Beyond Repair (2 page)

And she didn’t want to do that.

She just wanted everything to work again. She’d barely done
a single thing and her entire body was trembling. Her breathing was this
unsettling wheeze and for what? Five minutes of struggling with a big, heavy
body? Why was she sweating like this? She could taste it on her lip, ripe and
salty. Could feel it trickling down over her temples and into her hair—and all
over so little.

Well, she wouldn’t let it win this time. She wasn’t trying
to drag a bookcase down some stairs here. She was trying to stop someone dying
on her floor, and if she failed he’d never be in that Captain Amazing sequel.
She’d have to watch someone else being supercool in spandex, and somehow that
seemed like the worst crime of all.

So she ground her teeth together and went for it again—hard
enough to strain muscles that she definitely needed and pull things that she’d
pay for tomorrow.

But she’d think about that later, after he wasn’t dead.

“Okay, buddy,” she said. “It’s shower time.”

* * * * *

She somehow didn’t expect him to jerk awake when she blasted
him in the face with a sharp stream of cold water. Though she realized how
stupid that expectation was, once she’d done it. Of course he jerked awake, of
course he did. He wasn’t in the least bit dead, and she was suddenly
waterboarding him.

She was lucky he didn’t immediately get her on human rights
violations.

Instead, he did another thing she hadn’t anticipated—he
acted the way five-year-olds generally do when they suddenly realize how
sprinklers work. He put two shocked hands up to his face and tried to stop
whatever was attacking him, while making the funniest affronted sound she’d
ever heard. She wanted to laugh before she remembered exactly what was
happening here.

She was trying to revive Holden Stark.

Holden Stark, who she would now have to speak to using her
actual words and her real mouth. He’d think it was funny if she saved him from
an overdose and then didn’t say anything. Unless she could pretend that she was
mute, which seemed doubtful. She was already wondering how to explain what she
was doing when he spluttered that she should stop.

And when she did and he sort of slumped against the wall in
this too-sleepy way, she wanted to shout.
Stay awake
, she wanted to yell
at him, but fortunately she didn’t have to. Hitting him with the shower spray
had the exact same effect. It made him sit bolt upright again, gasping and
panting.

Only this time he opened his eyes.

Oh God, those eyes.

She wasn’t in any way prepared for those eyes. It was like
someone had found the switch around the back of the sun, and moved it to On.
She’d never in all her life seen anything as blue or as bright, and for a long
moment it paralyzed her. She clutched the showerhead and tried not to look, and
absolutely failed.

This was why he was a movie star, she realized.

Normal humans simply didn’t have eyes like that. She’d
always thought the effect was faked, but if anything his eyes were better in
person. Somehow, they were better in person
after he’d just suffered through
an overdose
. God only knew how good they could get, on his best day.

This was undoubtedly his worst.

She knew it was, before he said. Those eyes were shot
through with something other than pretty nothingness. And as she watched, his
whole face seemed to sag in a manner that caught her somewhere unexpected.
Just
below the heart
, she thought, about a second before he spoke and made it so
much worse.

“It didn’t work,” he said.

This time, it hit her full force in the chest. She wanted to
take his hand suddenly, but she knew she couldn’t. She’d only been in his
presence for about half an hour, and even if that wasn’t the case…he was
famous. He probably hated people grabbing his hand. He probably hated it so
much that he’d tried to kill himself over it.

Because it was obvious now that this was what he’d
attempted. He put his head back against the tiles, in a sort of hopelessness
she recognized only too well. His hands kept making fists, then relaxing, then
making fists again—so tight his knuckles turned white. And even after he’d
started to shiver, he didn’t try to move. She shut the shower off and he just
sat there, slumped inside his soaked clothes, defeated.

It gave her this incredible urge to say something to him…but
what?
Everything will be okay
sounded so trite in her head and
Do you
want me to call an ambulance?
seemed like too much pressure. Maybe he just
wanted to sit there for a little bit and gather himself back together—God knows
she had. She was still sitting and gathering herself, in truth.

She’d just mostly managed to disguise it as scrubbing floors
and painting window frames and pretending to know how to fix the rest of this
ramshackle old thing she somehow owned at the ripe old age of twenty. And some
days it worked too. Some days it was good, to know that she actually owned
something and could make it as beautiful or as horrible as she wanted.

And then other days you almost killed yourself on someone
else’s rug.

“I wasn’t sure…I didn’t know if this was the right thing to
do,” she said—mainly because the silence had gone on too long, now. If she gave
him another second he might think about doing it again. He might go for her
medicine cabinet and slash himself to pieces with her razor, and she just
didn’t know how to deal with that.

Hauling someone to safety, yes. Wrestling them for control
of a blade, no.

“But I couldn’t just leave you there,” she added, and this
time he gave her some response. He groaned and put his fist to his forehead and
followed it with something so absurd she almost laughed.

“Oh man, I trashed your rug.”

Was that really his chief concern here? And if it was, she
liked him a lot better than she’d ever thought she’d like a movie star. Weren’t
they mostly arrogant jackasses who never apologized about anything? But here he
was apologizing for something so slight, in the middle of an actual suicide
attempt.

Surely that qualified him for saintly status?

“I’m so sorry. I think I busted your door too.”

“I’m sure my door will be fine.”

“But the rug bought it, right?”

“The rug received a near-fatal vomit wound, but I think I
can revive it.”

It startled her to see him smile. And sure, it was just this
faint and trembling sort of thing, close to collapse. But it was there, and
maybe if she carried on like this it would find some foundations. It would get
stronger.

The question was—how to carry on like this with a famous
person? What possible point of commonality could they have?

“Man,” he said. “You look as crazy as I feel.”

She didn’t think badly of him. The truth was, she
did
look crazy. She was in her big old granddad’s nightshirt, and her hair still
hadn’t completely grown in on one side. It had taken on an almost lopsided air,
and when she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror she saw that
sleeping had exacerbated the situation.

Some of it was trying to escape off the left side of her
head. She tried to smooth it back down when he wasn’t looking, but of course
that only made things worse. Now her fringe was pointing skyward, and even more
horrifying…

He’d definitely noticed her doing it.

He’d noticed her being weird and vain in the middle of
helping him to his feet. And she couldn’t even explain, either, because how did
you go about doing that? She couldn’t possibly say,
You’re just so massive
and impressive, and I’m so small and ridiculous
. It was how she felt, but
it didn’t really matter here.

Or at least, she thought it didn’t.

He seemed to think otherwise.

“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t—”

“Your hair
is
crazy. But in a good way.”

“Is there a good way, for crazy hair?” she asked—mainly
because this conversation was serving one purpose, at least. It was taking her
mind off the hand she’d offered him, and the easy manner in which he’d taken
it. Now she could feel his rough palm and his big fingers, and how little he
seemed to care that he was holding on to her.

It wasn’t a big deal. It totally wasn’t a big deal.

He wasn’t that enormous, really.

“Sure—you ever seen a seventies rock chick?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they’d thank you for comparing us.
Pretty sure they never wear an old man’s nightshirt.”

He made the strangest sound, then. Like a chainsaw rubbing
against a rusty knife. It took her a good ten seconds to realize it was meant
to be a laugh, but even after she had she couldn’t fathom it. How had she
managed to make that happen? She was barely functioning. She wasn’t even sure
what she was saying—though maybe that was the idea. The less she thought about
things, the more chance she had of improving his mood.

“Maybe not—but believe me, the hair’s dead-on.”

“I think this is all just code for your hair is a weird
rectangle.”

He made that sound again, but it was better this time. Less
like she needed to get him to a throat doctor fast. More like a normal human
noise.

His efforts at moving, on the other hand…

“I think I’ve forgotten how to walk.”

“You haven’t forgotten. Your ability to walk is just
sleeping. It’ll come back once I’ve sat you down on the couch and filled you
full of warm drinks.”

He fell silent, then, for far too long a time. Didn’t he
realize she needed this conversation, to help with the next step? He was
practically leaning on her as she eased them both out the door, and he’d been
right about the walking thing too. His legs were dragging in this weird way—one
that made her think of CAT scans and other complicated hospital things that he
might need.

Maybe he’d burst his brain. Maybe he was going to die in her
arms.

Maybe he should just speak, before she went insane.

And then he did, and everything made even less sense than it
had before.

“You’re such a sweetheart. How are you such a sweetheart?”

She glanced up, whip-quick. Was he joking? He had to be
joking. The words were just so weird and unexpected, and his expression didn’t
help any with figuring them out. He looked surprised, she thought.

And sort of…warm.

“Anyone would do this.”

“I don’t think they would.”

“Of course they would.”

“I think they would have called the cops, the second they
saw the busted door.”

“Well I didn’t see the busted door, so—”

“And they’d have probably gotten out their shotgun, for the
ruined rug.”

“Nobody cares about a rug. Why are you so obsessed with the
rug?”

“Everybody cares about a rug. And they care even more about
a big, strange dude in their house.”

She was right on the verge of correcting him.
You’re not
strange
, she wanted to say.
You’re Holden Stark—everybody knows who you
are.
And then he spoke, and suddenly she couldn’t say anything at all. She
kind of froze instead, with him still attached like a massive limb she’d never
noticed before.

“Especially when big dudes obviously make them nervous.”

He meant her, she knew. She’d somehow given her nervousness
away, though she hadn’t meant to. She hadn’t said a word when he’d suddenly
smacked his big hand around her waist, and she was sure any flinching had been
kept to a minimum. It was important to keep it to a minimum, when he clearly
didn’t intend to grab her.

He’d just needed to steady himself, and now she’d somehow
made him feel bad.

“No, really, I’m not nervous at all.”

She was aware that this just made her seem very nervous
indeed. But what could she do? She couldn’t tell him the truth—
I spent most
of the last three years in a hospital, and now I’m socially weird
.
I
still feel like I’m seventeen inside and no amount of house buying is making me
grow up right.
He wouldn’t understand that.
She
didn’t even
understand that.

She’d always been old for her age…until it happened.

“It’s okay, honey—you should be nervous. Sudden huge, hairy
stranger in your home…messing up your stuff, using you as a crutch.”

He wasn’t quite holding on to her that hard anymore. In
fact, he’d worked his way up to a slow but steady pace and had just negotiated
her coffee table almost solo.

She knew what he was driving at, however.

“Is this where you reveal you’re a secret serial killer?”

“Hey, I could be. You never know.”

“Think it would have been in the papers by now.”

“So you
do
know who I am. Damn. Almost thought I’d
gotten away with it, then.”

He said it like a joke, but she could hear something
underneath. Something unsettling, that kind of made her feel bad. Maybe he’d
wanted her to pretend, or never bring it up. He was just an ordinary guy having
a bad time, and she was some girl who’d decided to help him out of the goodness
of her heart.

Only now…now it was possible he thought otherwise.

She could have done it all because he was famous.

“I don’t think you could ever get away with it…but I don’t
care, if that’s what you mean. I was just saying that it made me feel a little
safer, that’s all.”

“Oh honey, I can tell you don’t care.”

“You can?”

“Sure I can. You’re not asking me for my autograph, right
now, are you?”

God, did people actually do that in situations like this?
The way he said it suggested they did, but she found it hard to imagine. He was
practically dead on his feet, and when he sat on the couch it was really more
of a slump. He didn’t even seem able to take off his jacket. He just batted at
it ineffectually then gave up.

You’d have to be insane to have autographs on your mind. All
she could think about was the state he seemed to be in, closely followed by
slightly weird but largely practical thoughts like,
I wonder if he’s going
to need me to cut that coat off
.

“Well no…but I’m hoping that’s not a good indicator.”

“The way you seem is a good indicator.”

“And how do I seem?”

She was almost afraid to ask, and the long pause he took
before answering didn’t help. It gave her a chance to imagine a million things,
and all of them were horrible and hideous. Some of them were memories of
paintings in fairytales, of evil hermit trolls who didn’t like people and got
their comeuppance in the end.

Though none were as frightening as the one he actually went
with.

“Like something out of a dream,” he said, so soft and
strange she could nearly feel it herself. Everything seemed to waver and drift,
and that was before he added more faintly unsettling things. “Man, those eyes
of yours.”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“They remind me of an eclipse.”

She knew what he meant immediately. She saw it in the mirror
every day—those two empty holes in her head. Once she’d been her Mom’s
black-eyed girl, but over time they’d turned into something else. They’d turned
into the dark side of the moon.

And he’d noticed.

“You’re probably just not seeing things right.”

“Probably.”

“My eyes are plain old dark brown.”

“Right,” he said, but he wasn’t really agreeing.

He was just nodding off.

He was nodding off, after an overdose.

“Don’t go to sleep, Holden, okay?”

It was the first time she’d said his name aloud. The first
time she’d thought of it, without seeing it in lights. Now he really was just
some guy who might still be in trouble, slumped on her couch.

And she was just a girl who had no idea what to do.

“I won’t.”

“Maybe I should call a doctor.”

“No, no. Seriously, I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine then stay awake. Okay? Stay awake.”

He opened his eyes, but in a lazy way. A way that showed
more of those incredibly long and incredibly black eyelashes than it did
anything else. She could just about see the blue between, but only because that
blue was so damn incredible.

“I’m awake.”

“I should have kept you walking. Isn’t that what you’re
supposed to do?”

“Probably, but it’s not going to happen on these legs. I
think they’ve turned to water. I should probably put down a towel.”

“Then focus on something. You take off your jacket, while I
make some tea.”

It sounded like a good plan, in her head. Then absolutely
ridiculous, once it was out—like something a seventy-year-old grandmother would
say.

And apparently he thought so too.

“I’m not sure that’s going to cut it,” he said, in this
swinging sarcastic voice she recognized from a dozen movies. It was the one he
used when he quipped just before blowing the bad guy away—only now it seemed
kind of sad. Sad, and a little weary.

“So what would cut it?”

“Talking,” he said. “Talking would cut it.”

“You should probably know—it’s not my strongest suit.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then how come I’m enjoying this so much?”

“Because you’re still probably stoned,” she said, but when
he patted the coffee table in front of him she found herself sitting down. It
was almost impossible not to. Whether he was telling the truth about her
conversational skills or not, she understood the sentiment. This was the best
talk she’d had for months.

This was the
only
talk she’d had for months.

“Maybe. But I think you’re helping, dream girl.”

“Dream girl isn’t going to make you seem any less off your
gourd.”

“You better tell me your name, then. Make things more real.”

She paused for just a moment. But it was a moment too long.
It stank of a lie when she finally forced the fake name out, though really what
choice did she have? The fake one was on everything now. She couldn’t say her
real one and then have him see something else on the back of a random bill. And
even if there was absolutely no chance that would happen…did she really want
him to know?

She didn’t want the
mailman
to know.

Explaining to Holden Stark was just unthinkable.

“It’s Alice,” she said, then waited with bated breath.

He didn’t seem to find anything amiss, however.

“Down the rabbit hole, huh? Guess I really am in a dream
world.”

“Yeah, yeah. Like I’ve never heard any of this before.”

She hoped he did not know that she’d never heard any of that
before.

In her old life someone had once asked her where the
The
Famous Five
was, but that was the extent of her experience with name
jokes. Thankfully, however, it was not the extent of his. He had loads of stuff
to talk about, with a name like Holden.

“Hey—don’t feel bad. At least you’re not an angsty
teenager,” he said, and after he had everything was fine. They didn’t have to
discuss her fakery now.

They could just talk about his.

“But Holden’s not your real name though,” she said,
confident in the answer.

No one was called Holden. Nobody named their son that.

Except for his weird mom, apparently.

“Sadly, yes.”

“And Stark too?”

“Uh-huh. I know, disgustingly macho, right?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say it, but…”

“But my name sweats testosterone.”

“I was kind of hoping it was secretly Norman.”

“Oh yeah, I like that. Norman…Norman Dweezel.”

She laughed the second he’d said it, but immediately wished
she hadn’t. It came out as bad as his. It sounded all weird—as if she hadn’t used
it in a thousand years. Even he looked surprised to hear it, and he’d never
heard the laugh she’d had before.

The lighter one. The one that didn’t stink of rust.

“Maybe
you
need the cup of tea.”

“I know that was awful—sorry.”

“Was that a laugh? Or were you clearing your throat?”

“I’m going to say throat clearing. Dweezel was funny, but
not enough to get me.”

“No? Then what
would
get you?”

Something happened when he said it—a kind of shiver over her
skin. But then she shook herself and it flitted away. He didn’t mean
get you
,
get you. He wasn’t going to chase her through the house in the dark with big
monster arms.

And she wasn’t about to hide in the closet.

“Bernard Horganblaster,” she said, and watched as his eyes
slowly drifted closed. It was in the good way though, this time. The way that
reminded her of blissful things, like biting into a bar of chocolate after a
long period of near starvation.