Page 16 of What Rough Beast
“No.” I shake my head. “I actually felt less. Like something let go and . . .”
My words die off. Above me the squirrel runs across a beam, drops down next to the incubator. The light grows ferociously bright, and I can feel heat emanating from where I’m sitting. I glance at the temperature gauge on the side, which is approaching a hundred degrees. I need to unplug it, stop it from overheating. The red light flickers again, this time producing a low buzzing sound.
“Go ahead,” Dr. Hildebrand encourages me. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“What it feels like is that the dark center of the universe resides inside me, and whatever critical component of myself that is being kept from falling into it just lost one of its anchors.”
“That’s very well said.”
The squirrel makes its way to the incubator’s extension cord and bites down. There’s a spark and a snap, a small puff of blue smoke, and the singed smell of animal hair as it goes flying across the room, hitting the opposite wall and landing on the desk in front of me with a dull thud. I scream and jump to my feet, dropping my phone.
“Ava? Are you okay?” Dr. Hildebrand’s voice comes from the floor. “Ava?”
I scoop up the phone. “Yeah, I’m okay. But a squirrel just electrocuted itself. I’ve got to go.”
I drop my phone onto the desk, the smell of singed animal hair filling my nose. The red light of the incubator is out; I cup my hands against the glass and peer inside. The egg looks smaller than it did before, the skin a little wrinkled. I reach into the access vent and pick it up. It’s cooling rapidly, so I cup it in one hand and cover it with the other, sending my body heat into it. The incubator itself is fine; but the extension cord is shorted out. I grab a new one and plug the incubator back in; the red light flickers on, and the temperature starts to climb. I put the egg back inside and see that some of the wrinkles are smoothed out, like it puffed back up, filling its skin with the heat I gave it.
“Okay,” I say out loud, feeling a little better. “I need to take the squirrel to the pit, and I need . . .”
My breath falls short as I think about all the things I need. I need my life to not fall apart and my parents to realize that everything is not fine. I need the world to stop being a hellscape and humans to stop being a piece-of-shit species. I need Becca to be my friend again and for someone—anyone—to smile at me in the hallway. My head falls forward into my hands, and I think I feel something now, a sob working its way to my mouth. Instead, words come out.
“I need somebody to listen to me,” I say into my palms, where the dark, earthy scent of the egg still lingers.
The red light flickers, and my phone goes off with a notification.
I have a DM on Rock Bottom.
Thirteen
Hailey
Ava loses her shit in fourth period on Thursday.
To be fair, first she loses everything inside her stomach; the losing-her-shit part is the follow-up. I’m sitting with Meredith Jarvel and Carrie Hollern in art, not because they are my friends but because they look to me for approval of everything they say, and I find it amusing. They’re talking about their homecoming dresses, and I’m wondering how many blow jobs I’m going to have to give Ethan in order for him to cough up the money for mine when Ava pukes.
She’s sitting alone at a drafting table in the corner, and the rest of us don’t even get any sort of horking noise as a warning. Ava’s got her head down, eyes averted, then suddenly there’s something running over the edge of the table, and she’s hunched over it, mouth open as she spews white shit all over her art project.
“Mrs. Avern!” Meredith calls, covering her nose and pointing at Ava.
“Oh my god!” Carrie jumps and runs to the hall before her own gag reflex kicks in.
I don’t have one of those—another aspect of being a cool girl—so I’m one of the few people who doesn’t hightail it to the other side of the room. Instead, I watch as a second wave catches Ava and she lurches to the right, stool tipping. She slips in her own puke and goes all the way over, hitting the ground with a jolt and ending any chance she had of keeping anything inside.
It all comes up, and because Ava is a kind person who considers others, she actually tries to catch some of her own vomit. The girl is coughing her guts up in public, cupping her hands uselessly in front of her as they overflow, probably because she doesn’t want the janitor to have to clean up after her. There’s a moment when her body unclenches, and she’s allowed to breathe, pulling air in before losing the battle and spraying more milky-white shit all over the place. Mrs. Avern comes out of the supply closet and doesn’t even blink, crossing the room in a rush. I’m the only person that follows; the rest of our classmates are huddled in the opposite corner.
“Everybody out,” Mrs. Avern says when she reaches Ava, voice tight and clipped. “And, Blake, you’ll leave that phone on my desk until you can convince me that you didn’t just take a video of your peer having a health episode.”
I keep my eyes on Ava as everyone else filters out of the room. Their low mutterings—Holy shit, those Chucks are ruined and More like a mental health episode—audible until Mrs. Avern closes the double doors behind them unnecessarily hard.
“Out,” she says, pointing at me, but I shake my head, heading for a paper towel dispenser by one of the sinks before she can argue with me.
I tear off a length and reach for Ava, who is sitting in a cooling puddle of liquid and still holding her own puke. Her breathing is fast and shallow, eyes shooting around the room. They land on me, clearly surprised that I’ve stayed behind to help. She blinks quickly, confused.
“What—?”
But she doesn’t get to ask me or Mrs. Avern what happened before her midsection clenches up again. I grab her by the wrist and haul her up, what was in her hands splashing all over both of us as I drag her to a sink.
“Hailey, you probably shouldn’t—” Mrs. Avern begins, but the next onslaught from Ava’s gut drowns out whatever she says. I get Ava to the sink just in time, holding her hair as everything inside of her comes out.
