Megan Abbott - The Fever

I should have thrown it out. I couldn’t even turn it off. Having it the past two days, it was like being connected to you. It kept me strong. I even charged it once, held it in my hand like it was part of you. I can’t believe I just told you that. I hate myself so much.

I keep thinking about when Deenie finds out. She thinks I need her but she’s the one who needs me. I make her feel more interesting. Your sister’s a really good person. But she doesn’t know me at all. I hide myself from her. I would never want her to know. Now I guess she’ll know everything.

I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?

I believed her when she said it was you with Lise by the bushes. It was the worst moment in my life, worse even than the other. It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did. It was just supposed to embarrass her. I thought it would just make her look bad, to make her head crazy a while. Maybe I wanted her to have to feel crazy for a little while.

Lise is beautiful and there is nothing dark and messy in her. Nothing bad ever happened to her that I ever heard of except her dad dying when she was a baby. She’s unmarked. No one asks to be marked up. And nothing was hard for her ever. And then she got to have you too. Or that’s what I thought. Now I have to fix things.

I wanted to play Ping-Pong with you forever. Would you have let me.

I’m just so in love with you. I just can’t stop being in love with you.

This is the first letter I ever wrote.

“Your daughter couldn’t be here, sir,” the nurse told him. “Visiting hours ended at nine.”

“I know,” Tom said, “but I think she might be.”

Where else would she be? he thought. Not at home, not at Gabby’s—there was no other place.

“Sir, we have a lot going on in here right now.”

“I know, I do. I promise, I’m not being a jerk. I think she might have gone to see Lise Daniels. Can you at least let me—”

“Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Listen, can you page Sheila Daniels for me? She’ll vouch for me,” he said, though he had no idea if she would. “I promise.”

The nurse looked at him blankly.

Nurses are like cops, he thought. You can’t hide anything.

But then he remembered he had nothing, really, to hide.

Together, they sat on pastel chairs in the Critical Care waiting room.

The slump of Sheila’s body, so different from the Sheila of the other morning, or most of the times he saw her, always running on nerves and worry. Now there was a zombie sedation about her that made her easier to talk to, but much sadder.

Her hands, chapped, were folded in her lap, the nails lined red.

“Deenie was here,” Sheila said, the smell on her like a live presence. “I saw her. I think I did. The pills they gave me…”

“When?”

“An hour ago, maybe. I don’t know. My mom saw her too.”

“Do you know where she—”

“You know, I’ve only been home once. For an hour. The coffee table was still tipped over. I keep thinking about that coffee table.” She looked at him, eyes yellowed. “That’s what did it, in the end.”

Something ghastly turned inside him. “In the end? Sheila, is Lise…”

But she shook her head, over and over. “Nothing’s changed. Except everything. I don’t understand. Tom, who would hurt my girl?”

“Sheila, I don’t…what’s happened?”

“I told them Lisey doesn’t use drugs,” she said. “Is Deenie a drug user now?”

“Deenie? No.”

“That’s what I told them.”

“The police?” he asked, though he knew. “And they were asking about Deenie?”

“All day I’ve been talking to them,” she said.

“Detectives? A woman with a ponytail—”

“They found it in Lise’s thermos,” she said, taking a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket, reading from it. “Datura stramonium.”

Tom looked at the paper, a printout from the web. With a picture of a white flower like a pinwheel, smooth with toothed leaves.

D. stramonium —Jimsonweed; thorn apple; Jamestown weed (Family: Nightshade). A foul-smelling herb that forms bushes up to five feet tall. Its stems fork into leafy branches, each leaf with a single, erect flower.

For centuries, Datura has been used as an herbal medicine. It is also a potent hallucinogen and deliriant that can generate powerful visions. Legend has it that Cleopatra used the extract as a love potion in her seduction of Caesar.

Low recreational doses are usually absorbed through smoking the plant’s leaves. It can, however, prove fatally toxic in only slightly higher amounts, and reckless use can result in hospitalization and even death. Amnesia of the poisoning event is common.

Late signs/fatal reactions: convulsions, cardiovascular weakening, coma.

Tom tried to concentrate on the words, but the noise in his head wouldn’t let him.

“Jimsonweed. Someone gave her this?” he said. “Someone gave this to all these girls?”

“They gave it to Lise,” Sheila said, swallowing loudly, the paper shaking in her hand. “They couldn’t find it in the other girls.”

“Do they know why? And what about…” There were too many questions and she wasn’t listening anyway.

She looked down at the printout, turning it over, showing him the drawing of the plant’s chemical composition.

Looking up, she smiled vaguely, her voice rising and pushing the words out: “Blind as a bat, mad as a hatter…”

“Red as a beet,” continued Tom, an old memory, cramming for a long-ago exam, rising up in him, “hot as a hare, dry as a bone, and the—”

“—heart runs alone,” she finished. “The doctor told me that’s how they memorize it in med school. The symptoms. Toxic something. I forgot to write that part down.”

“Poisoned,” he said. “She was poisoned.”

“The heart runs alone,” she repeated, turning from the paper to Tom. “Isn’t that horrible?” Then, looking up at him. “Or beautiful?”

“Skye,” Deenie whispered loudly, moving closer. “What did you do? ”

“Why would I tell you?” she said, arm lifting to the dark boughs of the tree above her. “What did you ever care about me? The only one who ever cared is Gabby.”

“Gabby cares about Lise,” Deenie said. “What did you do, Skye?”

And that’s when Skye’s mouth started its clicking sound again.

“I can’t believe you never knew,” she said. “About Gabby.”

“What does Gabby…” But already something was happening, a feeling.

“About Gabby,” Skye said. “About how fucking much she loves your brother.”

“What…” Deenie started, but she couldn’t make the words come. Because there it was, some private song she knew from far back in a cobwebby corner of her head. A song so faint she’d barely heard it, but now, the sound turned up, she couldn’t muffle it anymore.

Gabby, who always walked so fast by his bedroom door. Gabby standing beside her at the washing machine, her hand on Eli’s T-shirt. Her fingers. Deenie wanted to look away. A dozen times like that. The way her body battened tight when he came in the room. The way her face…

This song, she’d heard it so low and quiet so long, she never really heard it all.

“She could never tell you,” Skye said. “She knew you wouldn’t understand, or help her. But she had me.”

Deenie felt something drag up her spine. Turning, she said, each word slow and raking up her throat, “Had you for…what? What did you do, Skye? ”