ELEVEN
I catch a glimpse of the clock on the wall and realize it’s only 2:00 in the afternoon.
Which means 6:00 a.m. is 16 hours from now.
Which means I have a lot of hours to fill.
Which means I have to get dressed.
Because I need to get out of here.
And I really need to talk to Adam.
“Juliette?”
I jolt out of my own head and back to the present moment to find Sonya and Sara staring at me. “Can we get you anything?” they ask. “Are you feeling well enough to get out of bed?”
But I look from one set of eyes to another and back again, and instead of answering their questions, I feel a crippling sense of shame dig into my soul and I can’t help but revert back to another version of myself. A scared little girl who wants to keep folding herself in half until she can’t be found anymore.
I keep saying, “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry about everything, for all of this, for all the trouble, for all the damage, really, I’m so, so sorry—”
I hear myself go on and on and on and I can’t get myself to stop.
It’s like a button in my brain is broken, like I’ve developed a disease that forces me to apologize for everything, for existing, for wanting more than what I’ve been given, and I can’t stop.
It’s what I do.
I’m always apologizing. Forever apologizing. For who I am and what I never meant to be and for this body I was born into, this DNA I never asked for, this person I can’t unbecome. 17 years I’ve spent trying to be different. Every single day. Trying to be someone else for someone else.
And it never seems to matter.
But then I realize they’re talking to me.
“There’s nothing to apologize for—”
“Please, it’s all right—”
Both of them are trying to speak to me, but Sara is closer.
I dare to meet her eyes and I’m surprised to see how soft they are. Gentle and green and squinty from smiling. She sits down on the right side of my bed. Pats my bare arm with her latex glove, unafraid. Unflinching. Sonya stands just next to her, looking at me like she’s worried, like she’s sad for me, and I don’t have long to dwell on it because I’m distracted. I smell the scent of jasmine filling the room, just as it did the very first time I stepped in here. When we first arrived at Omega Point. When Adam was injured. Dying.
He was dying and they saved his life. These 2 girls in front of me. They saved his life and I’ve been living with them for 2 weeks and I realize, right then, exactly how selfish I’ve been.
So I decide to try a new set of words.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I feel myself begin to blush and I wonder at my inability to be so free with words and feelings. I wonder at my incapacity for easy banter, smooth conversation, empty words to fill awkward moments. I don’t have a closet filled with umms and ellipses ready to insert at the beginnings and ends of sentences. I don’t know how to be a verb, an adverb, any kind of modifier. I’m a noun through and through.
Stuffed so full of people places things and ideas that I don’t know how to break out of my own brain. How to start a conversation.
I want to trust but it scares the skin off my bones.
But then I remember my promise to Castle and my promise to Kenji and my worries over Adam and I think maybe I should take a risk. Maybe I should try to find a new friend or 2. And I think of how wonderful it would be to be friends with a girl. A girl, just like me.
I’ve never had one of those before.
So when Sonya and Sara smile and tell me they’re “happy to help” and they’re here “anytime” and that they’re always around if I “need someone to talk to,” I tell them I’d love that.
I tell them I’d really appreciate that.
I tell them I’d love to have a friend to talk to.
Maybe sometime.