Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
I’m lying on a concrete floor, the smell of blood and rot overcoming me.
“Ava, help me,” she begs. “Please just get up.”
I try, but my limbs—my soul aches.
Drip…
Drip…
Drip…
The air has gone quiet as my eyes roll open. I track the dripping noise to a deer hanging from the ceiling… No, not a deer. A person.
I open my mouth to scream, but a streak of red light flickers across my vision, like a ribbon. No, not a ribbon. Blood. Poison in my blood. It’s in my veins and bleeding through my vision, making me forget?—
“Come back to me. Focus.” Ellis' face appears in front of me.
His warm eyes and compassionate expression are the first thing I see. Then I notice the worry creasing his features and that his hands are cupping my face. He’s so close I can smell the chocolate milkshake he ate earlier on his breath. I should jerk back, but numbness has seeped so deeply into my bones that nothing feels real.
I think I’m in shock.
“I’ve been in that building before,” I tell him in an eerily detached voice. “And I know why I can’t remember any of what happened.” I brush my hand along the bruises splattering across my arm. “Because I was drugged. And many times throughout my life. Even before my family moved to Star Meadows.”
His brows rise. “Even when you were a kid?”
I nod. “I can remember sometimes seeing these red ribbons floating in front of my face. I never knew what they were. But I just made the connection.” I summon a breath. “Every time one fills my memories, in that memory, I felt a pinprick. It’s not a ribbon I’m seeing. I’m feeling the drugs bleeding through my system, and then it erases my surroundings. It’s like everything is bleeding away. At least that’s my mind’s interpretation of it. The first time I can remember it happening was when I was like five or six. I was in trouble for watching something on television that I wasn’t supposed to—although it wasn’t on purpose. It was of this man having… rough sex with this woman, but anyway, it was a total accident that I turned it on. When my father saw it, he freaked out and punished me. Then I can remember my mother crying in her room… I went in there…”Her sobbing fills the air.“She was kneeling down in the middle of her room… And there were these photos around her…. “Someoneis banging on the door. Red and blue lights flash through the windows…“Photos of these people dancing in a field… She had a knife… There were all these lights. And banging…”She staggers to her feet and rushes toward me, but then she abruptly freezes as someonescreams. A streak of bright red ribbons floats in front of my face as a sting pierces my arm.“It was the police.”
“Why were the police there?” Ellis carefully asks, watching me like I’m made of fragile glass.
“I don’t remember.” Because the memory feels thick, like oil has filled my veins. “I…” I press my hand to my head as my temples throb.
“Hey, relax. Take a breath. You don’t need to remember everything right now,” Ellis assures me as he removes the laptop from my lap and sets it down on the bed.
“I’m fine. I just have a headache.” I lower my hand and blink a few times.
“You don’t always have to be fine,” he tells me, the mattress concaving as he scoots closer to me. “Also, if some sort of drug was used to erase your memory, there could be some side effects.” He lightly touches my arm while staring at the bruises. “We could find out what kind of drug it is since it happened recently. You’d have to get a blood test done, though.”
“Do you trust the doctors around here?” I ask.
“No, but I can call a friend of mine who is a phlebotomist and see if he can meet me here. He’s trustworthy. But I’ll only do it if you’re comfortable with it.”
I hesitate but then nod. “I want to know what the hell was put in me.”
He releases my arm. “I’ll call him then.”
I nod, but uneasiness is spreading through me.
It’s crazy, but the truth is, I might be as afraid of the truth as I am of the lies.
16
AVA
