But now? Nah.
She carried it out and held it up to Tam, like a flag waved in a parade, as we passed the TV room. Tam didn’t quite seem to process what she was seeing, but she didn’t get up and follow to air further grievances, so I figured it was fine.
And it was. It worked out well enough, in the sense that I never used any toothbrush but my own for the entirety of the six weeks I spent at Palmer House. Tam found several other reasons to despise me, but Tam despised everyone, so I didn’t dwell on it.
* * *
ON THE MORNING of the third day of the seventh week, I was in the bathroom, brushing, when Tam came in, grabbed a random towel off the rack, and began using it to dry her hair. She glared at me in the mirror.
“Hah,” I said, with the toothbrush between my teeth.
“Don’t hi me,” she said. “I’m exhausted, and it’s your fault.”
“Uh-kah,” I said.
“Can I just tell you how miserable it is to have you here?”
I spat into the sink. “Sure.”
Tam stepped closer. Not threateningly, but close enough to speak quietly so no one else could hear. “Everyone else here feels bad for you, but I don’t. I’m the only one who’ll tell you the truth, which is that we’re all sick and tired of you waking us up every night, shrieking like a maniac.”
I wobbled as though a pebble caught in my bloodstream had forced its way through the valves of my heart.
“You were in an accident,” she said. “So what? Get over it and let the rest of us sleep.”
“All right,” I said. “Great advice, Tam, thanks for the words of wisdom.”
She leaned against the wall. “I’m serious. Things were peaceful until you came. Now every night’s a horror movie.”
“Okay,” I said, rinsing out my toothbrush.
“Look at me, Margot,” she said.
I looked at her. Her eyes were flat and dull, but they weren’t stupid. And there was a glint of self-satisfaction in them that told me she was carrying out a rather pleasant errand. Had the others nominated her to tell me all this?
Probably.
“You should go,” she said.
“Cool,” I said, letting my attention drift away.
It was the first hit I’d scored on her. She tried again, less certain. “I mean it. You should go somewhere else.”
“Tam,” I said sharply, turning on her. “I’d love to. But where would I go?”
I heard something in my voice then—something dangerous and biting, like the strike of a snake.
Again, she wavered. “I don’t care,” she said. “Talk to Ms. O’Neil. She’ll figure something out. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’re the luckiest person I know.”
Then she stormed away before I could reply.
I went back to my room at the far end of the hall. One thing that made them all angry was that I was the only girl with my own room. My roommate went to live with her grandmother two days after I arrived, and by then everybody knew I screamed all night, so they didn’t want to share with me. In that regard, Tam was right. I was lucky. She’d lived here for going on two years, and by all rights the single should have been hers. But Ms. O’Neil refused to switch us, because no one who roomed with me would get any sleep.
I lay on the bed with Blue Bunny sitting on my chest, wondering in what other way I could possibly be considered lucky. The lawyers at Dad’s firm had held a fundraiser for me, so I had a little money waiting for me when I was an adult—not a ton, because my parents had cashed in their life insurance policies to build Mom’s practice. But it would be enough to get me through college, if I chose a cheapish school and lived on a strict budget, working weekends and summers to make up the difference. I was pretty sure none of the other girls could say that—but Tam couldn’t have known about the money, so that wasn’t it.
Did she think I was lucky because I had made it out of the water when my parents and sisters hadn’t?
That was lucky? Really? Surviving to see my family home emptied and sold? Surviving so I could wake every night in a cold sweat after some horrific nightmare? Be rejected and unwanted by all the people I’d thought were my friends? Surviving to end up here?
Lucky?
I turned to my side, feeling exhaustion coming for me, not wanting to let my eyes slip shut but knowing that it was inevitable. Last night, I’d probably managed four hours of sleep, and that wasn’t enough to get me through the day. Still, I fought the nap as long as I could. At least when I was awake I could stop myself from focusing on the accident. If I fell asleep, all my protections and distractions melted away.
Lucky.
I tucked Blue Bunny into my armpit and tapped his nose three times, hoping it would wake up whatever magic bunny energy he possessed and help him guard me from the shadows.
Then my eyes closed.
The shadows descended almost immediately—gray, black, and a sick mildew green, and behind them all was Tam. But not normal Tam—Tam’s dead body bloated with canal water, floating out of her bedroom and down the hall into my room. I dreamed that she came hovering through the door and then slowly, like a seesaw, her feet lowered and touched the ground, and she came closer and stood over me and looked down with her cold, wet dead-fish eyes. I waited for her to speak, but she didn’t say anything.
She just reached down and put her hand over my mouth, and it felt like a giant slug. A scream began to grow in my lungs like a train approaching from far down the tracks.
Then, suddenly, I was awake.
Someone had knocked on the door. When I opened my eyes, Ms. O’Neil’s head was poked into the room. Her eyes were agleam with something like confusion, or maybe excitement.
I’m leaving, I thought.
Ms. O’Neil, like the rest of them, basically hated me. I don’t think she wanted to, but all I did was make her job harder, and not in an interesting way like Tam did. With Tam, she could spar, and roll her eyes, and complain—but with me, what could she do? You can’t roll your eyes at the sole survivor of a tragic car accident.
I mean, I guess you could roll your eyes at anything if it got aggravating enough.
I’ll bet I’m aggravating enough, I thought.
The shiny-eyed moment hung in the air half a beat too long, and I had to break the silence.
“Hi,” I said.
Her left eyebrow went up. “You,” she said to me, “are a lucky girl.”
CHAPTER
2