Now would have been the perfect time to tell Dex that I fucked with his meds. He was bound to figure it out on his own anyway. But I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I felt like I had that rare upper hand again. It was a sick, sad thing to want but I couldn’t help but grab at it. With Dex, you never knew how long it would be until the rug was pulled out from under you again. As I had just found out.

I hate you, I thought, my eyes turning narrow and bitter.

“Maybe I should go on meds too,” I said while trying to get out of his grasp in such a subtle way that it wouldn’t cause attention on the street.

He released his grip a bit but kept his head down and close to mine. “Do you remember in Red Fox. When I had been off the meds and I told you how…alive I felt. That I really felt something?”

I nodded, keeping my breath controlled.

“That was the truth. Because the medication does some funny things to you. When it shuts down one part of your brain, it has a ripple effect. It keeps you from seeing with all your eyes. It sucks away your creativity. It hampers your soul. It keeps you from how you really, really feel. Deep, deep inside. For once, I felt everything. And the biggest thing I felt was the way I felt about you. That was like a hammer to the heart.”

I was speechless. I looked into his eyes, which were so close to mine. He was sincere. Sincere, worried, ashamed, scared and so many emotions. And I could see he was feeling something, whatever it was. Despite the damage I had done, I had freed him somehow, even if he didn’t know it. Even if it came with terrible, terrible consequences.

“What are you saying?” I said softly.

“I’m saying that you’re like my best friend,” he said. “You are my best friend, and I could never let pills take away what makes you, you. Your heart. And your beautiful soul.”

Oh. It was wonderful to hear, because I had come to think of him as my best friend, as twisted as that was. But...

And then his motherfucking phone rang. He kept my gaze for a few more moments before letting go of my waist and fishing out his phone.

I didn’t know how many best friends held each other like that.

He glanced at the display and answered it, looking excited. “Hello, Dex speaking.”

He smiled at me as the other person talked. It broadened and for the first time that morning, he looked truly happy.

“Thank you so much. We’ll see you then.”

He hung up and stuck the phone back in his pocket.

“That was Doctor Hasselback.”

“I figured.”

“He said we’re all set to film Block C tonight,” he said, clapping his hands together and wiggling his fingers. An entirely crazed look overcame his eyes, which made me think that he was at least, naturally, a bit manic when it came down to it.

I was still mad at him though. And at one glance at my face, he knew this.

“Look. I know you think I’m a pretty shitty guy after what I just told you. But you have to know that I’m constantly looking out for both of us. I care about me. And I care about you. In the end, I care about you a lot more.”

Well at least he admitted it wasn’t just one way.

“But I’m being honest. I really am. That’s all there is. And now you know it.”

I did have to commend him for actually coming clean when he didn’t have to. It took a lot of guts and a dip in his pride, which I knew didn’t happen too often. I could have come clean too. But I didn’t.

I just nodded. “So I assume Doctor Hasselback didn’t have a problem with us poking around the other night? I was a bit worried about the lights on the second floor, thinking he’d blame it on us.”

I was also worried that after I showed him Dex’s pills, he’d think twice about letting us in.

“No, he didn’t mention it. Doesn’t matter, we’re in.”

He raised his hand to high five me. I returned it half-heartedly. With everything that was going on, returning to the institute kinda seemed like the worst idea on earth.

He clasped my hand in his and gave it a quick shake. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you earlier. I really am. I hope we can just…tell the truth with each other from now on.”

I gave him a tiny smile. There was nothing I wanted more, I just knew on my side it wasn’t going to be too easy. Then again, Dex was here, functioning, and aside from seeing Abby, he seemed to be doing OK. He seemed…alive, as he would put it. Maybe everything would be fine.

We turned and headed back to the apartment. I let that last thought drift behind me and get caught up in a dirty breeze. Of course, things never end up being fine.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The rest of the day was uneventful. We passed the hours watching past seasons of Futurama, while Jenn slept her hangover away. Every little creak from the apartment, every blast from the monorail, or fart from Fat Rabbit had us both jumping in our seats. To say we were on edge was a bit of an understatement.

Finally, at 6 p.m. (a bit later than we left on Tuesday), we got into the Highlander and headed off toward Riverside. We were both mostly silent during the ride, too tense and overwhelmed to talk. I was scared of what we would find in the building. I knew there was some truth in what that Spook Factory chick had said about certain buildings and people being conduits to the unknown. Wherever I was, I attracted these things and it was bound to intensify in a haunted, historical place with a sordid past.

I eyed Dex occasionally as he drove, making sure he wasn’t overly tired from the Valium. So far, he seemed to be making good on my mix. The placebos obviously weren’t harming him, and the Valium would have just calmed him down a bit (which was never a bad thing), so all that was left was him dealing with his “visions.” But as long as he knew that I could see what he saw, we would be OK.

Still, there was something he had said earlier that I kept running through my thoughts during most of the day, and certainly on the drive over through the mounting darkness and the rain that occasionally splattered our windshield. It was “It’s not just Abby. I have a past that I can’t run away from.”

Not just Abby. What else was he haunted by?

But I couldn’t dwell on that forever. I was sure, especially now that he was off the pills, it would rise on its own, during some other time.

I wasn’t looking forward to that.

“You nervous, kiddo?” he asked as he pulled the car up the long, tree-lined driveway, past the cheesy Riverside logo and the flickering lamps.

“Yes,” I said, letting out a low breath.

“Me too,” he admitted. He pulled the car into the parking spot and turned off the car. Even though it was the same building as before (Block C was around the corner and in the woods a bit, naturally), it still looked scary and foreboding. I guess this time we knew exactly what – and who – lurked inside.

We sat in silence for about a minute, listening to the occasional gust of wind or sporadic rain.

“Having second thoughts?” I asked.

“Yes. You?”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes.”

He reached into the front pocket of his black cargo jacket and took out the packet of rolling papers. From the other pocket he took out a small bag of weed.

He started cutting up the weed with a tiny pair of scissors he brought out of yet another pocket and shot me a quick, rather sheepish, look.

“You don’t approve.”

“I…just don’t know if now is the time to light up.”

“When was the last time you smoked pot?” he asked curiously, and started to divide the smelly grains into an open piece of rolling paper. I was amazed at how well he could see in the dark.

“I don’t know,” I started, and thought back. After high school, maybe. After the sessions with Doctor Freedman, after I crashed the car, after my parents freaked out. After the accident. “Long time ago.”

“I think this helps me. It at least makes me feel better. Maybe dulls one part of the brain while the other one lies open. My medication is obviously not doing its job anymore and I’ll be damned if I’m going into this situation totally unaware.”

I could understand that. “I’m not judging.”

“Oh, but you get that little Perry twinkle in your eye.”

I smirked at that. “I have a twinkle?”

“Oh yeah. It’s gorgeous.”

I felt embarrassed and looked out the window.

“No really,” he said. I looked back, caught by his sincerity. He rolled the smoke up, brought it up to his mouth, and ran his wide tongue along the length of it.

My inner thighs had been that joint at one point.

“Well…as I said, I’m not judging,” I told him, pushing that naughty thought out of my mind. “Lord knows I’m no angel.”

“So what was your drug background, if you don’t mind me asking.”

I kinda did mind. I really didn’t want to go dragging that back up. And I know I had explained some of it, the Cliff Notes version, to him at some point. But as he rolled down the window and lit up the joint with his gold lighter, it reminded me that I missed that part of my life. Not the drugs, but just being young and stupid. I was too afraid to be young and stupid again. At twenty three, I felt terribly immature and strangely old at the same time.

“I think I already told you.”

He inhaled and blew most of it out the window and nodded. “You did. You mentioned you did coke once or twice. Pot. Booze. Pills. Sounded like the normal teenage experience to me.”

Normal or not, it sounded heavy coming out of his mouth. But if he could be honest with me about his pills, I could be honest about this. And I really had nothing to hide, not from Dex anyway.

“It was a little bit worse than that.”

He turned in his seat to face me, undoing his seat belt and bringing his foot up on his seat.

“What was your accident?”

“My accident,” I repeated. Drugs were one thing. The accident was another.

“You always blamed whatever accident you had on the drugs. I just wanted to know what the accident was.”

Did I even remember what the accident was half the time? I remembered a fire. A shimmer in the air. I think I was just really high. Jacob was there. He started the fire and I got blamed. That was it, really. But I was having this conversation in my head and not with Dex.

“Someone started a fire at a party I was at. I got blamed. I mean, for the company I kept.”

I looked down at my hands, at the pale glow cast on them from the nearby lights.

Dex frowned while he inhaled and shot the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. His brow never relaxed.

“Reason I ask is that this morning, you were muttering something in your sleep. Which is why I woke you up.”

I looked over at him, startled. “What was I saying?”

“You were saying something about the drugs. That it was the drugs’ fault you saw…the demons.”

The word demons hit me like a brick. I felt breathless. Demons? It didn’t bring up any memories but it brought about the most disgusting, helpless feeling that crawled through my insides, just underneath the skin.