“Perhaps you should’ve corrected our assumption. ”
“Yeah. ” I stared down at the step between my knees, feeling like a little kid.
“You really had us worried,” Dave piped up, staring straight ahead, just like I was.
“No I didn’t,” I argued. “You didn’t know there was any trouble until the cops called you in. From where I’m sitting, I was sparing you two worry. That was the point of not correcting your assumption, anyway. ”
“Thanks,” they said together, neither one of them sounding sincere.
We sat in a row—monkeys Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Speak No Evil, respectively.
Lu stared off at one of the two ambulances. “Your friends okay?”
“They’re okay. Benny knocked his head on a tree, but he’ll live. ”
Dave dropped his head into his hands, propping his forehead up with his elbows on his knees. “Eden, somebody died out here tonight. ”
“I didn’t mean it that way. It was a poor choice of words. ”
One of the other ambulances was closing up, and through the square window in the back I saw Dana’s blond head. I was miserable, but there was no fixing anything now, so I’d be better off if I could keep my mouth shut.
Lu leaned around me, noticing the hole in my shirt for the first time, and the dark stain around it. “What’s this?” she asked, and my mood sank even further.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
“Nothing?” She had Dave’s attention then, and they leaned in to poke at my chest.
“Well, you know. I’ve been running around in the dark, in the woods, and I’m sure I’ve finished the evening with more than a couple of scrapes. Bruises, and the like. It’s no big deal. ”
Dave’s voice lifted an octave. “No big deal? Look at this crusty mess. You were bleeding. ”
If it had been any other time, he’d have been answered with a menstrual joke. But he was Dave, and not someone else, so I saved it. It occurred to me that I needed to find a different way to deal with stress than resorting to bad humor. But it had been a rough night, and I was too tired to change my coping mechanism now.
“Leave me alone, y’all. I need a shower, my bed, and half a box of Band-Aids. And I’ll be fine. ”
“Let me see it,” Lu demanded, and I let her.
I tugged the neckline of my shirt down to reveal a flat white bandage, because I’d already run through the paramedic gaunt-let. I love Lu and Dave, but I know them too well to let them get the drop on me. I’d had the patch put on before they could arrive and see the weirdness for themselves.
It was just one more part of the secret I’d carried out of the swamp in Florida. Getting hurt was bad enough; but they’d be even more alarmed if they knew how quickly the wound had closed itself.
“What’s underneath that?” Dave asked, pointing now instead of poking. There’s something so formal and official about medical tape; I knew good and well that neither one of them was going to make me take it off to satisfy their curiosity.
“A scratch. ”
“A scratch?”
“A bad scratch. But it didn’t need stitches or anything, so it wasn’t that bad. ”
I didn’t mention how the paramedic had grilled me—how he’d called the ambulance driver over to look at me too. I didn’t tell them how they hadn’t believed me, at first; and I didn’t say how they’d put their fingers through the hole in the shirt to convince themselves that the half-healed wound they found there was only an hour
old.
It was weirder than they knew, and stranger than I was prepared to tell them.
I meant to change the subject, but Dave beat me to it.
“Is that my old camera?”