Subject #013 | ✓

Chapter 30

We return to the hotel room exhausted and sweaty. When Alix started to show signs of sickness, it was the least Liz and I could do to get him back safely to the hotel.

Lazy flashes of memories of the dance cross my vision against my will. Alix dipping me to the beat of the music, the exhilarating feeling when we got to launch the lanterns into the sky, and the radiant smiles on all three of our faces when Alix insisted we get a picture taken. My fingers tighten in my lap with waning adrenaline, because simply being back in the darkness listening to the disgusting retching sound from Alix in the bathroom is enough to zap any old excitement from my veins. 

Light streams into the dark room through a crack at the bottom of the bathroom door. The sounds coming from inside cause me to wince visibly. Liz lies next to me on the bed, her eyes already shut. I let out a long sigh before putting my head in my hands. I can't stop the tears from coming. I've held them in for far too long. I do my best to quiet them so that Liz isn't disturbed, but it's nearly impossible. Not when there's so much to mourn over. Do Jax and Bayley even remember that I exist? Or are they too wrapped up in each other to notice that I'm missing?

Liz sits up, meeting my eyes with her stormy ones. I guess she wasn't actually asleep. "You feel something for him, don't you?" She asks, her expression unreadable. I might go as far as to say she's smirking. I shift positions before responding.

"Um...no." I respond, taking a sudden keen interest in my nails.

"You've always been a terrible liar." She puts a pillow on her lap and lays her head on it, looking up at me with a smile. "You like him, don't you?"

"What's not to like?" Answering a question with a question. Maybe I'm more like Alix than I thought. "He's funny, sarcastic, and sneaky. Let's not forget that even you were all over him a few days ago."

Liz's smile drops, and a look that resembles shame crosses her face. I don't press the issue, and she doesn't look like she wants to talk about it. "Answer my question." She says firmly.

I let out a long sigh. "I do like him, but not in the way you think. Not in the way I probably should."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks, pressing her lips together into a thin line.

"He looks—he looks so much like—" I choke on his name. Jax. I can't figure out why it's so much easier to spill my deepest, darkest secrets to Liz than it is my own parents. I barely know her, and her motives still aren't clear, but she's the one I most want to talk to, I realize.

"There was another." Liz finishes the sentence, almost to herself. Her words startle me. She knows. How does she know?

"Yeah," I agree, tasting something salty on my tongue. I'm still crying. There is silence between us for a while before Liz speaks again. Alix has been strangely silent in the bathroom, and I can't help but wonder if he's listening to all of this. "I know what that feels like." She says.

My eyes shoot up to hers, surprised, though I should have suspected something like this along the lines of her past. Based on what I overheard on her conversation with Alix, I heard enough to figure out that she had been passed from foster family to foster family, and they all proved to be total disasters. But a boy on top of all this? What did this girl get herself into?

"What was his name?" I ask, not bothering to ask the generic 'really?'

"Elias." She responds. I nod serenely before asking 'the question.'

"What happened?"

Liz bites her lip and sighs heavily. I honestly don't expect her to say anything to me about this boy called Elias. Even from the moment she spoke his name, sadness shone through her eyes. In her stormy eyes, it has begun to rain. "He was everything to me. A way to get away from my past. With him, there was no past. Only the present." She swallows before continuing. "He got drunk one night." I suck in a sharp breath. Alix got drunk tonight. But I don't feel this way about him, do I? After all, everything that happened tonight was just for a simple break from reality. Liz continues. "I've never figured out how, or why. But he cornered me—he got too close. I told him no, but he was relentless." She meets my eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks as well. "He hit me, Jess. And he smiled when he did it. He called me nasty, vulgar things that no one could ever unsay. After that night, I never saw him again. I've never wanted to."