Garnet (Gems of Wolfe Island)

My stomach is hungry though. Surprisingly hungry.

“Buck, I remember something.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Yeah. I think I do.” I quickly relay the memory to him, all while swallowing back acid that wants to creep up my throat. But I’m determined. So freaking determined.

“So you were sick? But no one else on your team was?”

“Right. Not that I can recall, anyway. My roommate, Gloria, went out with her girlfriend. Some of the others on the team went out to dinner, and they invited me. But I chose to stay in because I wanted to be ready for the game the next day. I wanted whatever was making me sick to go away, and I figured the best way to make that happen was to stay in and rest.”

“Yes, it would be. In fact…”

“What?”

Buck’s forehead is wrinkled, and he threads his fingers through his long and unruly hair. “I don’t want to alarm you, Aspen, but has it ever occurred to you that perhaps one of your teammates sold you out?”

My body goes cold. “No! They would never.”

“Tell me about your roommate.”

“We both played middle blocker. Gloria was my backup.”

His eyebrows rise. “Your backup?”

“Yeah. I was the first team. She was my backup.”

“How good was she?”

“She was as good as I was, and I’m pretty sure I got the position because I was a few inches taller.”

Buck nods. “That makes sense on a volleyball team. How well did you know Gloria?”

“Pretty well. She was a nice girl. Honestly, I don’t think she could’ve had anything to do with this.”

“Sometimes people aren’t who they appear to be,” he says.

“Gloria? No. She was a devout Catholic. She did rosaries before bedtime. She was…”

“In a relationship with a woman?”

“Yeah, she was. But everyone was fine with it.”

“Including Gloria? A devout Catholic?”

“Yeah. She was. She and I talked about it a few times. She had always been attracted to women, and she had talked to her priest about it on many occasions. Her church was fine with it. Her parents were fine with it. Everyone was fine with that.”

“Okay. So Gloria didn’t sell you out.”

“I just can’t believe that of her. The woman prayed for everyone. She prayed for the homeless, for lost puppies and kittens… I’m telling you she was devout.”

“With you gone, Gloria would have your spot on the team.”

“That’s true. But she still wouldn’t have done that to me. Gloria was… I don’t know. She was seriously like the Miss Congeniality of our team. Everyone loved her, and she loved everyone.”

“All right. Let’s take Gloria out as a suspect for now then. You say you started feeling sick when you got off the plane?”

“Right.”

“Who were you sitting with on the plane?”

“God. How am I supposed to remember that? This is all new, Buck.”

“It’s new to you now, but it’s not new. You’ve opened up a database in your brain, Aspen. It’s all there. You just have to access it. Were you sitting with Gloria?”

I think back, squeezing my eyes closed, trying to force an image into my mind. Who was I sitting with? The row comes into view. I’m on the aisle, and…Taylor. Taylor’s across from me on the other aisle. She and Gloria always sat together on the plane.

“No, I was not sitting with Gloria. I was in an aisle seat because of my long legs. I can’t remember who were in the other two seats.”

“But you know for sure it wasn’t Gloria.”

“Yeah, I totally know for sure, because she was in the middle seat on the other side of the aisle. And her girlfriend, Taylor, was in the aisle seat across from me.”

“Okay.”

I rack my brain. Who was I sitting with? For the life of me, I can’t make the faces appear in my mind. “Why does this matter, Buck?”

“Because you say you got sick after you got off the plane. Were you sick once you landed? At the airport? Or not until you got to your room?”

The wave of nausea… Yes. It was there. “Yeah. We got to baggage claim, and I was starting to feel nauseated.”

“So that makes me think… If it was food poisoning, then it was something you ate on the plane. But all you had was a glass of Coke and a bag of pretzels. Pretzels aren’t going to cause food poisoning. So it has to be the Coke, but that’s unlikely as well, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless somebody laced your Coke. Like with syrup of ipecac or something.”

“Ipecac? That stuff they give little kids who’ve swallowed something bad?”

“Yep. That stuff.”

“So you’re thinking…”

“Right. Whoever was sitting next to you is the most likely culprit. If that’s what happened.”

“This is all a bunch of conjecture,” I say.

“It is. But tell me this. By the time you woke up in the concrete room, were you still feeling sick?”