Bitter Angel (11 page)

Jay and Nilah hear my screams before they reach my own ears. It’s the same ear-piercing wail from my nightmare when I tried to wipe the blood off my hands and it wouldn’t come off.

Within seconds, Jay practically shreds the wooden frame, and the door bangs open. He takes me by the shoulders.

Nilah peers around him. “What is wrong with her?”

“God, I don’t know!”

I can see my deranged expression in the reflection of his wide eyes, and I manage to stop screaming. “It was real!
It was real!
”

“Get her to the bed,” Nilah orders.

Jay lifts me again. Carrying me to my bed, he lays me down flat. “Baby.” His hand hovers inches from my face like he’s afraid he might break me. “You need to tell us what’s wrong. Are you in pain? Tell me where it hurts.”

I stare catatonically at the ceiling, hearing him, not absorbing, trying to turn the rusty wheels of my brain to figure out what is happening to me. Rather, what
has
happened to me. Or maybe what
will
happen to me.

I begin with a mental checklist. I was in two places at once—check. I was captured by and then escaped from a gang of rapists—check. My escape somehow led police to capture said rapists and free my friends—check. Although, I don’t know for sure if they were all captured. That detail wasn’t explained.

When I stayed back with Jay, Heather and Nilah were killed by rapists—check. I shudder at that thought. When I woke up this morning, none of the events had yet occurred—check. I woke up in the clothes I escaped in last night—check.

Somehow, I experienced everything, both nights, and I woke up without the physical consequences…and I’ve been given back this day.

This
did
happen—check.

This was
not
a dream—check.

That last check clicks into place in a very final way.
This was not a dream.
I remember every
detail. I can still feel
Alpha’s knife at my throat and smell
his breath on my face. Yet I remember Jay and I nakedly tangled on my bed last night. This happened. The drinks, the dancing, the horror, the nausea—
oh, the nausea
. It’s all too real.

Even though I technically determined that I’m not crazy, I feel no comfort knowing what I went through was real. Who would after being terrorized by a group of bored, horny, foul human beings, waiting to demoralize and debase young women for all their worth? Definitely stripping them of their spirit, but also possibly taking their lives in the process?

Answer: no one.

Now I need to figure out
why
this has happened to me. Why have I been given this second chance by a God I wasn’t entirely sure existed until now? Yet I know it’s God because who else has the capability to
rewind
time? Honestly.

This isn’t just a rewind. I think it’s notable to point out that this time around is different because Jay showed up a day early, and I woke up in Trigger’s T-shirt. This is too much for one brain to handle, understand, and grasp in the amount of time I don’t have to grasp it, but I do know I have been given this chance for a reason. I need to do something
.

1. I am no doubt keeping my friends from going anywhere near Knoxville tonight.

2. …

I debate number two for a while. If I go to the police without any kind of proof, they’ll have no need to check these guys out. Since I haven’t read a newspaper in, say, nineteen years, eight months and eleven days, I have no idea if the police have come to the conclusion that these rapes are being committed by a group of men and not just one person. I don’t know if these rapes are being reported at all.

From what I remember, those assholes were pretty quick to skim info from us—where we went to school and the fact that we were from out of town
. Maybe all these girls are out-of-towners, and they don’t remember the next morning?
If, hopefully, they have a next morning.

When I realize that I’ve been mutely dazing at the ceiling this whole time while Jay and Nilah hover over me, I snap out of it. Jay is in the middle of asking me again where it hurts, and Nilah is beginning to argue whether it’s a physical pain.

I interrupt them both. “I need your help,” I tell Jay.

He eyes me curiously. “With what?”

“I need to borrow your car.”

I don’t have a concrete plan yet, but I have an idea. I hope.

Jay pulls sharply away, surveying me with narrowed eyes. “No way in hell I will let you go anywhere without me until you tell me what just happened. What’s going on, Lil?”

Poor Jay.
I feel awful for putting him through this. Leave it to my near break from sanity for his badass side to come out.

“I can’t explain. I just need to borrow your car.” I look at Nilah. “Hand me my phone.”

She offers me my phone from the desk, gazing at me warily.

I text Heather:
911. Meet outside in 5.

I rip my drawer apart for some jeans and a new T-shirt.
I can’t wear this thing. It might be evidence.
Since I’m wearing the T-shirt, I am also strangely wearing the black lacy bra meant for this evening, which further proves my case. Taking no time for privacy, I dress hastily and slip into a pair of sneakers with no socks. I shove my cell in my front pocket, snatch my wallet from the drawer in my nightstand, and tuck Trigger’s shirt under my arm.

Jay is getting mad and tripping over the legs of his jeans as he shrugs them on. “Lil. Slow down. Tell me what’s going on,” he demands, exasperated. He pulls his head through a scarlet and navy long-sleeve logo tee from his university.

Just in case, I also snatch a hoodie from a hook by the door. “I’ll tell you in the car. I swear.” I grip Nilah’s arms. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back. Don’t go
anywhere
tonight.”

Birthday girl indignation rises on her face, and I cut her off before she can say anything.

“Promise me.”

She breathes angrily like a bull through her nose. It’s not fair for her to treat me this way. I know I’m freaking her out and asking her to do things I shouldn’t be.

Since this is Nilah, I shake her to get through to her that I’m serious. “Promise me!”

The anger melts and is instantly replaced with a meek uncertainty. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

At the last second, I take two giant steps toward the shelf beneath my desk drawer and snatch up the small digital point-and-shoot camera Jay got me for my birthday last year. I power it up. Battery bar says full. I snap open the memory card dock to see it occupied.
I hope I don’t need this.
I mean, I loved Nancy Drew and all, but I never wanted to be
her. I can’t count on anything right now. Nothing is solid.

Then I’m gone, jog-walking across campus with Jay at my side. He takes my hand and doesn’t bother asking any more questions—for now—which makes me want to stop and hug him. If I do, I know I’ll break down, and I can’t afford that right now. For the moment, I just appreciate how well he knows me and how much I love him.

In anticipation of seeing Heather, imagining her eyes open with that healthy, youthful glow to her face, I speed up. We’re almost to Tuller Hall, where her Friday 7:30 a.m. class is, and I spy her blonde hair up ahead. It’s crimped for today’s special occasion. Just the sight of her—standing, breathing, not passed out—brings tears to my eyes.

When she spots me, she holds up her hands. We’re within earshot now.

“What on earth? We were in the middle of test prep.” She gives me her most withering look. “This better be good.”

I want to squeeze her to me, but I’ll save that for later. “It is.”

Realizing I’m panting, I take a second and double over to catch my breath. It reminds me too realistically of last night, and I straighten up like a pin. “Jay and I need to do something, and I know it’s Neels’s birthday, but you need to
promise
me you guys will stay here tonight.”

She tilts her head, questioning. “Why? Where are you going?”

I shake my head. “I can’t explain. Just please promise me. Please.” I take her hand and squeeze it, my sign to her
that I’m sincere. “
Please
,” I whisper.

Her hesitant expression mimics Nilah’s, but she complies. “Okay. When are you guys coming back?”

I breathe in and blow it out through my nose as I think about it. “I don’t know.” It’s the only answer I can give her right now. As long as my friends are safe, I don’t care. “One more thing. Do you still have the number of that guy you dated last semester? The one that went to UT.”

She nods.

“Call him and ask him if he has any idea which building the pharmacology majors bunk in.”

“Okay,” she replies, suspicious.

I’m beginning to regret not taking a few minutes to come up with a better explanation than
I can’t explain
.

“Great!” I drag Jay away before she has time to change her mind. I shout behind me, “Call me when you hear from him.”

“I will!” she yells back.

I hold onto that tiny promise because the alternative is not an option.

Jay doesn’t speak to me until we’re nearly a half hour into the trip. He’s been driving dutifully, hands on the ten and two, watching the road while I stew in silence. I’m terrified to talk because I don’t know how I’ll answer his questions—or my own. He’s calm, eerily so, and it’s starting to scare me.

“When you’re ready to talk…” He lets the sentence hang.

Okay,
I mentally prep myself.
You can do this. Just tell him…what exactly?

I clear my throat thoroughly and take a long glance at him from my periphery. I peel his right hand off the wheel and hold it for comfort. “I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound really, really insane, but I need you to trust me.”

His profile hardens.

“Do you trust me?”

“Honestly?” He takes his eyes off the road for a moment, making me feel the impact of his aggravation. “I don’t know. You wake up this morning, freaking, thinking you killed someone. I think you’re okay, but you scream bloody murder like you saw a dead body in the bathroom. You stare at the ceiling for ten minutes, and then you jump off the bed and want to drive to over an hour away to UT! How is any of that normal, Lil?”

I swallow. My voice is quiet, humble. “It’s not, but I’m asking for your trust here, Jay. Have I ever done anything like this in the past to make you question me?”

He chews on that for a minute. “No.”

“I need you to trust me now. Something happened to me last night, and the best way I can explain it is that I had some sort of psychic dream or something.” I let him digest that. He waits for me to continue. “I woke up this morning believing that I had already
lived
Friday. It was so real, I feel like I actually
did
live it.” I could elaborate on how I think I did live it, but I don’t want to push it. Better to just leave at the dream scenario.

He looks at me again with less aggravation and more guarded curiosity.

“A lot of things happened in this dream, and I can’t tell you everything yet, but something happened to Nilah and Heather—to all three of us—in this dream. And I know I can keep it from happening to them, but I need to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.” I take a long pause. “Will you help me?”

He lets out a heavy sigh. I’m asking a lot of him, and I don’t expect him to believe me fully. All I need is for him to be on my side.

I squeeze his hand in mine. “Do you trust me?”

“I don’t know whatever the hell this is but,” he squeezes back, “yeah, I trust you.”

I lean my head against the seat in relief, my eyes on his profile again. “Thank you.”

He sneaks a glance at me, and I can tell he might trust me, but a part of him—a really big part—is still worried for my mental health. “What now?”

I pull my phone out of my front pocket. “Now…we wait.”

His hands return to the steering wheel as he settles into his seat, slightly more relaxed. “While we’re waiting,” his eyes cut to me, “you talk.”