Page 7 of Inferno
‘Goodbye, then,’ I said.
‘Goodbye, Sophie,’ he whispered unsteadily.‘Bella mia.’
He pulled away from me, out the door, and by the time I made it into the hallway he was already disappearing into Luca’s room, back to his brothers, back to their world.
CHAPTER FOURTHE CUT
Aside from the obvious injuries – a swollen nose, some thorny ribs and a general pervading sense of my own mortality – Jack’s beef with the Falcones had gifted me something else, too, only I didn’t find out about it until I got home.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder:post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that’s triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.
Great. I stared at my faint reflection in the laptop screen as the words settled in. I looked like a very sad, verysleep-deprived panda.
Everything had changed, and being back in my house and sleeping in my own bed only made that more apparent. Sophie Gracewell, one-time expert at sweeping things under the rug and reigning queen of the ignorance-is-bliss hypothesis, had disappeared. Or been killed, I guess, given the circumstances.
Before Nic, before everything bad that had happened, I was just sort ofthere, existing, but not reallyliving. Everyone around me had their lives and hobbies and friends and passions, and I had a dead-end job, a dead-end future and a friend who would go so much further than me after school. I was Sophie, but that’s all I was. Bored, aimless, mostly alone. And then suddenly I wasn’t. I was part of something bigger, a player in a world that lived and breathed passion and danger, and it was wrong, and scary, but it was more than just existing, and now that I had experienced it, it was hard to shut off. It was hard to leave it behind.
Every noise made me jump, every screaming nightmare demolished my throat, every pleasant moment was squashed by harder, stronger memories of darker ones. I couldn’t stop to smell a flower without my brain going:Hey, this is a nice rose, but also, remember that time you saw a guy get shot in the chest?I couldn’t even watch my favourite comfort movieAladdinany more.Yeah, this genie sure is charismatic but on a slightly different note, do you think blood is stickier when it’s warm and still inside a person’s body, or when it’s drying all over your hands an hour or so later?
When I stood in my room amidst my books and clothes and all the other comforts of my old life, I felt completelyunlike myself. Something new had taken hold of me. It began as a pinch, an uncomfortable twinge in the pit of my stomach that twisted into something darker. It wasn’t my ribs. It was fear. I was afraid, and the fear was relentless.
And the solution?
If you believe you are suffering from PTSD, we advise you to seek help from a qualified health professional.
The solution was to tell a therapist about the night my mother and I almost got shot in the head by a bunch of trigger-happy mobsters, and the lingering irrational urge to make out with the boy who had tried to kill my uncle directly after I stuck my hands inside his brother’s chest cavity to save his life.
I’d rather go on a picnic with Jafar.
Instead I replaced my preferred hobby of watching Netflix and eating ramen noodles with a couple of new games called shadow-watching and street-staring. You don’t really notice how many shadows there are in the world until you start being afraid of them. I spent hours at the windows looking at shapes go by, watching pedestrians to see if they were watching me. I studied every car on the street with manic interest. After a time I saw the same one cropping up over and over – a blacked-out Mercedes with black rims. I convinced myself someone was watching me. When I went outside to check, it was gone, rolling down the street and disappearing from view – whoever it was, they were just going about their life.
I missed my father more than I thought possible; his absence was like a physical ache in my chest – this hauntingsadness that I couldn’t shake, this face that was never far from my mind. I needed him and he wasn’t there. Sometimes, the anger surfaced and I would curse him – how could he have left us? How could we possibly face this without him?
I started to dream of him – of that fateful Valentine’s night a year and a half ago. My mother’s screams rose up through the floorboards, and before she crashed into my room with news of what he had done, I heard her, somewhere far away, shouting in a voice thinned by hysteria: ‘He got him. He got him!’ Was my mind playing tricks on me, or was this fresh new horror lifting the veil on all the other things I had squashed down to the bottom of my memories? ‘He shot him!’ And then it was my voice, screaming into a void inside an impossibly expanding warehouse, looking for Jack in the blackness and knowing he was already gone.
During the day, I called every number I had ever had for my uncle. I left messages with old acquaintances. But there was nothing. The Falcones were gone, too. Millie said their house was deserted now. There was no sign of them ever having existed in Cedar Hill, nothing except for the memories seared into my brain.
And something else, too.
One morning, when I had beaten the sunrise, and was pacing around my room, attempting half-heartedly to tidy it, I came across the shorts I had been wearing that night at the warehouse. I held up the frayed denim, and Luca’s switchblade dropped on to my bed.
Oh.I picked it up and traced the letters.Gianluca, March 20th.It was heavy, the crimson falcon swooping across thehandle like it was going to unstick itself and take flight. I sat down on my bed and stared at it. I had his switchblade. The proof that he had set me free against his family’s wishes – that he, of everyone, had done the right thing in that one moment. I had one last piece of the Falcones sitting in the palm of my hand.
It felt good. I had an unexpected surge of confidence holding it. I guess it reminded me of the confidence he’d had in me. Plus, it was a weapon, and a weapon meant protection. I slid the pad of my index finger along the sharp edge of the knife, revelling in the feeling of metal on skin, the quiet sureness it gave me.
I started to carry the switchblade with me everywhere, like it was some depraved comfort blanket. I ate in the kitchen with my mother, the knife tucked into my shorts, pressing against my hip. At night I kept it under my pillow, curled in my fingers. When Millie came over I thumbed its edges inside my pocket. In moments of idleness I flicked it open, measuring its sharpness against my palm.
I thought about using it, wondered what it would feel like to pierce someone’s flesh. Sometimes I really freaked myself out. I used to fantasize about moving away from Cedar Hill and starting a new life as just an unknown girl in a big city, working on film sets, holding a boom mic, adjusting a shot, or helping to run lines with some hot young Hollywood actor while he fell hopelessly in love with me. Now I was fantasizing about chopping Felice Falcone’s finger off and laughing in his face.God.
It happened almost ten days after leaving the hospital. I had been looking out the window – counting the black cars thatrolled too slowly down my street, my eyes vibrating from exhausted concentration. Now I was nearing the edge of unconsciousness, where I knew sleep would come whether I willed it to or not.
My mother hovered in the doorway to my room, a mug cupped between her hands. She raised it in offering.
‘No, thanks.’ My words slurred.
‘It’s chicken noodle.’ She bit down on her smile to keep it from shaking. ‘You haven’t had anything all day.’
Hadn’t I? Hadshe? ‘So tired.’
