Touch: Awakening

Part Seven

"C'mon. High Noon is a classic in every sense of the word." Drew walks backward, keeping his eyes trained on me as he tries to convince me to watch the movie he wants to see.

"It has the most annoying theme song in the history of theme songs. Besides, I ought to head over to the library. Parker said she was going to be there." It's only a partial lie. Parker is, indeed, at the library, researching, and I've been slacking for the past week, compiling notes for the paper I'd rather be writing. I know High Noon, and the theory it's an allegory for blacklisting isn't exactly a secret.

It's also one of those films that, like certain books, require permission to view. I'm not sure why; communism is a thing of the past, and it was one of those ideologies that when put into practice always failed. As far as threats go, it makes kittens look tough.

He's watching me with that strange, intense look, the one he's gotten a few times before. It's always, always about something it's not smart to discuss with people you don't know well. His face is incredibly expressive. He gives it away, every time, and he ought to have figured it out by now, because I do the same thing, every time: I step back.

And then I tell him what he wants to know anyway. Usually.

Not this time, though. Parker's under enough pressure as it is. "Sorry. Library time." I shoo him away. "Go watch Gary Cooper stomp around in the desert."

He huffs out a breath, grins, and walks off toward the cineplex. I hurry to the portal and switch over to the campus, blinking my eyes to clear my vision. Switching is a pain, literally; I always end up with a headache. I don't want to miss Parker, though, and I'm already an hour past when she said she'd be there. For all I know, she could have left when I didn't show.

Parker's holed up in our nook. Her head's down, hair hanging in lank hunks, and when she glances up, the familiar misery has settled deeper into her eyes.

I hurry into the nook and drop into the chair beside her. "What is it?"

She flinches away when I stretch a hand toward her. "I can't do this anymore," she whispers. "Everything is so wrong. Everything. I can't feel anything anymore."

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle with awareness, the soft sounds from the library loud as church bells. This conversation requires privacy, and our secluded nook is too open for my paranoia.

I urge her to her feet. "Let's get out of here."

The Arts building isn't far from the library, and the campus is quiet, most people in class or the library. For a second I think I see Drew, loitering in the shadows of a nearby building, but he's gone in a blink.

We make it to our office without running into anyone we know, and Parker collapses in her chair as soon as the door shuts behind her. "Okay. So what's going on?"

"I can't help it, Lex. They-" She clamps her mouth shut and closes her eyes. "In the beginning, they switch out your pills. You lose all sense of time, day, night, hours, minutes. Two days, three, maybe more, where you're in pain. It's like the hottest water you can stand and it's amped up a thousand degrees. It's worse than the desert Realm, where your skin is burning off your bones. You can't keep anything down, so you're strapped to your bed with a needle in your arm, some bag hanging above you.

"And when it's over?" Her smile is brilliant, bright and serene and perfect. "You're alive. You can feel every individual fiber in your sheets, how smooth the metal is, the slickness of the water on your tongue. Warmth and cold and damp and dry all mean something." She opens her eyes. "It's touch, Alexis. We've been going through life embracing things that are about as solid as ghosts. The regimen tricks you into believing you can feel."