Chapter 32
Tina stared up at the fourteen-year-old girl. She couldn’t believe it. It was the girl from her dream. Ashley was the brunette with sparkling blue-gray eyes and smooth, tan skin.
Most other girls either wanted to be around or were jealous of a girl like Ashley.
Tina felt ugly standing in her baggy, gray pajamas beside the taller, beautiful girl. The two small pimples that had found a home on her forehead last week seemed to fatten while staring at the fourteen-year-old’s clear face.
It was strange seeing her. She had just been in Tina’s dream. But Tina couldn’t have simply been dreaming because now Ashley was here. Tina couldn’t have dreamt of someone she had never met. Could she? Besides, a deja vu feeling grew inside her while staring at the older girl. Memories swam just underneath the surface of her frozen mind.
Ashley smiled. “Our eyes are the exact same color.”
Tina touched the other girl’s arm. She was real, with warm skin. Her smile was so friendly it made Tina feel safe and whole as she did before her mother passed away.
Ashley reached for Tina’s hand and held it.
This felt right, like they had already been friends, connected somehow in their past. The older girl said, “I remember us … together.”
Tears escaped Tina’s eyes. She had always wanted a sister, someone to share her life with. Since that was impossible, she hoped Ashley would at least be a good friend. She squeezed Ashley’s hand. “I remember too.”
Tina didn’t have many friends at Katherine Edwards Middle School,Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Address:
where she attended the sixth grade. Even though she didn’t wear glasses, didn’t miss daily showering and grooming, didn’t try getting out of P.E. classes, most kids thought that she was a geek. This wasn’t because she was a tomboy—although that didn’t help matters—but because she had been in the GATE program for gifted children and always received excellent grades. Most people kept their distance from her. Some of the other smart kids talked to her, but she never really felt connected to them.
She did have two guy friends in her neighborhood who she played baseball, skateboarded, and wrestled with sometimes, but they always seemed to tease her and make fun of her more than include her. Besides, she wanted a girl for a friend. She was getting tired of doing boy things. Maybe Dad would accept her more as a girl if she had a friend as beautiful as Ashley.
Jeff, Laura, and Charlie all talked at once: “What happened?” “What did you guys do?” “How did you get out?”
They seemed far away to her though. Ashley was her focus. Ashley and … memories … memories that wouldn’t quite come.
Laura pulled up Tina’s loose pajama sleeves and studied her arms. “A shot mark.”
Tina looked in the middle of her right arm, and sure enough, there was a little red dot where a needle could have penetrated. And on her wrist were the puncture marks from the monster’s claws.
Jeff asked, “Do you remember anything else, Tina?”
“Not really.”
“A doctor’s office?”
“No.”
Ashley offered, “I remembered something like a doctor’s room, with a table or bed, and IV drips.”
Tina froze. IVs. That triggered something inside her. Anger.
“Ouch,” Ashley grimaced.
Tina was squeezing her hand too tightly. “Sorry.” She let Ashley go. “I’m … something about the IVs makes me upset.”
“What about them?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ashley nodded her head. “It makes me uncomfortable thinking about them. Something ... wrong about them.”
“Wrong?” asked Jeff. “Like what?”
Tina’s anger began to make her hot.
Ashley said, “Like they shouldn’t be there.”
“Where?” he asked.
Then Tina recalled something, clearer, like it wasn’t just from a dream. “I remember her in a bed with an IV in her left arm. Lying in the bed, a hospital bed, like she was sick. But I don’t think she was.”
“So you guys were in a hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Ashley agreed. “But it wasn’t a good hospital. We were being held there. I was strapped down and handcuffed.”
“You guys were taken to a hospital and held against your will?”
“I think so.”
“This is sounding weirder by the minute. Hiding in the dark, monsters take you to a hospital, which is really a prison, but giving you medicine.”
Tina felt disbelieved by Jeff. As a therapist, he was supposed to understand people. She pointed at the puncture marks on her right wrist. “The monster did this when he grabbed me at your office.”
Guilt twisted his face. “I didn’t mean to doubt you. I believe you. I just can’t make sense of it.”
She nodded, quickly forgiving him. He seemed sincere. She looked around at the shadows in the living room. There weren’t many. Jeff and Ashley had turned on all the lights when they arrived.
He continued, “Somehow you got to this hospital, this bad place. Do you have any idea where it is?”
“After I found Ashley asleep, I looked at her chart before the janitor came in, but there was no address. Later, we ran into each other in one of the showers.”
“Yes. And I remember us hiding behind a board in the janitor’s storage room.”
“That’s right,” she also recalled. “And we thought we were bitten or clawed by the monsters, like we got venom in our blood or something.”
“And then …” Ashley stopped, her face tense.
“Yes?” asked Jeff. “Then?”
“Then …”
“Then what?” Laura said knowingly. “Just say it.”
“We found you and Jeff.”
Also remembering, Tina gasped and held her hand over her mouth.
Jeff had a weird expression, like he was afraid and confused. He looked at Charlie, then Laura, then back to Ashley. “I’ve been here the whole time. I never went to this hospital. I’ve never even seen the monsters, let alone been bitten by one.”
Tina confirmed, “You were there. That’s when the staff caught me and Ashley. They wouldn’t let us wake you up. They said we were sick and forced us to get shots.”
“But how could I have been there? I was here the whole time, looking for you.”
“You were asleep in the hospital,” Ashley agreed. “We were going to take out the IV, but were scared of hurting you.”
Tina saw Goosebumps forming on his arms. He looked freaked out. She didn’t mean to make him feel this way, but he needed to know everything.
He protested, “I was here the whole time.”
There was a long silence.
“Were you?” asked Laura, looking hard at him.
He glared at her. “What’re you saying?”