She kicks it again, then grimaces and bends over, clutching her hand. “God,” she says in a raw whisper, “this really hurts.”
A small voice echoes from across the hall.
“Julie?”
Her eyes widen and she leaps back to the window. “Nora?”
“Hey, you.”
A surge of disoriented emotion wracks Julie’s face; a joyful laugh bubbles out of her even as tears fill her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“You’re glad I’m in prison? Thanks a lot.”
Julie laughs louder. “So I’m a selfish bitch. Yes, I’m glad.”
Standing behind Julie, I can see the window of another cell a few feet down the hall. A single frizzy curl pokes out through the bars.
“Is R with you?” Nora asks.
“Yeah, he’s in here.”
“What is this? What do they want?”
“I don’t even know. They think we can control the Dead. They’re insane.”
“Are you okay?”
“Mostly, yeah. Although this happened.” She sticks her bandaged hand through the bars.
“Oh, Jules …”
“Yeah. We’re stump sisters now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll get used to it. The only time it really trips me up is when I’m playing guitar.”
“I was never going to be a musician anyway. That gene died with Dad.” She’s quiet for a moment. “What about you, though? You’re okay?”
“They haven’t fucked with me much. I’m in for disorderly conduct.”
“What happened?”
“They were trying to take my Nearlies. I shot a guy.”
“That’s my girl.”
A pause. “Jules?”
“Yeah?”
Another pause, this one longer. “I heard about Lawrence.”
Silence.
“I’m so sorry.”
Julie leans against the door, pressing her forehead into the bars. “Yeah.”
“Ella came into the Morgue. Said she wanted to help someone. I asked if she had any medical training. She said she took a CPR class twenty years ago.”
“She was okay?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Julie closes her eyes and goes quiet.
I push my face to the window. “Nora. Have you seen M?”
“Marcus? The great outdoorsman? Sure haven’t. But now would be a pretty great time for him to come back, if he’s going to.”
“He’s going to,” I mumble, half to myself. “He said ‘See you later.’”
“That’s sweet. But what he said to me was, ‘I don’t deserve to be here.’”
I let myself sag back from the window. Julie takes my place. “How long have we been in these fucking bathrooms?”
“What, you’re not carving check marks on the wall of your cell? Where’s your prison spirit?”
“We’ve been unconscious most of the time.”
“Oh. Well, I’m pretty sure the explosion was three days ago.”
Julie nods and looks at the floor, lost in thought. “So today’s … July 26th?”
“If I’ve been counting meals right, yeah,” Nora says. “Why?”
To my surprise, Julie laughs. She laughs the way you laugh at a joke you know you shouldn’t find funny. “It’s my birthday.”
There’s a pause, then Nora bursts into a bitter cackle. “Well happy birthday, stump sister! Wishes and kisses!”
“Why didn’t you get me a present, R? What kind of boyfriend are you?”
“Just think, you’re almost old enough to buy beer!”
I listen to the two women collapse into fits, exchanging birthday clichés and savouring the fresh irony that coats each one, but I can’t make myself join in. Even the blackest edges of my humour are numbed by this. It’s an arbitrary line, of course, subjective and ultimately meaningless, but this is not how I imagined Julie graduating from her teens. In every meaningful way, she’s been an adult for many years, certainly longer than I have, but some old-fashioned part of me still wanted to celebrate this official step into maturity. I wanted to get up early and put daisies on her pillow. I wanted to play her favourite records all day. Maybe I’d try to bake a birthday cake.
But instead, this is the party I threw for her. Sitting in a jail cell waiting for our next round of torture. Surprise!
I listen to the two friends riff off each other, and then I wonder if their laughter might have triggered some kind of anti-joy alarm, because as if on cue, a door bangs open and heavy boots pound down the hall.
The laughter stops. Julie backs away from the door until she bumps into me, and I wrap my arms around her, absorbing the icy tremble that’s shaking her tiny frame.
“R,” she whimpers as a shadow falls across the window, and the cold, terrifying reptile in my brain starts sorting through objects in the room. The mirrors. A shard of glass …
The door opens, and Perry Kelvin steps through.
Julie’s knees collapse. She sags against me. I stumble back and fall into a sitting position, holding her under her armpits.
“Time to go,” Perry says, reaching out to help me up. “Now.”
I hear a distant commotion through the walls. Furious shouts, fists pounding a door. Perry’s face is indistinct in the shadows, but the thick eyebrows, the brittle voice and its subtle drawl … I don’t know what he is or how he’s here or if I can trust him, but I can imagine no scenario worse than the one I was just contemplating. I grab his hand and stand up, pulling Julie with me.