Confessions of a Lab Rat

Chapter 13

I lie awake in bed, pretending that I'm looking at the stars.

I've never actually seen stars.

Lillian once described them as little holes in black velvet cloth.

She says the sky is bright blue and the clouds are white and the sun is like fire.

I've lain awake many nights since then trying to remember a time before I came here. Trying to remember the sky.

Trying to remember anything. The feeling of being healthy, the faces of my parents and siblings, or just trying to remember if I actually ever had any of that.

I think of Beech talking about his sister, his voice filled with hope and pain.

I imagine a girl with long blonde hair and deep blue eyes under a blue sky in front of a faded yellow farm house with a green door.

I think of black soil and a big green tractor.

The girl has a wide smile on her face. In my mind she's beautiful.

I try to imagine Beech there, smiling and without his tattoos or his hospital gown.

My imagination doesn't stretch that far.

I silently wonder what Beech could have done to find his way into prison. He must've killed someone. But that's not my Beech, I decide. Not the Beech who talks about life and plays monopoly and watches over Sugar while she sleeps.

I decide that whatever Beech did has turned him into that person that his right now and it is so opposite to think that doing something terrible can maybe make us better.

The door to my room creaks open.

"Hey there, Pepper Rat," Beech sits on my bed next to my skeleton body, highlighted by the white hospital sheets. "It's been a big day, huh?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I know it's silly to hope that maybe she'll survive this."

"There's always hope," he says.

"That's what Lillian said the day before Salt died," I whisper. "There was hope then. Now there's pain."

Beech is silent for a long time.

"You know, you just reminded me of something I read once," he finally said.

"What was it?" I ask quietly.

"It said that we will always grow and prosper if we have two things."

"And?" I prod.

"It said, 'courage and the hope of which we boast.'"

I struggle to make sense of that.

"Who's we?" I ask.

"I think the 'we' is us," he says. "All of us. You and me and Sugar."

I think about that for a minute.

The silence makes the night seem darker.

"Did you kill someone?" I ask quietly, unsure of my own voice.

Beech's body tenses beside me.

"Yes," he says. "I won't lie about what I did."

"Why?"

"Why won't I lie, or why did I kill someone?"

"Both," I say.

He takes a big breath.

"First I've learned that lying doesn't change who we are, it only confirms what we knew we were the whole time. I'm ashamed of what I did and I can't deny it.

"And second..." His voice trails off. He shifts farther up onto the bad and I put my head in his lap.

"After Lena died, Something inside of me died. And at boarding school... I met these guys. It all seemed harmless at first. The alcohol and the drugs."

I see him put his head in his hands.

"I got kicked out of school, but I couldn't go home. I lived on the street until a gang took me in."

I struggle digest that, letting it tumble around in my stomach.

"My parents were looking for me. I was hiding from them. I got caught by a police officer..." His voice fades away again. "I was so desperate. I- ... I shot him.

"He had kids, Pepper. And a wife. But that feels so far away, like it was done by a completely different person."

I reach for one of his hands and hold it tight.

"You're a better person now," I say.