Heartsick

Chapter 5

I push away from Luke and run through the kitchen to the back door, toward the sound. Luke’s heavy steps are close behind me.

The dim lantern on our patio table makes Zachary’s bewildered, madman expression even more off-putting. He’s usually so put together, so in control. Hell, he’s the kind of guy who actually follows the instructions on the side of frozen dinners. You know, taking it out and stirring it midway. But now, he holds a broken bottle by the neck as he shakes. The dim light punctuates the beads of blood that glisten off the jagged edges.

“Shit,” he mumbles when he sees me. “She’s bleeding.”

Mandy’s arm is red with blood, not just the lighter red blood you get when you scrape a knee, but the deep, dark maroon that comes when something has cut closer to your core. The patio is littered with glass shards and some brown liquid that must be liquor. As I step forward tentatively, Luke circumvents me.

“Are you all right?” he asks Mandy, before drawing back. “Your eyes…”

Her eyes aren’t just purple, they’re bright, like the moonlight has caught them at just the right angle.

“Yeah, yeah, they’re purple and my arm is bloody, but I’m fine,” Mandy says. Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary curls his shoulders, folds his arms and looks to the ground. Luke steps toward him, close enough that his height and the mass of his shoulders are a clear advantage. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear: I could fuck you up.

“It was an accident,” Zachary whispers. He sets the bottle on the table.

“We were just playing around,” Mandy says. “We were joking and then I got hurt. That’s all there is to it.”

Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary finally takes two steps back and runs both hands through his hair. Mandy sighs to the sky and Luke tenses his jaw. “Luke,” I say, “if Mandy says it was an accident, it was an accident.” Luke doesn’t know Mandy, so he doesn’t know about Mandy.

“Where is your bathroom?” Luke asks. He’s bobbing slightly on his feet, ready to sprint.

“Right after the kitchen,” I say as he lunges back inside.

The wooden steps up to Conrad’s apartment creak. He has hovered in the one-bedroom apartment above our two-bedroom since sophomore year. And he’s coming down. I’ll have to be quick. I say it hushed to Mandy, but not so hushed that Zachary can’t hear. It’s hard to keep my tone level. “It was an accident, right?”

“Quinn, you know I would never—” Zachary starts, but I raise a hand to him. I look at Mandy.

“It was an accident,” she says, her chin high and her eyes cold. But I had to press it.

Conrad pops his head around the corner. “Hey, I thought I heard…something. Everything okay?”

As he walks toward us, he sees that it’s not.

Luke bursts back onto the patio.

“What happened?” Conrad says, touching Mandy’s shoulder.

Mandy mumbles again how it’s nothing. But her flesh is still erupting in jagged lines. Conrad pulls out his phone. “I’ll call 911.”

“No!” Mandy, Zachary and Luke say in unison, but with varying levels of urgency.

Luke raises his eyebrow at the other two, then turns to Conrad. “She won’t need an ambulance,” he says. “But while you have that out, can you take a picture?” He gestures to Mandy.

“No…what?” Mandy says as Conrad aims and shoots.

Luke bends down, ignoring Mandy’s huffs as he dabs her arm with a wet towel. “I put some soap on this, so it might sting,” he says.