Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us 2)

“You look . . . ridiculous,” I forced out, and it was high-pitched and desperate, and all of a sudden, I was sure I was about to come fully unhinged. “It’s all . . . Everything is ridiculous.”

Stellan’s pout turned into concern, and confusion. He reached for me.

“No.” I stepped out of his grasp. If he tried to hug me or say something reassuring, I would cry. If I cried, I wouldn’t stop. “Sit,” I ordered.

I pulled a little stool from the vanity, still giggling a little. Stellan sat, his head flopped down until his chin rested on his chest. I inspected his head, where only the top layer of his blond hair was clean, and the mat of blood beneath it hadn’t been touched.

I started laughing again, hard enough that I hiccuped. “Elodie did a horrible job,” I gasped. “What is wrong with her?”

Stellan raised an eyebrow. I took two rasping breaths and shoved it all down. Compartmentalizing. I’d been doing it all night, and I could keep doing it.

“You need to wash it the rest of the way tonight, or it’ll never heal right,” I said.

Stellan eyed me warily, but used my shoulder to stand up, gesturing to the shower stall.

“I don’t know if you should do it yourself.” In this state, I was afraid he’d kill himself in the train-sized shower. Or at the very least, not be gentle enough with the wound and rip it open again.

A woozy but wicked grin spread across his face. “Does that mean you’re getting in with me? I never thought you’d take me up on that rain check, but I won’t say no . . .”

“We’ll wash it in the sink. Sit.”

I ran warm water in the basin and swished in some orange-scented shampoo from the shower, and he leaned back until his long torso was taking up half the bathroom. I rolled up one of the puffy white towels and wedged it under the back of his neck. He winced almost imperceptibly, like if he’d had his wits about him he would have been able to suppress it.

“What?” I said. “Did you hurt your shoulder, too?”

He shook his head.

“What is with you guys?” I said. “If you have a broken collarbone or something and you just haven’t mentioned it . . .”

“It’s nothing,” he said, but the lie wasn’t convincing.

I crossed my arms over my chest. Finally, he took a deep breath, then touched the scars snaking up his neck. Those strange, translucent scars, all up his back and twisting like ghostly vines over the tops of his shoulders and around the sides of his throat.

“Your scars hurt?” I said. “Did you do something to them?”

He shook his head slowly, staring up at the ceiling. “Always,” he said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear.

It took me a second to understand what he meant. When I did, my breath caught. Of their own accord, my fingers reached out to the same scar he was touching. “The scars always hurt?” I said.

He nodded.

I traced the scar down his neck and across his shoulder, at the lesions pearlescent against my own white skin. I didn’t know what to say.

Stellan’s fingers brushed my hand.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m used to it.”

The heat at the back of my eyes built up again. What this world did to people. What it’d done to this boy whose life had been far harder than mine, looking up at me with a mix of emotions in his face I wasn’t sure I understood. Wasn’t sure I wanted to understand. The fact that, despite it all, there was something in me that was telling the truth when I told Jack I didn’t want to run.

“Lean back,” I said, and splashed the warm water over his hair. Fighting the tightness in my throat left my words clipped, too cheerful. “I hurt my head like this once,” I chirped. “I was leaning over, and had left an upper cabinet open, and stood up right into the corner. Blood everywhere! It was disgusting. My mom washed it out. She always knew exactly—” I drew a ragged breath, full of tears that had been building all day that I wouldn’t, couldn’t let fall. “That’s how I know what to do. We’ll work the blood out of your hair first to get to the cut and then—and then—” My voice cracked. No more words would come out around the lump in my throat. “And then—”

I stopped when I felt Stellan’s hand close around my leg.

“And then, um, we’ll sterilize the cut,” I continued, my voice high, reedy. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but it’ll heal quickly enough if you don’t mess with it and then you’ll—then you’ll—”

Stellan stroked my knee with his thumb, calmly, firmly. Whatever had been building up for so long—the knot pulling tight, my sanity stretching thin—I felt the moment it snapped.

Once the first tear fell, it was a floodgate.

No laughing this time, just silent, steady tears, dripping salty into my mouth for what felt like a long time. The cloying orange shampoo scent, the buzz of the fluorescent light over the sink, the clack clack clack of the train tracks. The water sloshed in the basin as Stellan tilted his head up, and I could feel him looking at me.

I took a deep breath, full of the soothing, steady strokes of his thumb on the knee of my jeans and their inherent promise that I wasn’t alone but that he wasn’t going to force me to talk about it. The last almost-sob died in my throat.

“And then you’ll be okay.” I blinked the tears away, my vision cleared, and I realized that Stellan’s head was still resting heavy in my hands, my fingers still twisted in his hair, blond streaked with red, making shaky ripples in the reddening water.

I disentangled them and wiped the mascara from my face with the back of my hand, then put a little more shampoo in the water and swished it around. Stellan didn’t let go of my leg, and I didn’t move away.

“That’s not normal, about the scars,” I said, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. My voice was stronger now. “Scars are supposed to be dead tissue.”