I saw it in her eyes as she topped my coffee.
Finish this, then let’s get to it.
Henry peered over his newspaper, giving us that look telling us he knew we were up to something on the weekends, that he wouldn’t ask, but he didn’t necessarily agree.
“The two of you were far too late coming home last night,” he said. Not condescending or correcting. Merely stating. “And looking far too pretty and happy about it.”
“Dad,” Alice started.
“Just saying I missed you,” he interrupted, “And be careful.”
The last words not echoing of warning, only love.
“Ready?” Alice asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” I lied.
There was no eager hustle up the stairs. Just the two of us getting ready for another week of school.
“Fuck me if I know what to do with that hair, babe,” she sighed, “I guess David starts wearing a fucking beanie from now on.”
His clothes burned my skin more than usual. At least I wore his pathetic, sad face.
But in the mirror, Veronica dressed as David.
And in all my movements, I became a parody.
A fucking paranoid parody.
Back on the bus, their venom stung like it never had before. Because I agreed with them. David was a fucking joke.
Gone were my silent, “Fuck you, Dwight.” The ones he never dared to say out loud.
The irony?
In my sleep, I whispered, “Fuck me, Dwight.”
Every second of being David felt like a trap. Did my hips sway? Did my voice leak of me? Did I smile? David never smiled; he was too busy wallowing in his self-pity. But I could smile at a question asked wrong or a fly trapped against the window.
I could catch myself stretching so wrong and feel too good about it.
I could answer the questions David never understood.
With honeyed pride.
By Wednesday, I crashed into the mid-week lull that Alice used to possess. But mine wasn’t about coming down from last weekend or dreading the next. Mine was feeling stretched between them.
Things had changed at school. Everyone wanted me to help with their group assignments because Alice had forged me into something sharp. Not just knowing but being confident enough to let others know.
So, when Tonya grabbed my hand to usher me to come along, I couldn’t escape her stare.
“David?”
Her hesitation felt like an eternity.
“Your hands…so soft.”
I’m sure her brown eyes saw right through me, peeling off all the layers of him, stripping me down to my beauty, and…
It lasted no longer than a few seconds.
But it made mimicking his voice, doubt, and insecurities even more difficult.
I found her note on our bench, but now, I had to shake people off me to find my privacy. “Hey, David…have you had to look at the homework for tomorrow yet? I just have a few questions.”
It wasn’t just Tonya or the other girls. Even some of the guys…the guys from my fucking dreams. And I couldn’t—wouldn’t—hide my honeyed pride and delight.
You look like sex and reek of pride. Come see me. The little boy’s room down in the basement. Just follow my scent. Feeling giddy.
Follow my scent. It all made sense when I opened the door. The smell of weed wasn’t even faint, nor was the cloud above the third stall.
She didn’t even look apologetic when I opened the door. Just sat there, zen as fuck, smoke curling from her nostrils like she had all the time in the world.
“You know, babe,” she said, flicking her fingers vaguely at all of me, “It’s not working. You have to pull it together. You’re unraveling way too fast.”
She didn’t just hand me the joint. She shoved it into my hands.
“Inhale. Deeply. Find your fucking chill. You’re spilling Veronica-juice everywhere.”
Her green eyes pinned me. “Be smart. Be brilliant. I fucking applaud that. But don’t be fucking sexy about it.”
Then she stood and kissed me.
Not like last time.
Not stolen.
Not playful.
Deep. Needy. Breaking all her damned rules in one stolen moment.
She pulled away just before opening the door, looking at me.
A pause. A flicker of something she’d never admit.
“I fucking hate being horny at school.”
No more gym classes, thanks to Dr. Leigh.
Fuck, I keep forgetting my limp.
Should I dare, though, peeking through that vent?
Allison shuddering, fucking shuddering, “You smell nice.”
Friday afternoon came as a rescue and the first hair removal session?
I wept at how ugly and burnt it made me.
Alice teased that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be cock-blocking her as much.
Yeah, tough luck, girlfriend. My face might be ugly, but damn, I’m a good fuck.
And that spawned the first seed.
Stephan was good.
But not enough. Not in the long run. We were both getting too greedy.
And between that greed?
The roller coaster of weekends and school, the hormones eating at the last remnants of David, and the deepening surge inside me.
I was willing to go further, wilder, spinning out of control.
Alice let me. She understood long before I even wondered.
I wanted them to fuck David out of me.
When Dr. Leigh finally agreed to up the dosage, I celebrated by getting high, drunk, and taken.
Spiraling into me.
“Slow down, girl.” Alice tried.
“Feel my fucking skin!” I’d reply. And my struggle became hers.
Because if I didn’t feel fucking awesome and on top of the world?
I crashed to the bottom in a pool of tears and misery.
His lines were fading. No, they were obliterated. Rounded, not enhanced, but erased.
Of course, the rumors of me being kicked out and thrown to the curb had hit.
“Not even the freak-house could take your freak, eh, Tiny?”
But worse, news of living at Alice’s house spread, bringing her into it. Making her a target.
“Hey, red, what are you guys feeding the freak?”
“Hey, ginger! Aren’t you afraid to catch the freak?”
“Hey, ginger? Do you sell tickets to the freakshow?”
Dwight. It was always Dwight.
The taunts never touched Alice.
Each insult only made her smirk sharper, her spine straighter and her fire burn brighter.
But that last one?
She closed her book. Set it down beside her.
Turned to face him.
And in that moment, Dwight had already lost.
“You know, Dwight.”
Cool as the fucking breeze. Not a threat. Not a challenge.
Just a statement of fact.
“Humanity—it’s not what separates us from the animals. Not what differentiates us from other species.”
She stood.
Pulled that stubborn curl. Tucked it behind her ear.
Unhurried. Measured. Deadly.
“No, Dwight.
Humanity is what separates us from ourselves.”
She stepped forward.
Hips swaying, each foot perfectly placed.
She wasn’t just walking. She was claiming space.
The crowd had gone silent.
“I find your lack of humanity… worrying.” Head tilting, gaze unwavering. “I must ask myself—what happened to you, to make you so… detached?”
She reached for him.
Fingers twisting into the back of his hair.
Pulling him down.
He towered over her, but it didn’t matter.
Because she owned him the second she touched him.
Her forehead pressed against his.
Her breath lingered on his lips.
“I don’t care how miserable you are. I don’t give a fuck about your dominance games.”
Pause. Stillness. Controlled chaos.
Then—her grip tightened.
Nails digging into his skin.
“But you don’t get to talk like that to me…”
Her lips brushed dangerously close.
“…or anyone I know…”
The pull—harder. Sharper.
His pulse thundered against her fingertips.
“…or anyone I’d like to know.”
And then?
She drove her knee up.
Not just to hurt.
Not just to drop him.
To destroy him.
A ragged gasp tore from his throat.
He hit the ground. Collapsed.
But Alice wasn’t done.
She shoved him onto his back.
Straddled his chest.
Pressed herself up to his chin.
And when she spoke?
It wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t rage.
It was finality.
“Don’t even start to think this is pain, Dwight,” she hissed, “You stop. You stop now. Or I will tear you to fucking shreds.”
Silence. Thick. Suffocating. Absolute.
No one laughed.
No one moved.
And Dwight?
For the first time in his miserable life—
He finally knew what it felt like to be small.
The teachers had to pull her off him.
Alice spent the next hour in the principal’s office, but Henry? When he came to pick her up?
Pride. Love.
And a dismantling of school rules, a teaching of how not to hunt the victims but target the predators.
An official apology.
Alice started changing the world with a simple knee-jerk.
Since that day, I rode the bus with her. There was no longer a need to hide that David lived under her roof.
David was officially Alice’s brother.
And no one fucked with a Caldwell.
And the taunts?
They didn’t entirely stop, but there were fewer and only whispers between the few.
Dwight didn’t even dare look at me.
It stung how I missed his stare because he still fucked me in my dreams.
And I bloomed.
“There’s no sweater big enough to hide these,” Alice smirked, brushing against me.
Her touch burned.
I didn’t fucking know my own body or what it was doing. A fucking revolt against reason and restraint. Because everything was felt fucking tenfold.
My nipples weren’t tender or sore anymore.
They were the fucking center of everything.
Allison brushing my hand reaching for her pencil?
Titties! Hello!
A fucking shockwave yanking my hand back like I’d touched a live wire.
Heat pooling low in my belly, my breath hitching, shallow—a complete betrayal.
She laughed, finding me quirky, not even noticing.
But I fucking did.
At lunch, where David would sit alone before, the girls insisted I sit with them. Tonya leaned closer, whispering low, “I never realized how deep blue your eyes are, David.”
I froze.
But my body?
Suck us!
Fuck.
Every look.
Every brush of fabric.
Every second spent being perceived.
I was vibrating, on fucking fire.
But Alice fucking cupping me, filling the palm of her hand with me? Pushing every button and flicking every switch on full?
I wept and laughed at the same time. I was deliriously horny, but not for release. Just for her touch to never stop.
“You realize it’s a fucking problem?” she laughed, “The blockers you started on? This? Fuck me, in a few weeks, he’ll be fucking wiped out. But we still fucking need him.”
But even she struggled between the lines of harsh reality and blossoming temptation.
“Fuck, you’re soft,” she murmured, melting me.
Melting led to surrender; surrender led to us being ourselves and brought us both to a place desperately needed.
Some calm between the waves.
She stared at the ceiling, a puff of smoke escaping her lips.
“Do you ever think about it?”
Still thinking I was able to read her mind.
“The first time you saw her in the mirror.”
“Not as much as I used to.”
Because it was true. Because in that mirror, nothing existed before that first time. I couldn’t see him anymore, and I had to dig deep even to find his memories.
“We still need to start tucking those babies in,” she whispered, “And that, in itself, is a fucking sacrilege.”
But even that, even pulling on his costume and binding me fucking in…
“You been working out, David? You seem, I don’t know…fuller?”
“Easy on the butt exercises, David…there’s just so much a girl can take.”
My gut wrenching at sobbing in the boy’s room. The smell of urine had never hit me before; how hard could it be to hit inside the fucking bowl? Just opening that door felt like trespassing into a world that had nothing to do with me.
Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
I ripped him off me, stripped down to nothing but myself, and headed straight for the shower. Scrubbing every little piece of him off me.
I stood in front of the mirror, still feeling like I needed another scrub, when she came in, put her head on my shoulder, and whispered, “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“This weekend needs to be legendary,” I whispered, “No more sharing, no more guarding. Let me find my own and let him own me.”
“No…” she whispered, but too doubtful to catch, “It’s too dangerous. Stephan is safe. No wife to slash our throats, no danger of violating boundaries. He’s safe. He gives and only takes when permitted.”
I knew she was right.
Alice was always right.
“I know,” I whispered, “But somehow…I need to be allowed to be wrong. It’s what I need to make this right.”
“I know,” she echoed, “But I can’t let you do that entirely alone. Stephan has this friend…I could hook up with him in the next room.”
“No.”
I hadn’t intended to sound so cold. Harsh.
“I need something new. Not the safety net of Stephan. You do Stephan, and you do him good. I’ll indulge in something new. A hint of danger.”
“Just next door?”
She wasn’t asking.
She was pleading.
“Always, babe,” I whispered, “But not guarding. Let me do this on my own.”
She exhaled, slow and measured, her eyes flickering between defiance and surrender.
“Okay,” she finally said, but it didn’t sound like agreement.
It sounded like reluctance. Like she already saw what I refused to.
There was a different tension between us at the bar. Still teasing and admiring, I couldn’t deny her protective stare, however.
Frank was handsome.
Eager, polite, and built just right.
More direct.
Cupping and feeling.
“I like petite girls,” he whispered under hot whiskey, “and you’re about as petite as I’ve ever had.”
And I let myself melt into it. His touch, his muscles playing beneath his shirt, the girth of him as he pressed against my thigh.
Melting like fucking chocolate at the weight of his hands—firm, claiming. His fingers pressed and explored, mapping me like I belonged to him.
Those fucking muscles shifted beneath his shirt, alive beneath my touch, taut and controlled, promising what would come.
The fucking girth—hot, insistent, pressing against my thigh, demanding my full attention.
Attention? Yeah. But focus? Obliterated.
Until I demanded we leave.
Until we arrived at the motel.
And then—Alice.
Slamming me against the wall, her grip tight, her breath hot with something between panic and desperation.
“Are you fucking sure, babe?”
Her kisses bled worry.
Her fingers curled into my skin, not claiming but pleading.
“You can still walk away from this.”
I giggled, meeting her worry with my need. “Have you seen him?”
I licked the words against her lips, teasing, taunting.
“He’s a fucking bull.”
I wish I hadn’t pushed her off me.
I wish I hadn’t taken his arm and pulled him into that room.
But I did.
I did it because I wanted to.
I did it because I needed to.
I tore his clothes off, feeling his body unfold beneath my hands—strong, solid, undeniable.
And when his manhood fell heavy against my face, I fucking lost it.
He was taller, broader, and built like something meant to ruin me.
He didn’t fit. So I made him fit.
I adjusted, stretched, let my lips part—
And took him in.
My fingers trembled, searching, finding, pulling the condom free.
“A fucking rubber?”
The way he said it…
Not rejection.
Disappointment.
Driven too far. Hesitant.
Pulling from the moment.
Alice.
“If you want this, then yes.”
“If you say so.”
I trembled.
With Stephan, it had been easy. Predictable.
This? This was strange. Awkward.
Then his grip in my hair.
His breath—hot, whiskey-soaked, searing against my skin.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, girl.”
Ripping.
Stripping me down.
Hands everywhere. Groping, claiming, taking.
Rough. Exactly what I was craving.
“Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”
He didn’t rip my bra.
Didn’t need to.
Just unclasped it, letting it fall, letting his eyes drink me in.
And fuck, he was already getting off on my tits.
Then his mouth.
Sucking. Hard. Unapologetic. Not tasting, but taking.
His teeth scraped, bit down—just enough to sting, just enough to keep me on edge.
Slobbering, sucking, claiming every inch of me.
His fingers trailed lower, further—searching, demanding.
Consuming me with roughness. With certainty.
And then—pressure. Insistent. Pushing in.
Into my very being.
Pressing underneath my skirt.
Closer.
So much fucking closer.
Then—shattering.
“What the fuck?”
He flung me onto the bed.
“You have a fucking cock?!?”
The lamp hit the wall, shattering above my head.
Discarded.
He didn’t just move—he stormed, kicked, destroyed everything in his path.
The chair crashed against the floor, tumbling.
Like trash thrown into the wind.
He snatched his clothes, his fists tight, his shoulders rigid, and his breath uneven.
He yanked the door open—too hard, too fast—like the room itself had tainted him.
The door slammed so violently that the walls rattled.
Like garbage littering the street.
Alice arrived just too late to kill him.
Fully dressed. Completely dissolved.
“Babe!” she yelled.
Again. And again.
Her voice cracked, breaking, unraveling into tears.
I curled up against the wall, against broken glass, against everything that had just happened.
“Get the fuck out!” she turned, teeth bared, eyes burning, rage thick in her throat.
Stephan stood in the doorway. Hesitant.
“Alice…” he started.
“No.”
She cut through the air. Sharp. Final.
“This? This is on fucking you!”
The glass shattered inches from his face, raining shards at his feet.
“I fucking trusted you!”
A busted piece of the chair ricocheted off the wall behind him, the echo slicing through the silence.
“I fucking trusted you with everything I have!”
This time, she didn’t throw anything.
Only her words. Only her rage. Only the weight of everything she had lost.
“Get the fuck out, Stephan.
From this room. From this memory. From my fucking life.”
He turned and left.
And Alice didn’t fall to the floor weeping.
She covered me in a blanket of herself.
“This, babe,” she sniffled, “Is not about you.”
And not a fiber in me believed her.
“Take me home.” I wept.
But the voice? All David.
She didn’t move. She just held me, shielding me against the cold. Not just flowing through the open door but flowing from the world.
“Let’s get you dressed,” she whispered, planting soft kisses on my shoulder.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t deserve pretty. I just pulled the sheets over me.
I didn’t deserve rest, but I drifted.
Perhaps that was the best thing to happen?
Blissful darkness.
I woke to her touch.
Soft. Warm. But trembling.
Her eyes were red and puffed.
“Dad is here.”
Not a whisper. Not a question. Just a fact.
“Let’s get you home.”
Henry.
I sat up. Didn’t cover myself. Didn’t guard myself.
Naked, exposed, and every part of me screaming what had happened, yet I couldn’t bring myself to hide.
And Henry?
Didn’t stare. Didn’t wonder. Didn’t even hesitate.
He just stepped forward, his heavy boots against the stained motel carpet. He lifted his coat and wrapped it around me, keeping me warm, worn, and safe.
He scooped me into his arms like I wasn’t shattered glass but something that still deserved to be carried.
No words. No questions. No fucking hesitation.
The motel walls blurred past me. Alice’s broken sobs faded behind us.
The car door opened. He set me down. Buckled the seatbelt himself.
I stared at him then, waiting.
For the flicker of something. A reaction. A question. A fucking flinch.
But there was nothing.
Alice sat beside me. No…she wrapped herself around me.
The engine rumbled to life.
The motel drifted out of sight through the back window, and we never returned.
I had single-handedly torn that refuge in Alice’s life to ruins. In my stubbornness.
But her look never said, “I told you so.”
It was a long, silent drive. She hushed, trying to reaffirm me, but I refused to believe her.
Just once did Henry show anything; still, it wasn’t much. He hit the wheel with the palm of his hand and muttered a single word.
“Fuck.”
When we finally pulled up the driveway, he let out a sigh.
“Go inside, do your thing.”
He lingered. He hated parenting.
“When you’re done…we need to talk.”
I was up the stairs and inside her room—not ours, hers—long before she got out of the car.
I shed what little clothes I had on and found his boxers, his trousers, and his oversized sweater. I didn’t need the mirror to tell me he was there.
His ugly face behind a mask of makeup.
I scrubbed.
Until I felt raw.
Alice saw me but understood. She just sat on her bed, crying.
Undone.
Because of me.
“Let’s just go,” I mumbled.
My hand withdrew from hers as she tried.
Still fucking tried.
Henry also tried.
Hot chocolate and brownies.
“Okay,” he started, “I’m sorry for failing you. Both of you.”
His eyes drifted from her to me, then back again.
“Pride doesn’t even begin to describe what I feel when I look at you. And love,” his voice breaking, “becomes empty when I try to explain what you mean to me.”
His hand rustled through his beard as if trying to pull out some sort of unknown wisdom.
“But this is the second time my life has come undone over you…so please, help me understand what’s going on.”
And Alice?
“All you had to do was ask, Dad,” she whispered.
She told him about her stay at her mother’s, how she needed an escape from the world, how she had found it in exploring.
Nothing was left untold.
The motel.
Stephan.
But also the men before Stephan. Things she hadn’t even told me.
But more, the treatments, Veronica’s emergence, and the bar.
“I’m sorry, Dad. But I’m just trying my fucking best to be who you raised me to be. But I love her, and right now, it’s killing me.”
I hate watching Alice dissolve.
“Help me, Dad. I don’t know what to do.”
“I…think hot chocolate is a start,” he said, waiting for the right words to appear, “I’m taking you to Dr. Leigh’s first thing in the morning. But the only thing that can fix this is relentless love. Love and time. You’ve got this, Alice.”
His eyes shifted and landed on me.
“And you? You need to trust her. Alice has never loved anything undeserving her entire life. So, if she tells you, it’s fucking true.”
He hugged me. He kissed me. And he sent us off to bed.
“Are you coming?” she asked as she slipped under the covers.
I sat on her couch. It felt strange. I don’t think I’d ever sat on her couch before.
I didn’t reply.
I didn’t want to hear David’s voice in that room.
“Please,” she begged.
She cried herself to sleep.
I sat.
And I watched.
Time drawing.
She was always beautiful in her sleep. She was always beautiful.
In her quirkiness.
In her oversized t-shirts.
In her weed-driven haze.
At the bar.
In her desire.
She was always beautiful.
I let her sleep. My bare feet were cold against the floor, but I didn’t notice. The hallway seemed…peaceful? A quiet hush had wrapped itself around the sleeping house.
Tiptoeing down the stairs and into the kitchen.
It felt foreign, as if it rejected me in the still of the night.
Top drawer, on the left.
Then, hurried but silent upstairs again.
The door let out a sigh but not a creak.
She slept. In her beauty.
The cold glare of the bathroom light felt blinding.
A relief as it blurred the reflection.
That ugly…
…undesirable…
Boy.
You were sinful from the time you were conceived.
That ugly boy.
That ugly boy with tiny breasts.
You should have stayed unborn.
I tore off my panties.
That ugly boy with tiny breasts.
And an ugly, useless…
Cock.
I forced myself to watch.
His utter.
Complete.
Ugliness.
The blade glinted. Sharp.
The handle felt cold.
Cut it off!
I closed my eyes.
Felt the knife against my skin.
My fingers hurt around the handle.
Cut it off! Stab a hole—make yourself perfect!
My breath hitched.
Then, something blue, at the very back of my mind.
I had to see.
From the corner of the bathroom mirror, a blue butterfly.
The knife clattered sharply onto the tile.
That perfect, blue butterfly.
My stomach wrung itself.
Clenched so violently I tasted my insides.
A brutal wrench—like something inside me had ripped free.
Gutted.
Flung against the floor in a splattered, pulsing mess.
I couldn’t breathe.
Didn’t want to.
And darkness embraced me.
***
“Veronica!”
Faint, ethereal, and so far away.
“Veronica!”
I know that voice.
“Babe! Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare!”
It would be so easy to dare.
“Dad!”
I should have stayed unborn.
“Dad!”
Somewhere in the distance, a door came crashing down.
***
A faint, familiar smell. The darkness less pressing, and something both warm and cold at the same time.
A glimmer of light.
Dr. Leigh’s office.
And my head hurt.
Then I saw her. Only, it wasn’t her.
Ragged curls lay in clusters around her head. Her eyes, swollen and red. Her face puffed and in pain. She was trembling, sitting on the floor.
Someone had dragged her through hell.
Her beautiful cheeks were raw, blotched with streaks of salt and fire. She had been crying for hours. Days? Forever?
Her hands were shaking, twitching, curling, and uncurling against her thighs, pressing into her skin as if she were trying to keep herself from flying apart.
Her pajamas—my pajamas—were wrinkled. Stained. Like she had worn them through the trenches of war.
She wasn’t breathing. She was trying to catch air that escaped her. Again and again.
My unbreakable rock.
Broken.
Disintegrated.
And I did this.
I dragged her through hell.
I was the someone.
The bruises on her knuckles. The redness on her wrists. The way she sat there, emptied of everything she was, barely holding herself together—
I did that.
I had tried to leave, but she was the one who had shattered.
Her body was here, but Alice was gone.
And the worst part?
I wasn’t sure if she’d ever come back.
“Alice…” I whispered. Afraid I could never speak her name again.
“Alice.” Henry’s voice boomed even in whispers.
She lifted her head slowly.
“Babe?”
Her voice was crackled, dry. and barely audible, buried.
She steadied herself against the wall. Her bloodied bare feet left stains on the tiled floor.
“Babe?”
Her steps were hesitant, slow, but somehow determined.
She brushed her hair out of her face.
“Babe?”
When her hand touched my face, when her eyes saw life in my blue eyes, she fell to her knees and wept.
“I’m sorry.” My whisper sounded hollow.
“No,” she hulked, “You don’t get to be sorry.”
She stood, gripping my hands so it hurt.
“You get to fucking live! It’s your damned duty! You don’t get to feel sorry. Not for yourself, not for me, not for your fucking mother. You fucking live!”
She stared.
She breathed.
Behind those swollen, bloodshot eyes, it glimmered green. Tender green.
“I can’t exist in a world without you.”
Henry touched her shoulder, “I think Dr. Leigh needs to examine her.”
“I’m staying right here,” she whispered.
“We need to give him some space…”
“I’m staying right here!”
“It’s fine, Henry,” the doctor said, “I need to check up on both of them. Your daughter…Alice has experienced severe trauma.”
Dr. Leigh was thorough. Calm, reflected, and not saying much.
I felt her eyes on me, but I didn’t dare to meet them.
I felt her leaning in but didn’t dare to lean against her.
I felt her breath on my cheek, but my own was caught.
I felt her kiss.
“I had to,” she whispered, “To feel it’s real.”
I felt warm. Not hot like she used to. But warm. Spreading from my cheek down to the center of my chest and through my limbs.
It was life.
And I dared to meet her eyes. I dared to smile.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You don’t get to thank me, either,” she whispered back, “Not yet, anyway.”
Dr. Leigh’s voice was bare, naked, and intensely factual.
We were off school for the week. And Henry was ordered not to leave the house.
“There’s got to be more,” Henry said, “There’s got to be more I can do.”
“Henry,” the doctor said, “You make soup.”
But there was more. There was always more, and the doctor’s face showed it. He sat back in his chair and looked at his notes.
There was hesitation, and I knew his hesitation meant something uncomfortable was coming.
“Now,” he said, “the treatments. I’m nudging towards putting them on hold.”
If silence had a temperature, it would be sub-zero.
“Unless,” he said, “You give me one good reason this night doesn’t matter.”
I searched their faces, but not even Alice’s could give me the answer. They all looked at me for one.
A cold realization hit me.
My voice felt cold, factual, and final, “He needs to be gone. He must die. It’s the only way I live.”
Dr. Leigh’s eyes burned less on me. They softened as he leaned back in his chair and put his clipboard down.
“I…I have misjudged you, Veronica,” he said, “I’ve…this is why we choose to be doctors. We continue.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what we continued into, but I swore never to put Alice through that again.
We sat nestled in the back of Henry’s car.
She touched me.
And I welcomed her.
But there was something hesitant about her.
And it echoed of pain.
Henry made sure we got inside.
“Hang on,” he said, ushering us to the kitchen.
He faced the broken door by himself so we wouldn’t. The sound carried enough memories to chill my bones.
When he came downstairs, he held something wrapped in a towel. He threw it in the garbage bin.
We all knew what it was.
“Soup,” he said, handing me the butterfly necklace, “That’s what the doctor ordered.”
It felt heavy in my hands as if it held all the pain of that night.
I let Alice put it on me and rest her head against mine.
“Wear it to remind you,” she whispered, “Of your beauty, of your strength. Whatever you need. But that butterfly? It’s me trying to make you understand just how much I fucking love you.”
Even now, after I had utterly destroyed her.
“I’m going to fix you…or at least die trying,” she wept, “But right now…”
She clung on to my hand.
“How do I fix anything when I’m so utterly broken?”
