Page 49 of Freaks
There were going to be bumps in the road. Obstacles we had to overcome in order to move forward. There were probably going to be days when Fix behaved so egregiously that I wanted to murder him for his actions. And there were definitely going to be days when I wanted to be alone, to run away and hide from the world, and I was going to try and push him away. I wasn’t afraid, though. We’d get through it.
See, easy and simple weren’t concepts I was used to. I’d had to fight for everything in my life, and I didn’t regret that for a moment. The fight had shown me how strong I was. It had shown me the true value of happiness, and it had shown me the lengths I was willing to go to in order to protect it. It would be okay if I had to fight for a life with Fix from time to time. After all, he’d been fighting for me since the moment he set eyes on me, and it didn’t look like he was planning on stopping any time soon.
“I’ve been meaning to ask. Why did you rent a car for your trip across country when you had this beauty sitting in the garage the entire time?” Fix asked, slapping the steering wheel as he headed north east, up toward Redmond.
The Chevy Beretta I’d stolen from Sixsmith had gotten us as far as Washington State. I’d walked into a Walmart in some town I couldn’t even remember the name of anymore, with the purpose of buying Amy and I a few items of clothing. At the checkout, the woman in front of me was struggling to wrangle two tiny children while she’d counted out the change to pay for the diapers and baby food that sat on the conveyor belt. She’d looked tired and harassed and had nearly burst into tears when the guy waiting behind me had told her to hurry the fuck up. Outside, once I’d paid for the clothes I’d picked up, the same woman was waiting at a bus stop in the rain, her children quiet and round eyed, and I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d pulled the car over, told Amy to get her bag, and we’d gotten out.
The sheer disbelief on the woman’s face when I’d handed her the keys and told her the car was hers…I was never going to forget that. The mother had taken some convincing, but in the end she’d taken it. I advised her to exchange it for another car and soon, or sell it outright and keep the money, and she hadn’t asked why. Essentially, the car had been mine to give away. I’d paid for it three times over with my twice weekly trips to see Sam. Sixsmith was a fucker of the highest order, though, and had no doubt reported the Chevy stolen, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
Five years later, after I was done with college and had been working for a while, I’d picked up the Fastback. She was a thing of beauty. With the gleaming, slick, paint job in midnight black and the matte black rims to match, the thing was almost murdered out.
“Didn’t wanna put the miles on the engine,” I mumbled around my mouth full of sandwich.
Fix gave me a sidelong look, smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
I’d been about to take another bite of my sandwich. I lowered it. “What?”
“Nothing. I just never realized I’d fallen in love with a greaser is all. This is a badass car, Sera.”
“I know. But I’m a badass. I deserve a badass ride. Count your lucky stars I’m even letting you drive it.”
Fix smile wavered. “Youarea badass. You’ve been a badass since that night at the motel.”
I angled my head, wondering at the odd tone to his voice. “Does my badass status worry you or something?”
“Quite the opposite. Your badass status compliments my totally-fucking-awesome-smart-and-sexy-as-fuck status quite nicely.”
Asshole. I stuck my tongue out at him.
“I’m just wondering if you’ve thought this through, that’s all. You don’t have to be so strong all the time. You’re allowed to be affected by things from time to time. You don’t owe her anything, Sera. Not one thing.”
I cringed, my appetite evaporating into smoke. Silly, really. We were less than thirty minutes away from the facility where Sadie was…living? I’d been lying on a gurney, getting my stomach stitched back together, while Fix had left me to take Sadie upstairs to the psych ward at the hospital. Of course, he’d had to use a fake name when he’d dealt with the care staff. He’d become Daniel Whitechurch—the same Daniel Whitechurch who’d accompanied me on a plane back from New York City only a few hours earlier. The cops hadn’t suspected a thing when we’d both had to give our account of what had happened.
After a thorough examination, the doctors put Sadie on a seventy-two-hour hold, deciding that she was, indeed, suffering from some sort of mental illness. Since we weren’t family, they wouldn’t tell us exactly what their diagnosis was, but they seemed appropriately concerned by the fact that she’d stabbed me in the fucking stomach with a nine-inch-long piece of glass. Once the psychiatric hold had expired, they’d deemed her a risk to herself and others and had moved her to Gateway House.
Today was the first and last time I’d be paying her a visit.
“I’ve thought it through. I’ve done nothing but think it through,” I said. “Part of me thinks I’m being selfish. That I just want to see her in there with my own two eyes, so I know she’s not getting out any time soon. And if that’s the case, then I should just walk away and not step foot inside the place, because me going there is only going to rile her up and completely unbalance her again.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Unbalanced is Sadie’spermanentstate. If you need to see her for some reason before you can move on, then just fucking do it. I know she’s sick, but really.Fuck her. She tried to fucking kill you. Came pretty close to succeeding, too. Let’s not forget that.”
He was right.
Some nights, I laid awake in bed, sweating, panicking, questioning if I’d done the right thing. If I’d just let Fix kill her, I wouldn’t be feeling like this now. More than likely, I would feel free. She would never have posed a threat to us again. Sadie would have been yet another life Fix had taken, though, and, although he never said it, I knew the weight of the dead pressed down on him every day.
“I don’t expect this to make any sense to you,” I said weakly. “But wewereclose. For years. Maybe she was only pretending, and shereallyfucking hated me the entire time, but I believed she was my friend. She was so important to me. I leaned on her. I trusted her. I relied on her for so much. And welaughed. We had some amazing times, Fix. It all sounds so fucked up and crazy when I say it out loud, but in a way it doesn’t matter if none of it was real to her. It was real tome, and I feel… God. I feel…”
“Like you want to say goodbye to your friend,” Fix murmured.
Staring straight ahead, I wrapped my sandwich up with numb hands, putting it back into the plastic bag at my feet. He was so astute. He saw absolutely everything with those beautiful, fierce, moonlit eyes. “Yeah. I guess you could put it like that.”
Forty minutes later, we’d found Gateway House, parked and signed in at the front desk. But when we were getting ready to be shown through to the common area where Sadie was reportedly watching television, a short woman in her forties with a high blonde ponytail and very businesslike horn-rimmed glasses intercepted us, calling us into her office.
“I’m Doctor Sandra Hewitt,” she said, vigorously shaking my hand. “I’m very glad to meet you, Sera, although I am a little surprised that you’re here. Most victims of violent physical assault choose to avoid seeing their attackers for quite some time. And you must be Daniel?” She smiled brightly up at him.
Fix smiled tightly as he also shook her hand. He was really, really hating this, and I couldn’t blame him. I was hating it, too. The place wasn’t bad at all. Everything was very relaxed, the décor plush, and none of the (super friendly) staff were wearing scrubs. It didn’t feel like a medical facility at all, but there was just something unsettling about the place.
“Listen, I’m sorry to have stopped you in the corridor there, but unfortunately I don’t think it would be wise for you to see Julia at this time. She’s really struggling to come to terms with reality at the moment. In fact…” She squinted at me, her eyes flitting sideways, taking in Fix for a second. “She’s made some very concerning accusations about you, Daniel. Can I ask what line of work you’re in?”
