THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

15_iseemyselftoo_

Flint's waiting for me outside, shivering in a short-sleeved shirt and apron, cigarette in her hand. She nods at me, taking another drag then grinding the butt beneath her boot heel. Her arms open, and I mold myself into her, into the ashtray scent of her, but when her arms close over me they don't hold fast, loosening after a heartbeat. She's still angry.

"Come on, inside," she says, looking at her watch. "Shift starts in fifteen but I'll get you a coffee. You look like you need one. You look like shit."

"Sorry," I say, and she manages a smile, shaking her head.

"Only you," she says, holding the door open for me. The restaurant's practically empty, the breakfast crowd gone, the lunch crowd not here yet. There's a couple of wait staff at the bar and I feel my skin ripple as I think about Outcast. I have to gulp down a couple of airless breaths, have to screw my eyes shut to stop the panic.

I'm not underground, the day is right there outside the window, there are people here.

And Flint. She slides her arm through mine and pulls me to the back. I only open my eyes when I hear her drag out a chair.

"Sit down before you fall down," she says, then shouts back, "Hey, Rohan, two coffees okay?"

The guy at the bar shouts something back, lost beneath the scrape of Flint's chair as she pulls it next to mine. She spins it around and straddles it, keeping the back between us like a shield.

"What's going on?" she says. "Last night..." She shakes her head again, then lifts a hand. "Look, forget it. You really think you were spiked? You should see a doctor, Tommi, some of the stuff around these days can stay in your system for, like, weeks. Makes you lose your mind."

"You think that's it?" I say, running my hand across the table, feeling crumbs collect between my fingers. "Maybe that's it. Everything's been so... so wrong."

And I'm so desperate for an explanation that I'm almost praying that somebody slipped me a roofie. I don't even care what happened to me, to my body, because I need to save my mind before it runs through my fingers like sand, scatters in the wind. But now it's me shaking my head, because the truth is all this started before last night, it started yesterday morning.

"Maybe it's just that mixed with what happened to that girl?" Flint says, reading my mind. "You were pretty rattled anyway, anxious about it the way you get, then somebody gives you some chem or other and wham, your brain explodes. What's been happening anyway? Why are you so freaked?"

"It's hard to explain," I say. "Like, ever since the cops showed up yesterday, ever since they asked me about Cara, things have been weird."

"Weird how?" she says.

"Mom keeps having..." I chew the end of my thumb nail, realizing how ridiculous this is going to sound. "Like, she keeps having baths, and she's losing her hair, and I'm getting mixed up, hearing people and seeing things when there's nothing there. Dreaming and stuff."

"Right," says Flint. "You're tired, stressed, and you're you, Tommi, let's not forget that. Dreaming and stuff is who you are, awake or asleep. More importantly, what happened to you today? I felt a..." She slaps her hand to her chest. "I've never felt anything like it, like there was danger. I felt like I downloaded it down the phone."

The guy from the bar is here, putting down two steaming mugs of coffee. He smiles at me.

"Enjoy," he says. "You want something to eat?"

I shake my head and Flint waves him away.

"What happened?" she says, cupping her hands around the mug, shivering. "Where were you?"