Chapter 56: 56 Dreamers Often Lie, Part Four

Tabitha slowly dragged her feet through the cool morning air. All her joints felt stiff and sore. Her left hip didn't seem to want to work the way it should. She didn't know which to hate more – the mental dizziness, or the prickly feeling settling into her feet.

In the damp space behind the equipment shed Tabita watched Gemma kiss the person she had seen her flirting with, Mr Average Height, Dark and Handsome, and Tabitha remembered dreaming of things like that, of thinking some day she'd get to have that again. She remembered when dreaming of a future was a thing she was allowed to do.

Tabitha stumbled and Andrew caught her. She was too tired to pull herself from his grip on her arm. But what did it matter? Even as she walked long enough to do a full circuit of Zapville, he didn't talk even once.

*

For days Josephine wondered, am I losing my mind?

Stumbled upright in the morning, hand on her face, hot and cold all at once. Forgot what order her early morning exercise routine was supposed to be in. Stared at her drawers like she'd forgotten how to put on clothes.

And even as Eleanor laughed at her, Josephine looked at the hallway outside her room like it was the scene of a crime.

"What's wrong?" Eleanor asked. She poked Josephine's face and her face dimpled up as she smiled. As Josephine watched this her heart skipped a beat like it was any normal day.

"I..." But answering that question meant thinking of it again, and already her mind had stepped outside the room.

"I know, the same stuff everyone else feels. We're all kind of messed up here," Eleanor said.

Eleanor's look was gentle as she brushed Josephine's hair back with her thumb and smoothed the rest of her fingers over Josephine's face.

"You're such a good person," Josephine said, taking the wrong way out.

"No, silly, I'm just..." Eleanor bit her lip and stepped back, already bowing her head in that shy way she had. "I'm just normal."

Josephine tried to smile the way she normally would, as if she hadn't pressed another girl against the wall outside their room and...

"That's why you're great. You're the normal one and I'm the weird one," Josephine said.

"No," Eleanor said. She began to wind her arms around her body like she would squeeze herself to paste. "I know people say things like that but there's nothing wrong with you. You're unconventional, that's all."

She always looked so sad when she said things like that. Josephine tried to rub some warmth into Eleanor's spindly limbs, tried not to let her guilt ruin Eleanor's day.

"We should go outside," Josephine said.

Eleanor nodded.

*

When they held hands as they walked Eleanor's hand always clung so tight to hers that it started to hurt. It was better not to tell her to stop.

In the cafeteria Angharad stood with her friends, bouncing on her heels, skirt so short that...

...that it wasn't Josephine's business to look where her skirt ended, that's what.

Angharad's voice carried across the room, telling Zelko they had to celebrate his birthday because, "a Halloween birthday is so cool! Back me up on this, Tsuyoshi."

Josephine focused on the food, sloppy and lurid in the metal trays, and Eleanor's hand making sure she could feel all her carpals and metacarpals.

"I don't want to eat these things," Eleanor said.

Eleanor tipped her head onto Josephine's shoulder, and still Josephine was too aware of Angharad's presence somewhere behind her, brightest thing in the room. What was wrong with her? Thinking of Eleanor when she was with Angharad, and of Angharad when she was with Eleanor.

Eleanor finally squeezed her hand so hard that she gasped.

Eleanor let go immediately. "You should tell me before I do that. I don't always know my own strength."

"But it's fine, of course," Josephine said.

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Josephine looked around to see if anyone was noticing them. To see if...

Angharad smiled and waved at them, like things were normal, like Josephine hadn't accosted her in a hallway days before. For days she'd been acting like nothing had happened, like it was all in Josephine's head, always too busy for Josephine to get up close enough to say sorry again, check if it had been real. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she really was going crazy, imagining Angharad's warm body, her wild eyes and hot mouth so intensely she thought she'd really...

Angharad turned back to Zelko and, with a voice so loud it was almost like a blunt instrument she was using to bludgeon him into agreeing with her, said, "But that's why you have to have a celebration. Something tries to kill you, you survive, you party. That's the rules. A birthday feast to celebrate 22 years of not being dead."

"Not a chance," Zelko said.

Tsuyoshi turned and looked at Josephine like he could see right through her and didn't like what he saw. She took Eleanor's hand again and fled.

*

In the afternoon she ceded Eleanor's attention to Mac, who looked at her like competition. But for who?

Josephine looked for Jin, but he was with Angharad, again, and his flirtatious friend Freya, doing things that Josephine probably wouldn't understand. Josephine stood a few awkward feet away, wringing her hands together and trying to figure out what to do.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Jin said. "Did you think more about that thing we discussed?"

Josephine blinked, surprised to be addressed. "Ah, no, I must confess that I didn't."

"She probably wants to talk about how great her girlfriend is," Angharad interrupted, "and how compatible they are."

"Why would she talk about that with us?" Jin asked.

"Did you know they met at a boxing gym and are in church choir together? I've heard it many times," Angharad said.

Josephine pushed her hands tighter together.

"Oh, really?" said Freya, somehow even more energetic than Angharad. "Oh, that's so cute! Isn't that cute, Jin?"

Jin didn't look like he thought it was cute.

"Uh, well, that is..." But Josephine's thoughts fled as soon as Angharad looked straight at her.

"Can you do me a favour?" Angharad asked.

"Of course, anything!" Josephine said.

"Can you find Tabitha and Sophie so they're not stuck being sad together. It makes me worry. You should totally take Eleanor," Angharad said.

Josephine nodded and fled.

*

Maybe it was a good thing that Eleanor held her hand too tight.

Tabitha's room was too quiet for a room that held both her and Sophie in it. Tabitha lay on her bed, eyes open, face pale and sweating. Sophie was quiet as she sat, stroking Tabitha's hair until Eleanor and Josephine burst into the room and made her look up. And then Sophie smiled, that warm smile she saved for her friends, and Josephine wondered why she'd been worrying about Angharad at all.

"You must have missed us," Eleanor said.

"I'm missing pain killers," Tabitha said, with a rough laugh. "Dr Yeoh is rationing me. Maybe I should do flirtatious eyes at the new doctor instead."

"Be healed by our love!" Josephine said. A poor joke, but if it got everyone to laugh, wasn't that enough?

It wasn't so hard to fit all of them on the bed and huddle close.

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