Wake up, me! Wake up! I can"t see! I can"t tell! I don"t want to kill! ! don"t want to die! Find me now? Find me now before it"s too late!
I thought I was dying. No one could possibly live through such an explosively swelling joy, such a fireworks eruption of relief. Even as I clawed at the choking bands of fingers that closed inexpertly around my throat, even as I fumbled for and found a finger, pried it loose and bent it back farther and farther, even as deeper darkness danced in the darkness before my eyes, I savored the joy!
I"m not guilty! I didn"t do it! I was the listener, not the speaker! I was the waiter, not the creeper! My prayers of thanksgiving rose like a hurried flock of doves as I got my other hand untangled from the bedclothes, found another finger and bent it sharply backwards. There was a m.u.f.fled scream and someone collapsed across my bed, moaning softly.
I sat up in the darkness and gulped the air, feeling nausea burning up in my throat. I swallowed, painfully, and swallowed again. The moans became sobs and the sobs, m.u.f.fled little screams.
I started to scramble out of bed to run from this thing that lay so limply heavy across my legs. And then I paused. In the darkness, I could so easily have been the weeper. In the darkness, only part of me was swallowing nausea with an aching throat. Part of me was sobbing across my knees. Part of me was sleeping all down the hall. Part of me was awaiting a grave somewhere out in a larger darkness.
I leaned over and gathered up the convulsed shoulders. Awkwardly I held the unseen sobbing face against my shoulder.
"There, Kit," I murmured. "There, there-" I felt her tears hot against my bare shoulder and my tears started, too. The two of us huddled there in the darkness tasting the bitterness of what had been done and what had yet to be done.
"She told him! Oh, Cleo, she told him!" Kit"s voice was broken and m.u.f.fled as she spoke for the last time before she stopped being a private self and became a thing of the State. "And I loved him. He was the end of all my running and looking. And he loved me truly, or he wouldn"t have been so mad. I know. He would have laughed with her and kidded back if he hadn"t cared, but he hadn"t known Cleo, did you ever watch love die?" I shook my head in the darkness as she cried for a memory. "His face was changed. He was someone else. She killed the one real love I ever had and she killed me, so I killed her-"She caught her breath. "And now they"ll kill me again, won"t they!" Her arms closed around me so convulsively that I gasped involuntarily.
"I don"t know," I said, "Oh, Kit, I don"t know!"
"It doesn"t matter," she said dully. "It really doesn"t matter any more, Cleo, except I hate fusses and being hurt." Her sudden storm of crying shook us both and then she was half laughing. "I killed her!" Kit sobbed and then laughed.
"And I"m afraid I might get hurt!"
I soothed her the best I could-poor hungry Kit, who had seen her feast s.n.a.t.c.hed away-until quite suddenly, she fell asleep, half kneeling by the bed.
I waited a while and then slid cautiously out, letting her head down softly to the pillow, lifting her slender legs up onto the bed and covering her over with the extra blanket. The covers were too tangled under her to free them. Ishivered into my robe and curled up in the one arm chair in the room. I sat there wide-eyed and watched the wall slowly pale and turn into a window.
I"ll never get lost again, I promised myself. It"s hard enough to manage one self without struggling with two or four-or five. I can firmly be myself and still share life with others. I"m going to be too busy with building a life-sized solid me ever to have time to get lost again, or to h.o.a.rd fears to fill my emotional emptiness.
Light flowed suddenly through the window. I blinked sleepily at the Day.
There are three of us left in the Dorm, three of us trying to realign ourselves with one another and the world around us.
There are three of us-and I, Cleo am one of them.
SHARING TIME.
"NEN MY GRANDMA SAID, "Isn"t she the sweetest thing-the darling-" " I let Cookie"s adenoidal voice fade out with the rest of Sharing Time. I suppose I could have warped Cookie"s ego and blasted her personality forever