Poor, Merilee. She’s one of the lifers. She’d lost her mind when her husband was found murdered in an alley a few blocks away from their home.
Aurora sits up, pretzling her legs and my attention shifts back to her. “I know you’re mad at me,” she says. “I can’t say that I blame you.”
What I’m really anxious to know is why she would do that to me. I thought we were friends. “How could you do something like that?”
She throws her head back, allowing the sun to warm her cheeks and breathes, “It’s more than what you think.”
I sit up. “Oh yeah? How so?”
“It’s a long story,” she mumbles under her breath. “And hard to explain.”
“I have time,” I tell her, urging her to go on with my violet irises. I feel like I deserve an explanation for all that I had to endure for her being a shitty person and it better be a good one, too.
“I was trying to protect you,” she tells me, weaving a crown out of a few long blades of grass.
I lift an eyebrow. “Protect me?” Then I glare at her incredulously. “Seems like you did a lousy job. In case you didn’t know this, I wound up with a broken hand and a month in solitary.”
She pays no attention to my tone and continues weaving. “I did know, actually,” she fills me in. Sometimes it bothers me that Aurora can remain so calm about some things. In fact she does the opposite of what most people do; she freaks out about the stupid stuff and remains calm and collected about the not so stupid stuff. “In case you didn’t know this,” she mimics my comment and tone, “the walls here are thin and people talk.”
Shaking my head and grinding my teeth I look away. I don’t know why I’m wasting my time, so I move to get up, but Aurora clamps her fingers down around my forearm. “Wait.” There’s urgency in her voice. “I’m not done.”
“You seemed done talking to me.”
She scrunched her face. “Well you made an assumption that was wrong.”
My eyes center on the metal fence that cuts off our ward from the men’s ward. Damien is at the fence, fingers looped through the metal rungs, eyes locked on me. Pushing to my feet, I start for the fence. I can’t help the magnetism I feel whenever he’s around. I can’t help that he’s always able to lure me into his web with those crystalline blue eyes.
Aurora is up off the ground following me. “Where are you going?” she whines. “I thought we were having a conversation.”
“We were,” I say. Then I decided to end it.
She grips my shoulder and jerks me around to face her. “You need to listen to me.”
I shrug my shoulder out of her grasp and roll my eyes. “I was until you decided to stop talking.” I thought it was nice of me to hear her out as much as I had because there’s a huge part of me that thinks she doesn’t deserve my time.
“I didn’t stop talking,” she huffs. “You didn’t let me finish.” She peeks around my shoulder at the chain link fence, eyes narrowed. “Where were you going anyway?”
“None of your business,” I snap, turning on my heel and stalking toward the fence. I come to a stop halfway when I realize that Damien isn’t at the fence anymore. I scowl over my shoulder at Aurora and storm in her direction, nudging her shoulder as I brush past her. “Great,” I mutter. “Now he’s gone.”
“Who?” Her voice hikes up a level. “That Damien?”
That Damien?
That Damien?
The way she says it so casually infuriates me.
She doesn’t understand. He’s not just that, Damien. A random boy. He’s the keeper of my heart. The light of my soul. “Not just that Damien,” I spit out, my voice laced with anger.
“You need to stop this.” She spins around and jogs to keep up with me.
“I’m glad you think you know what I need,” I seethe, hoping that she’ll leave me alone before the hot steam swelling inside of me erupts through my ears.
She doesn’t let up. “This is exactly why I said something to the staff. Adelaide, you’re delusional! I think this place has finally gotten to you.”
I whip around, hatred flashing in my eyes. She bumps into my chest and I raise my finger. “You don’t know anything! And you’re the one who should talk. You pretend you’re crazy because you’re too much of a coward to stand up for yourself!”
Her mouth drops open and she takes a deep breath. “You don’t know anything either.” Suddenly she snaps and digs her fingers into my shoulder. “Do you what it’s like in the basement?” Her eyes are wild and for a second I’m more terrified of her than I was the first time I met her. “Do you know what they do to you? How they torture you?” I back up, trying to get away, but she keeps coming at me. “Do you know what it’s like to be restrained and have thousands of volts of electricity pumped through your body?”