Page 117 of Tell Me Why
Tina looked back at Tell.
His hair might have been smaller.
Or it might have been snakes.
“Fight,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I know you’re still in there, because you got yourself out. You have to fight, though. Don’t get lost in there.”
“I’m going to have to cut it all out of her,” Ginger said. “The sooner the better. It’s going to keep degrading her until it’s all out.”
Tell nodded, his eyes fixed on Tina’s.
“I understand,” he said.
“Tell,” Ginger said, her tone changed. “I can’t sedate her, I can’t anesthetize her. Painkillers would kill her, at the doses that I would have to give her, for them to work. If I do this, it’s going to be dry. It’s just going to be alotof pain, and if it’s for no purpose… I’ll do it. Iwantto do it. I want to see what they’re up to. I’m keeping everything. But you’re the one who needs to say that it’s not worth it if it isn’t. If you’re going to regret it because it was just more torture.”
Tell’s eyes didn’t move.
“Is this real?” Tina asked, and Tell nodded.
“It is.”
She couldn’t trust him.
He’d lied to her before.
So many times.
Told her so many things.
His hair wasn’t snakes anymore.
He was lying better.
It didn’t matter.
If he wasn’t real, what she said to him didn’t change what was going to happen next. If he was, she hadthis momentto choose what became of her.
She knew.
She understood, a moment of lucid hallucination, that this was her mind preparing her for the fact that they were about to butcher her.
Maybe it would be easier if she said yes. If she agreed to it.
Maybe shehadto say yes before it wouldwork, and sheneededto say no. She needed to fight. She needed to find the knife and stab him in the face with it and try to get out.
Again.
She had to fight.
That was what he’d told her.
She should say no.
Fight.
But he was right there.
And his face was beginning to stretch again, and the purple box was shrinking and expanding, and if Tina was ever going to walk again, it would be on someone else’s feet.
