I started running, but I was too late. She was on the floor in a puddle of her own blood.
“One of the counselors,” I heard my voice creep through my lips, almost against my will and definitely against my better judgment. “He had been looking at her, and she told me he was creeping her out. I wasn’t paying attention, and he got to her.”
“Got to her?”
“He fucked her in the girls’ bathroom while I was out in the courtyard,” I blurted out. “I wasn’t there to protect her, so she killed herself. She was supposed to be able to depend on me, but obviously that’s idiotic. I couldn’t stop her from dying, so I figured I’d kill him. I fucked that up, too. If I had known all the ways to kill quickly then, he would have died before they could stop me.”
“One of the counselors raped Theresa?”
“Yeah.”
“Bastian, I’m so sorry…” Raine reached out, and her fingers grazed over my leg. I pushed her hand away.
“I should have killed him,” I grumbled. “He didn’t even get charged. He told them I beat him up after he caught us in the bathroom together. I got fifteen months for assaulting him and the statutory rape of Theresa, posthumously.”
“Oh my God.” Raine’s hand reached up and covered her mouth. “Didn’t you tell them what had happened?”
“Of course I did!” I was angry now. Maybe at her, maybe at the world, but she was the only one there, so she was destined to get the brunt of it. “Who do you think they believed – the counselor or the delinquent? Yeah, it’s an interesting system we got, huh?”
“You dream about that, don’t you? About finding her, I mean.”
It wasn’t really a question, and it made me wonder again just what I had maybe said or done in my sleep. I tried to rein in my anger a little and nodded in response but didn’t look at her. I reached my hands up to my head and twisted my fingers through my hair, tugging at it and closing my eyes against the slight pain in my scalp.
“She found her own way out,” Raine said. “It was her choice and not your fault.”
“She wouldn’t have done it if I had been there for her.”
“Maybe not,” Raine said. “Maybe it would have just been on a different day.”
“I still fucked up,” I insisted. “Her only mistake was thinking she could rely on me.”
“You aren’t all bad, Bastian.”
“Yeah, I’m a fucking philanthropist.”
Raine started to push herself on to her elbows like she was going to get up and move towards me, but her hand went to her head and she started to slump to one side almost immediately. I moved over to her, fighting my own dizziness, and caught her before she fell back to the floor of the raft. I slowly lowered her onto her back again.
“Stop that shit,” I told her. “Just stay where you are.”
“See?” she said with a sly smile. “You aren’t so bad, are you?”
“Whatever.”
“My hero,” she giggled, which turned into coughing. For a minute I thought she was going to gag up bile, but I got her rolled onto her side and her coughing quieted.
“Go back to sleep, Raine,” I said. “You need to rest.”
“I don’t want…”
She was out before she finished the sentence. I decided to try fishing again.
* * * * *
My head swam as I pulled myself out of the water and fumbled with the tether around my waist. I was empty-handed again, but at least Raine hadn’t been disturbed by either my fishing expedition or my subsequent return to the raft, so she wasn’t going to notice. She was still asleep, as she had been for the last few hours.
There hadn’t even been any dew on the canopy this morning.
Raine’s pale, dry cheeks puffed out a moment as she seemed to sigh in her sleep and roll slightly to one side. Her darkened, hollow eyes opened for a moment, searched around the raft, and closed again without any signs of recognition. I dried myself off, pulled my shorts on, and crawled over to her side. The last two times she woke up she had been pretty incoherent. I needed to know if she was still the same or getting worse.