Chapter 85: Next Big Step
Kofi’s mind flashed back to the teachers’ lounge. To the casual cruelty in their voices as they’d talked about her.
’Cursed.’
’A black cloud.’
He looked at the girl in the oversized hospital gown, the one who looked so small she might disappear into the white sheets. She didn’t look cursed. She looked like a kid. A kid who’d been through a meat grinder and was just trying to figure out if she was still in one piece.
’They’re the cursed ones,’ he thought. ’Not her.’
Thea finally wiped her face with the back of her hand, a gesture that was both childish and deeply weary. Her eyes, red-rimmed and full of a dawning horror, were locked on him.
"Live... with you?" she whispered, the words sounding foreign and impossible. "I don’t even know you."
(Which, you have to admit, is a pretty reasonable objection. A random boy from school shows up and offers to let you live with him. It’s either a trap or the start of a really terrible indie movie.)
"I know," He said. His own voice sounded strangely calm. "It’s a weird plan. A really weird plan."
"Weird doesn’t cover it. It’s insane." She shook her head, pulling the thin blanket up to her chin like a shield. "You’re a kid. I’m a kid. We can’t just... do that. That’s not how things work."
"The doctor said it’s the only option that isn’t terrible," he explained, leaning forward just a little. "He said if you leave here, you either go to a shelter or you go back to... that house."
He didn’t have to say anything else. The look on her face told him she understood exactly what ’that house’ meant. Her guarded expression crumbled for a second, a sign of raw fear showing through.