Page 126 of A Dead Man's B-Side
She groaned. “God, I don’t need another lecture, I know, okay?Iknow.”
I didn't mean for my voice to raise, hell, I hadn’t even realized it had. “No, you don’t know! You-you… I was–Paris, this ends now. You hear me? You are done with all of this or I’m telling Jett.” she recoiled at the name and fear washed over her eyes. I didn’t want to do it, and even if this was merely a threat, I had to make it sound real. “She’ll be more than happy to send you back to rehab, because you don’t just owe yourself your health. You owe it to the board.”
She pushed the plate away along with her blanket and stood to face me, despite her limbs threatening to fail her. “Okay, okay, okay, just-just don’t tell Rain, okay? I’ll stop, I’ll get better, I promise, just don’t tell anyone, please, Sasha.”
I was never going to buy her words, despite them being what I’d wanted to hear; they weren’t enough. “Give me everything else. All of it.”
She didn’t need me to elaborate as she nodded frantically and rushed to every hiding place she could find in her dorm, pulling outdrinks and bags and pill bottles. I hadn’t realized, until then, how long ago she might have relapsed.
I should have known. I should have known since The Gallery when she couldn’t stop drinking that goddamn wine.
She handed it all forward, and yet I eyed the pile spread out on her bed in front of me skeptically. “This is all of it?”
Glumly and slightly shamefully, she nodded. “Yes. I swear.”
I nodded and began collecting it, trying to carry it all towards my dorm. When I’d returned back to hers, I found her pacing, rushing to me when I entered and speaking faster than when she raised her hand and recited correct answers with such avidity. “Sasha, listen, I know what I said and I promise I’ll stop, I promise, but just–I just need one more fix and then I’ll be done. I promise.”
“No.”
“Sasha–”
“I said no, Paris.” My words were clipped and sounded with finality, but she persisted.
“You don’t understand, i-if my father finds out, he’ll send me back to rehab or-or-or try to force me back into going on those god-awful suitor dates. He’ll force me into marrying someone for his benefit, and I–” Her voice cracked as she choked over her words. “Rain will write to him. I know she will, she did the same thing with Wolf.”
I took in the information she dumped upon me and tried pulling it apart, biting into it, word by word. “Paris, one more fix isn’t going to help the situation with your father. If you need help, you know theFounder’s Society will provide it–I will provide it in any way that I can. This is just a temporary fix to a problem you’re too distorted to find a permanent solution to because you’ve got these drugs meddling with your system.”
She shook her head, her words coming out angry now. “You don’t understand. Rain snitched on Wolf–did she tell you that? She had him sent to rehab, and that’s why he won’t talk to her! But he’s better now, he-he never needed all the doctors and the programs. And I don’t need them either. I just–I’ll heal on my own. I can do it, I know I can, you just have to trust me.”
She wasn’t listening to a word I said, and any other time with any other person, I would have taken advantage of her state and pulled more details from between her lips. But I couldn’t bring myself to focus on the words coming out of her mouth, placing the pieces of Wolf and Rain’s estranged relationship aside.
She wasn’t going to listen to me when her withdrawal was clearly in motion. She was anxious and paranoid and volatile. “Okay, Paris.” I lifted both hands in a sign of deference and placed them lightly on her shoulders, pushing her backwards towards her bed and urging her to get back under the sheets. “We’ll talk about this when you feel better. Right now, you just need to finish eating and rest.”
She pushed my hands away but went to lie down. “Sasha, you don’t understand, you’re not listening. You can’t tell anyone, please.”
“I won’t, I promise. Anything else?” I asked, finding it best to defuse the situation before it escalates.
“My father can’t find out. He’ll ship me away again.”
“He won’t find out.” I sat back down on the chair facing her as she spoke.
“I just need one more time. That’s it. And then I’m done.”
I sighed, dropping my head and wringing my hands together. “Get some rest, Paris. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and turned to face me with turmoil in her eyes. “I’m not tired.”
“You will be. Just try.”
It took an hour of idle talk for Paris to fall asleep and another eight before she woke back up again.
In the meantime, forty-five minutes into her sleep that I’d realized would be a deep one, I returned to the Dining Hall and ate the same meal I offered Paris, among students enjoying their free period, and arrived only a few minutes late to class.
Professor Caddel was at the front, in the middle of what looked to be an interesting lecture with wild hand gestures, before he spotted me entering. “Alexandr, you’ve arrived in the nick of time, we were just getting into the rabbit hole of Russia’s history.”
I ducked my head and walked to my seat at the back, unsurprisingly next to Wolf. “It sure is a rabbit hole, I’ll tell you that.”
I spoke with confidence, for once, because despite being well-aware of my subpar knowledge in any subject, I knew my history.
