Megan Abbott - The Fever

There was a frenzy around him, a constant whir that didn’t seem to touch him. Or his nurse, her voice tut-tutting, the fine gold cross around her neck, hanging between the tops of her breasts.

And then, as she bent the arm of a light above him, he saw she wasn’t really crazily beautiful and was a lot older than he thought, but there was a tenderness and efficiency to her that made him feel like everything would be okay.

“We’ll still take some blood but—” Just then a crash came, followed by the yelp of a girl’s voice, the skidding of sneakers on the floor.

“Some help here!” a voice rose, deep and urgent.

“I’ll be back,” the nurse said to Eli’s dad, putting her hands on his shoulders to direct him to a narrow waiting area crushed with parents. “Sit tight.”

His dad just stood there, watching the unshaven men with pajama tops under their open coats, women wearing slipper boots, one father weeping into his lap.

“Eli,” his dad was saying, “I have to make a call, okay?”

No one was looking.

Eli was the only male and that made it easier. No one was looking, so he started walking, exploring.

Hearing a dozen conversations, voices pinched and frightened.

“…and her throw-up looked like coffee grounds. I heard that means…”

“…explains why she’s been this way for so long. All those ADD meds. Maybe this is why…”

“…all these clots when I was doing the laundry. And I asked her and she started crying…”

“…and heavy-metal poisoning, or mold? She kept saying everything smelled like meat. And then she’d throw up again.”

“…like I was floating, and a darkness was closing in on me.”

He had been sitting on a small chair, all the exam tables taken, when he spotted, under one of those rolling privacy screens, a pair of soggy bunny slippers.

And then the slippers started to move.

He saw her, the sophomore girl, walking toward the swinging doors.

And he couldn’t sit there anymore.

And no one stopped him.

A man in scrubs, his forehead wet, clipboard in hand, called out to him as he passed a nursing station.

“That’s my sister,” Eli lied, rushing past the man, who started to say something and then stopped.

“I think he’s fine. I don’t know. They think he’s fine.”

“Oh, Tom,” Georgia said, “what’s happened?”

And he didn’t know how to begin to answer that question.

He’d planned on telling her everything he knew, but it felt like so many enigmatic scraps, and all of it depended on her being here, on her knowing the teen-girl complexities of Deenie’s friendships, of the extraordinary something that had overtaken all these girls and everyone in their lives. How did you explain any of that?

He could tell her about finding Eli’s phone, and they could try to figure it all out, but he didn’t know how to tell her without explaining why he’d been with Lara Bishop at midnight.

“I was always afraid something could happen to Eli on the ice,” Georgia said. “That’s the thing that kept me up nights.”

“Georgia,” he said suddenly, “why aren’t you here?”

“Because,” she said, “I’d only make it worse.”

Then she told him she’d tried three times. Gotten in her car, driven nearly all the way to Dryden, three hours, before turning around and driving back. Now she was in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven twelve miles from her apartment.

“Drinking a can of beer,” she said. “Genny Cream. Which I haven’t done since I was twenty.”

And he laughed, and she laughed.

And everything felt mysterious and lonely and half forgotten.

He could hear her laugh in the center of his brain and he thought, That’s not her laugh. I don’t recognize that laugh at all.

Eli lost sight of the sophomore girl quickly.

But down a long hallway in Critical Care, he found what he was looking for.

It was the quietest spot in the entire hospital, a building smaller than their school, which it seemed to be trying to contain right now, its walls swelling and straining.

The doors are always open in hospitals, which seemed funny to him, but he was glad.

Because there she was.

Lise Daniels.

It felt like she’d been alone in the waiting room a long time, her thoughts scattering everywhere, jumping to her feet whenever either set of doors opened.

But then Deenie’s phone rang, and time seemed to stop entirely.

Gabby, the screen read.

She walked swiftly outside, into the back parking lot to a place hidden by a pair of drooping trees, and answered.

“Hey, girl.”

“Hey, girl.”

And a pause that felt electric before Gabby spoke again.

“So I’m waiting for my mom. I told them I wanted my mom here before I tell them.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the police station,” she said, voice hoarse and faint. “I walked for an hour and when I got there, I knew I would do it.”

“But Gabby, listen to me—”

“Don’t hate me, Deenie, okay? Whatever you hear.”

“Gabby, I know what happened. I talked to Skye. It was Skye.”

“No,” Gabby said, with finality. The voice of someone who had decided many things, and now that she’d decided, she was done. I won’t see my dad, I won’t talk to him. I’m done with him forever . “It was me, Deenie. It was me. And I’m not going to tell them about her. You have to promise me you won’t either.”

“I won’t promise! Listen to me, Gabby,” she said again, trying to forget the things Skye had said, about Gabby not caring about Deenie, about how Deenie was in the way. “You wouldn’t have done it without Skye. It’s all her fault.”

Then Gabby said the thing Deenie hoped she wouldn’t say, never guessed she would.

“When I put the leaves in the thermos, I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t care.”

And Deenie could hear it, that click-click-click on the other end, Gabby’s jaw like one of those old wind-up toys, a spinning monkey slapping cymbals. Deenie could practically see her shaking.

Then, as if Gabby had wedged her hand under her jaw to hold it in place, the words came fast and Deenie tried to hold on to them.

“Deenie, if Eli didn’t love me, why would he have been so nice to me and played Ping-Pong with me and that time he gave me a ride on his handlebars? Why would he have treated me like I was special? Not like those hockey groupies, not like girls like Britt Olsen or those girls from Star-of-the-Sea or that slutty sophomore Michelle. But then I heard about Lise and the bushes by school.”

There was a long, raspy gulp, like Gabby couldn’t get air in. And when she started again, Deenie could feel everything falling apart for her. Gabby had many things to say, none of which could help her explain any of it.

“And the more Skye kept talking,” she said, “the more it seemed right. It was supposed to be me , Deenie. He was supposed to love me . But we did the love spell wrong. And Skye told me what she saw. It was like a loop in my head. And he was pulling down her tights, that’s what Skye said. Thinking of his hands on that…that-that-that skin of hers when it was supposed to be me.”

The way she said it, that skin of hers , her voice shaking with anger and disgust, Deenie had the sudden feeling she’d had with Skye. For a fleeting second, she thought it was all a trick, some black art, and it was Skye on the other end of the phone, casting a spell.

“After, Skye said we shouldn’t feel bad. She said it’s what was supposed to happen. It’s how the universe works. Lise’s bad energy came back on her. Skye said when she looked at Lise, she saw a black mark, an aura. Just like the mark on Lise’s thigh, it was a warning.”