Page 102 of A Heart of Bluestone

The answer comes too swiftly. It is firm in my mind.

I roll over onto my front, and Witchdoctor Urma starts kneading the balms all over my calves, down the soles of my feet, anywhere with even a streak of angry red skin.

My cheek is smushed against the pillow.

I watch a hunched, limping silhouette draw closer—moving for the bed next to mine, the curtains parted, and a clear sight. Clear enough that, once the silhouette moves into my line of sight, I let a scoff jerk me.

James, holding his gut, a sickly shade to his sweaty face.

James slowly sets himself down on the neighbouring bed, as though his bones scream with his movements. But I myself have the burns, the pain of the flesh, and moving isn’t a trigger. It’s just there, searing at me, constant, parasites eating me from the outside-in.

No doubt in my mind, James saw an opportunity to get time off from classes, or just to keep away from the other students, and threw himself into a puddle of bile.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

I watch as he sinks into the pillow with a pitiful groan.

His face is a twisted grimace as he pushes his glasses up his oily nose.

I reach for the curtain beside my bed. The tips of my fingers pinch the cheap, plastic-like material, and I shake it, loud. Sounds like a shower curtain.

It draws in his self-wallowing frown.

“Where’s Courtney?” I ask.

Urma’s fingers leave my balmed flesh, and don’t return.

I hear the clatter behind me, the metal trolley being moved, then she rolls it over to James’s bedside.

The look she shoots him is narrowed and wicked. Bet she’s sick of the sight of him.

“On her way,” he mumbles, then his words cut off with a wince as Witchdoctor Urma lifts a pair of scissors. “She stopped in at the bathroom.”

I’m glad for her that peeing is wildly more important than coming to check on my—and James’s—health. The order of the priorities is notable.

Or maybe that bitter mood of mine is just lingering.

I loosen a breath and turn my face. It drags along the pillow, suffocated for a moment, then I face the other bed, the empty one.

If James is offended that I have silenced our chat, cut him out like that, he doesn’t speak on it. He’s too busy wincing and murmuring ‘ow, ow, ow’ over and over as the witchdoctor works on him.

I leave him be.

And I let the ointments soak into my flesh and sink me into a deep slumber.

18

My bag is absolutely ruined.

It’s in scraps and ribbons, like my Mary-Janes. I don’t mourn my tights, of course, that’s ridiculous. But I do loathe to dump off three items into the bin once I’m discharged from the infirmary. So wasteful. So sad.

I leave behind James.

All the warts and blisters are gone, from my body, from his, and yet he’s still sulking about his bones burning or something, I don’t know, I closed the curtain to shut him out.

The next morning, I am discharged.

As soon as I am back in the dorm, I write to Mother. I need replacements for my ruined things.

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