Poison Ink (18 page)

“Sammi?” her mother said, worry in her voice.

“Sorry, just thinking,” she lied. “Not a lot, I guess. I remember coming out of the gym and seeing the fight going on, then trying to stop it. After that, nothing.”

What?
a little voice said in her head.
Why did you do that? Why lie to your mother, never mind the police?

But Sammi knew. Deep down, she knew. If she tried to tell the story of what really happened, she would get to the point of that tattoo, and they would all just stare at her. Tattoos couldn’t change by themselves. They didn’t spread. And they certainly didn’t move of their own accord.

“What are the police saying?”

Her mother hesitated, obviously afraid to burden her with unpleasant news.

“Mom, please. I’m going to find out eventually.”

“Everyone has a different story. Your friends—”

“They’re not my friends,” Sammi corrected.

Her mother nodded, frowning as if to say,
Of course. Of course they’re not your friends.

“Letty, Caryn, Katsuko, and that Simone girl are claiming they were attacked and only defended themselves. Marisol Garces and her friends are saying they were assaulted and accusing the others of being on some kind of psychotic drug. Zak and the Dubrowski girls are sort of contradictory. Some people tried to say you were with your…with Caryn and the other girls, that you were a part of it. But the police have ruled that out because of the statements from your cousin and Rachael and Anna. Anyway, you’re not in any trouble, thank God. But the rest of them are all being charged with assault.”

Sammi frowned. “The rest of who?”

“All of them. The Reinas—or whatever you all call them—and Caryn and Letty and the others, too.”

“Are they in jail?”

“They should be, but no. Apparently the idea of holding all of those girls didn’t appeal to the judge. They’re all out right now. But the investigation is…Hey. Are you all right?”

Sammi’s eyes had begun to feel heavy, pain exhausting her, sleep creeping up to take her unaware. She forced her eyes open.

“Fine. Just sleepy.”

Her mother got up. “All right. You rest. The doctor will be in soon and—”

“Wait. You didn’t tell me…what’s wrong with me?” Sammi asked, raising her cast. “What’s the damage?”

Her mother’s sadness permeated the room. “Nothing that won’t heal, honey. Your cheekbone is broken, but Dr. Morrissey says it will heal quickly. More of a crack than a break, she said. Most people who have a broken cheekbone also end up with a broken jaw or a broken—what do you call it?—orbital bone. Your eye socket. And that requires surgery. But you won’t need surgery, thank God. The swelling has gone down a lot since Friday night—”

Sammi narrowed her eyes. “What’s today?”

Now the fear practically sparkled in her mother’s eyes. “Sunday.”

Ice spread through Sammi. “I lost a whole day?”

“You weren’t in a coma or anything. The trauma did you in, and then they had you on serious painkillers all through yesterday and last night. You might not remember anything, but you were awake sometimes. You were just…”

Lifting a shaking hand to her forehead, Linda Holland dropped her gaze. Tears began to well in her eyes and her lip quivered.

“Mom?”

Smiling weakly, she wiped her tears away. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I was just so afraid. Seeing you like that, disoriented and all bandaged and bruised. No matter what the doctor said, I couldn’t help fearing the worst. It was like I was holding my breath the whole time, and now, talking to you, I can exhale for the first time.”

Sammi felt her own eyes beginning to well up. “I’m gonna be okay, Mom.”

Linda Holland nodded. “I know.” Then she raised her eyes and studied Sammi more closely. “So your face will heal. It’s going to hurt to talk for a while, and you’ve got to be really careful. Percocet is going to be your friend. Yogurt and ice cream and soup, too, because solid foods are pretty much off limits for a couple of weeks. I guess chewing works against the crack in the bone closing.

“You’ve got two broken fingers under that cast. Three cracked ribs. And a concussion. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but Dr. Morrissey says you were really very lucky. None of the ribs gave way.”

Sammi closed her eyes. On the screen in her mind she saw the faces of her former friends gathering around her, smiling and sneering and even spitting at her as they kicked. She flinched at the memory of the kicks that had landed on her sides and back and breasts and skull.

“I must be bruised all over,” she said, opening her eyes.

Her mother nodded. “Bruises heal, Samantha. So do bones. All that matters is that you’re still here with me.”

Me.

Sammi studied her for a moment, then looked around the room. Her gaze landed on the door out into the hospital corridor. Exhaustion had begun to pull at her again. The throb in her face had grown worse, and she thought that some painkillers would be very welcome at the moment. She looked at the clear bag and the long tube that led to the needle stuck into her arm. The IV drip probably had something in it besides nutrients and water, but she needed a little more. “Where is he?” she asked.

Her mother did not need to ask whom Sammi meant.

“We’ve been taking turns sitting with you,” her mom said. But the tone revealed so much. Sammi understood immediately that her father had visited, but not as often or for as long as her mother thought he should have.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I really think we should talk later. You should rest some more. Get your strength back.”

“Mom.”

Linda Holland sighed, then nodded slowly. “Your father is moving out. He’s going to stay at a Residence Inn for a while, until he figures out his next step. Right now, we’re both just focused on getting you well, and soon.”

Sammi stared at her, eyes burning as tears began to spill down her cheeks. Her throat seemed to close. Barely able to move without spikes of pain in her side and chest and face, she hardly shook at all as she cried.

There would be no more Sunday-morning pancakes. No more family dinners.

Hell, no more family.

“Son of a bitch,” she hissed.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” her mother said.

“I wanted to know. Needed to. It’s done now, right? All that’s left now is living with it.”

Her voice was filled with such bitterness that she did not even recognize it herself. Sammi winced, hearing her own pain. Those words could apply to so many things. Her betraying her friends’ faith in her. The way they’d banished her from their lives. The violence that had put her into this bed, all blood and broken bones.

All of it was in the past now. All that remained for her was to live with it.

“We’ll get through all of it, Sammi. I promise,” her mother said, taking her unbroken hand. “And your father isn’t gone from your life. We’ll all get through it.”

Sammi sighed. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

For long minutes they sat together in silence. Sammi closed her eyes and drifted in and out of fitful sleep, the pain in her face and her ribs flaring any time she inhaled deeply or shifted on the bed.

When the nurse came in and asked how she was feeling, she told the truth. Whatever they had attached to her IV, it worked wonders. The nurse touched a machine that beeped softly beside the bed, increasing the flow. Within minutes, the pain had abated somewhat.

Her thoughts began to feel slippery, her body floating on a gentle ocean.

“I like your tattoo,” her mother said.

Sammi blinked and stared blearily at her. “What?”

“Well, not at first. When I thought it was real, it scared me, like I didn’t know you anymore. But then Kim, one of the nurses, told me it was a temporary one. It’s cute. I don’t know what possessed you to get one, but all in good fun, right?”

“Gonna sleep now,” Sammi thought she said.

“You go ahead. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Sammi felt the darkness closing in around her. A tremor of fear passed through her as she remembered the way it had swallowed her on Friday night as they’d beaten her unconscious.

I don’t know what possessed you.

She feared that she knew exactly what had possessed Letty and the girls. The image of those black tendrils traced all across Letty’s back loomed up in her mind again. Fueled by painkillers, her imagination made them slither under Letty’s skin like snakes.

As Sammi let herself drift off, she prayed the drugs would keep nightmares at bay.

The nightmares came, just as she’d feared. Instead of keeping them away, the drugs only made them worse. By Monday afternoon, Sammi had taken to asking the doctor to decrease the pain medication, preferring the deep ache and sleep deprivation to the images that lurked in her subconscious, waiting for her to fall prey to sleep.

Visitors came and went. T.Q.’s mother was the first of her former friends’ parents to come by. On Monday afternoon, she came in with a small mixed bouquet of flowers and stayed for less than fifteen minutes, made uncomfortable by the dreadfully awkward absence of her daughter. Caryn’s parents sent flowers—and signed their daughter’s name, which seemed almost obscene to Sammi, all things considered—but did not come by in person.

Adam did not send flowers. He did not call or come to visit. Sammi knew they had only met a couple of weeks earlier, but she had taken a fierce liking to the guy, and it hurt her that she hadn’t heard from him. She asked for her cell phone, which she’d had in her pocket on Friday night when all hell broke loose. Maybe he’d left her a message. It could be that he didn’t even know what had happened to her. But no one could locate her cell phone. In the midst of the chaos, it had been lost, and she did not have his number written down anywhere else.

Sammi asked her mother to try to track down a phone number for Adam, and she promised that she would. But as much as Sammi liked Adam, and as disappointed as she was, other things weighed more heavily on her mind.

Her father had visited for several hours on Sunday night and all of Monday morning. Sammi thought he seemed to want credit for missing work to visit her, then wondered if all of her thoughts about her father would be colored by such resentment from now on. Four or five times he stepped out of the room to answer his cell phone, and every time Sammi wished he wouldn’t come back because she knew that her mother would stay gone until her father left.

She loved him, but for a while she planned to give herself the freedom to hate him. Her mother must have shared at least some of the blame, but Sammi didn’t care. Her mother wasn’t the one in the process of moving out.

Not once in his presence did she acknowledge that she was aware of her father’s decision. If he wanted to talk to her about the fact that he planned to move out and separate from her mother—and eventually get divorced—he would have to muster up the guts to bring it up himself, to tell her to her face.

After he left, just after her lunch on Monday—soup and chocolate pudding—Sammi spent a few minutes just quietly crying.

On Tuesday, the police made their long-anticipated visit. Their questions seemed fairly routine. The doctor had already given Sammi an out, making it clear to her parents and the police that it was not uncommon for someone who’d been brutally beaten—and especially received head trauma—to have little or no memory of the incident. Sammi confirmed for the cops the first part of the story that Anna and Rachael Dubrowski and her cousin Zak had told them—that they had not seen the fight break out, but that Las Reinas had threatened violence against Letty and Caryn earlier in the week.

“Zak and Rachael had gone outside right before halftime—” she’d said.

“Why did they do that?” one of the cops had asked.

Sammi only smiled. “I’m guessing they wanted someplace to be alone for a few minutes.”

After that, she lied to the police. She claimed not to remember anything that happened after the first glimpse she got of the melee going on in the dark parking lot. The cops reminded her that Anna, Zak, and Rachael claimed it had been Sammi’s own “friends” who had beaten her so badly, that Las Reinas had run off by then. Sammi had tried to shrug, but winced with the pain, hissing air in through her teeth.

“Are you sure you’re not trying to cover for your friends?” one of the cops—Ransom, she thought his name was—asked.

“What good would that do? You’ve got witnesses,” she’d said.

But it was a good question. A better one would have been why? Why was she covering for her former friends? Sammi hadn’t given it very much thought. She just knew that putting the girls in jail would not be the answer. Images of that tattoo creeping and spreading across Letty’s back like poison ivy kept flashing in her mind.

Not poison ivy,
she thought, as the cop droned on.
Poison ink.

In her nightmares, she saw their faces again—T.Q., Katsuko, Caryn, and Letty, all grinning down at her with gleaming, dead eyes—and every time she woke from one of those dreams, her conviction became greater. Their behavior at school in the week leading up to the fight had made her suspicious, but that night she had become certain.

The girls she knew had not been an illusion. They had practically been her sisters. She had disappointed them, but not one of them would ever have willingly engaged in the kind of behavior she’d seen. And the violence…how could those four girls, none of them a fighter, none of them tough, take down six Reinas?

They couldn’t.

Unless their behavior wasn’t willing at all.

Sammi always stopped her mind from traveling any farther along the path of inquiry those thoughts would lead to. She couldn’t think any more about it, couldn’t dwell on it much. All her life she had loved mystery novels, and she’d haunted the shelves at Cruel and Unusual Books since she could read. Sherlock Holmes had always been a favorite, and while she knew her deductive powers were limited, one bit of advice Holmes had given in Arthur Conan Doyle’s work had always stuck with her.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”