seemed to have been coming from monsters lately.
“Of course,” the man replied. “But since we’ve got the photographers here, I figured we could attack some photos to the article…”
“Excuse me? Are you asking my permission to take photos of my injured daughter, or did you assume that you could just march straight in and snap away? Unbelievable! I want all of you out. Now. Don’t make me call security. Good day.” There was shuffling of feet, before the door was slammed shut.
Jessabel used what little strength she had to speak. “Mom?”
Gwyneth Griffin gasped, before rushing over to the daughter she thought she would lose. Tears shone in her eyes. If there was one thing she didn’t plan on doing, it was outliving her only daughter. “Oh, Jessie! How are you feeling, honey? Would you like some water? The doctor will be back soon, he’s just gone for a little while. Oh goodness. There are so many questions I want to ask – so, so many. I’m mean, how on Earth did you even-“
Jessabel groaned in discomfort, hating the tubes stuck to her nose and hating even more the brace that supported her spine. “Mom,” she interrupted. “Who was that before? You were talking to someone.”
Relief morphed into annoyance. “Oh, it was another one of those journalists. This one tried to convince me to ‘Just shake her until she wakes up. I only have a couple questions’. Disgusting, every one of them.”
Jessabel looked down at her bandaged arms, and the IV tube attached to it. Her neck was the source of all her problems. Every swallow of water was difficult, and it was as if her oesophagus had been twisted bloody. The tube wrapped around her ears released a gentle stream of oxygen into her nose, letting her breathe easily. Otherwise it would have been a painful task. Beside her were several little cups of pills and tablets. She nudged them with her elbow. “Do I have to take all of those?”
Gwen nodded, taking the seat beside her bed and clasping both of her daughter’s hands. She was holding something back – something very big. Jessabel could feel it. “Only every two hours. They wanted to wait until you could swallow on your own. How is your head? Do you feel dizzy?”
Jess shook her head, making herself nauseous. “What happened, Mom? And don’t you dare hold back anything.”
There it was again. Underneath Gwen’s reassuring smile was something big. Monstrous, even. The pain was almost palpable. Gwen hesitated, feeling as if her feet were hovering over broken glass. “You… you don’t remember anything? Anything at all?”
Again, she shook her head. Jessabel’s memory was very limited. As well as the names she came to remember, and the memories the presence of her mother brought forth, everything unless was an indistinguishable fog. Bits and pieces that just wouldn’t fit together.
Like for instance, the memory of a stain remover and the memory of sleek white hair. How did those two have anything to do with each other?
One by one, she ticked off the names to her mother. “Gwyneth, that’s you, Nathan, Vera, James, Melissa, Mei. Uhh… and Kyle. Also Theodore and Renee.” Jessabel frowned deeply, thinking she might have missed another.
Led. Baby Leonard for Led Zeppelin. Nathan’s little joke, a joke that wasn’t funny at all. What had he said again? "If it's a boy, we'll call it Led Zeppelin Ericson. Or Leddy, when we're mad at him. And when he's older, he can call his bed the Stairway to Heaven."
Then it came to her.
Her pale hand suddenly came down to her stomach, clawing at the hospital gown in order to get to the skin underneath. Little Led. Where was he? And had he been affected by all of this?
Gwen knew what was about to come out of her mouth. Jess waited with baited breath, frightened and hopeful and fiercely protective, until it all came crashing down as her mother broke into bitter sobs. She uttered the words that changed her.
“Gone. He’s gone, Jessie.”
Jessabel said nothing. Did nothing.
Gwen, who had spent the last couple of days working up courage for this exact moment, forced the words out of her mouth before she could think about it any longer. “Nathan’s gone, too. Disappeared along with Renee. Nobody knows where they are. The party ended as soon as someone found you unconscious in one of the bathrooms. When the ambulance arrived, Teddy had to speak for them. His daughter was nowhere to be found.
“You almost died, sweetheart. Somebody tried to strangle you to death, and they almost did. And you weren’t the only one, either. The body of a little redheaded girl from another town was found in one of the coat closets, and she hadn’t been as fortunate as you. It’s crazy, Jessabel, everyone’s going crazy. People are leaving town, they’re deserting their homes and friends, and nobody has a clue of what happened. Someone awful had been lurking around at that party. Nobody knows what to do. I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry.”
If Jessabel thought she had felt numb before, she was sorely mistaken. Turns out she had never truly known the feeling of numb. She had never really felt it, never really appreciated it for what it was. Her mind, however, was racing. Spinning faster than it had ever spun before.
Gwen begun talking faster, as if to fill the dead weight of silence that hung over the world. She hiccuped between words, sounding more and more unhinged by the second. Something had switched off inside her daughter, and she knew it. She feared that this would happen. “But I want you to know that the police are doing everything they can, okay? They’ll find Nathan. They will. There’s no other choice. You also have to know that we’ve tried everything to save little Led. Everything you can think of, we tried. The oxygen flow had been cut short to your brain, doing partial damage to you but colossal damage to him. I’m… This is awful. You don’t deserve any of this. And this isn’t in any way your fault. You’re a good person and you-“
“Stop.” Had her voice always sounded like that? Jessabel didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore. It took energy, so much energy, to keep herself together for the sake of her mother. The discomforts she had felt before – the tightness of her neck brace, the burn in her throat, the itch on her lower back – all melted away. Now, as she forced every syllable out of her mouth, she wondered if she would ever feel discomfort again. “You should go home. Please go home.”
She did.
And Jessabel was left to herself.
Amazing, she thought. The numbness seemed to reach inside of her, too. It gripped her heart and detached it form the rest of her body, and for a while she was grateful. She was grateful for the fact that the pain and the devastation and the grief hadn’t settled. God knows what would have happened if it did.
I’ve lost everything.
Doctors came and went. Nurses and patients and visitors passed to and fro, day and night, visiting their loved ones and saying goodbye and praying for miracles.
But Jessabel hadn’t been given the chance to say goodbye, had she? She hadn’t been given time to prepare for her whole life to come crumbling down. She hadn’t been given a second option.
The only thing she had been given, the only thing she now had, were the warning signs.
Of course.
Her mind was still sharp. Jagged, but sharp. Hadn’t Jessabel sensed it from the moment she had walked through those doors, Nathan by her side, ready to meet the distant relative her mother had been raving about? She’d seen it. Jessabel had brushed it off so many times, but she could lie to herself no longer.
Renee.
It was always her eyes that gave her away. And if not her eyes, then her hands. All the clever jokes in the world hadn’t distracted Jessabel from noticing the way Renee’s hands would clench against her thighs whenever she said one thing and felt another. Her smile had always been pretty, but her eyes had always been aggressive. Eyes that always lingered a little loo long on Nathan – a little too long on his mouth when he spoke and on his hair when he raked his fingers through it.
Jessabel found her very odd at first. For instance, how had she managed to wrap my mother around her finger after living in Alistair for less than a day? How did she always know the right words to say, the right way to approach people? How on Earth could she make you agree to things you didn’t even want to do?
Terrible things happened wherever she followed. That should have been the first sign.
The girl had been foolish, Jess thought to herself. Not only did she suck at choking people, but she also had a flare for last-minute confessions.
Before she could cry for Nathan and Baby Led, before she could scream herself hoarse and beat someone bloody, she had to make a phone call.
The police weren’t going to bring Nathan back to her. But someone else would.
***
Author's Note: This is where general knowledge of White Lies will REALLY come in handy. Otherwise, not a lot will make sense. But I'll try to mention certain things for those who haven't read it. So don't panic.