Page 22 of The Misfits
Dexter reset it.
Imagine you’re looking at a heart monitor. See the flat, bland line? That was my heart two months ago. Now imagine a massive surge of electricity jolting through my chest. The flat line spikes up high on the graph before it returns to a standard, rhythmic beat.
Dexter is the surge.
Nick is the normality.
I return my eyes to Dexter, grateful for the surge but frightened by what it means. He’s still shuddering. The purple bruise around his wound is barely distinguishable since his olive skin is pale and blue.
“Stop it!”I shout at the voices in my head, my demand accompanied by ripping out several chunks of my hair. I’m sick to death of the stupid things they say every single day.
Do this.
Do that.
That puppy would look better without its tail.
Nick will never forgive me if I sleep with another man. For that alone, I can’t listen to them.
Wanting to silence their snarky comments, I slide a pill bottle out of the pocket in my dress. These tablets are the ones the doctors prescribed after I informed my teacher that my father had killed my mother. He told everyone I was sick. That what I saw wasn’t true. I thought it was, but within a few months of taking these pills, I began to wonder if I was mistaken.
Maybe my dad didn’t stab my mom twelve times until her pale blue dress turned into a sea of red. Maybe he didn’t leave her sleeping in their bed for six months until the smell of her decaying body became so unbearable he had no choice but to bury her. I was certain he hid her in our barn because he didn’t want anyone to know he had killed her, but maybe I was wrong. These tablets do make me confused. They make me doubt everything and everyone, but at least they numb the pain.
I tap three tablets into my palm. The voices in my head will never be fully silenced, but my prescription calms me down so much, I barely hear them. It is a double-edged sword. If I don’t take them, the pain in my heart won’t stop. If I do take them, my daddy was right. I am a Grade-A lunatic.
I should take them. The memories surfacing in my head are more violent than usual. I’m not surprised. The blood streaming from Dexter’s wound matches the stain I scrubbed from my parents’ mattress the day after my mother was buried. His painful screams when I poured the whiskey over his wound were as vocal as my mom’s before my dad silenced her cries with his blade.
I hate feeling confused, but the pain in my chest is too intense to ignore. I have no choice. I can either be medicated or believe my father murdered my mother as callously as I killed Bryce.
Preferring to pretend neither of those events transpired, I raise my hand to my mouth. Here it comes—a blackness so dense, it doesn’t just numb my thoughts, it freezes my heart as well.
seven
CLAUDIA
Just before my tongue laps up the personality-disorienting tablets, a long growl rumbles through the cabin. Dexter is awake, and his hand is creeping toward the stitches in his back. Although his low growl makes my heart flutter, it also kickstarts my legs.
“Uh. Uh!” I grunt, warning him to stay away.
My tablets skid across the floor with a clatter when I sprint across the dark space. My steps are so fast I reach Dexter in two heart-thrashing seconds. I swat his hand three times before he grips my wrists in a painful hold. He tosses me over his body, his lack of effort making it seem as if I am weightless.
I hit the wall opposite the bed with a thud before landing on the smelly mattress face first. I want to say that is the end of the horror. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Dexter is on my back two seconds later. With his blood-scented breaths quivering against my neck, the raging beat of my heart drops several inches lower. It aligns with a stiff region of Dexter’s body digging into my backside.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” he hisses, his snarl brimming with violence.
My excitement shifts to fear. I try to grunt. I try to move. But I don’t do either of those things. His body pinning mine to the mattress is too heavy. I can barely breathe, let alone respond.
The fear depriving my lungs of oxygen diminishes when Dexter murmurs, “Claudia?”
He burrows his nose into my hair before inhaling an enormous whiff.
I shouldn’t like that he can identify me by my scent, but I do.
“Claudia.” This grumble is a confirmation, not a question.
When he rolls off me, my nostrils flare. I pretend I’m refilling my lungs with air. In reality, I’m trying to calm the heat roaring through my body. The snarky voices inside my head were right. Together, Dexter and I have enough heat to keep half the continent comfortable this winter. Blankets would be an unnecessary requirement.
After his eyes float around the cabin, Dexter returns them to me. “You found it.”
