Fearless Beings

Chapter 30

Tom's POV:
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"You think he's awake?"

"I don't know. He seems peaceful, though."

"Do we wake him?"

I hear a laugh and then, "No no. He's your potential boyfriend. Not mine. You wake him up."

"Nonsense." Pause. "And besides, I don't think he'll live to be my boyfriend, y'know?" This person sounds sad.

I almost want to jolt out of bed as soon as I realize that these voices belong to Mia and Megan. But it's no big secret that Mia and Megan and Karen know something I don't, and honestly, this might be my only chance of getting answers the easy way.

"Hey, we'll find a way around it," that's Megan, and I'm more than surprised by the softness in her tone.

"How? I'm leaving in a week."

What? She just came back.

My nose is itchy and when I think about it, my left ear is itchy too and it's taking all my will power to lie still.

"Mia, it's a matter of time before he dies, anyway. And if you don't do it, you're just buying him time, but he'll die anyway."

"Whatever," Mia sounds melancholic and her voice comes out heavy, as if burdened.

"I hope you know you're only procrastinating the inevitable," Megan says.

And I want to squeeze her throat out because whatever they're talking about, it's obviously upsetting Mia. "I know I'm not saving him."

"He's going to die," Megan continues.

At that, a loud sob echoes in the funeral-silent room, before Mia tells Megan to fuck off.

"I'm just saying."

"Why do you have to be a bitch about it?"

"I'm not--"

"Tom?" Mia sounds incredulous.

I realize then that my eyes are wide open, staring at the blank white wall, my back to them. I lift my head off the pillow. Sit up. Turn around to them.

"Who were you talking about?" I ask. I sound strange to my own ears.

Megan steps in front of Mia and glares down at me with such fierceness I almost shrink in size. "Eavesdropping, were we?"

"Why are you standing like that in front of her?"

"What did you hear?" She's firing questions.

I move my neck slightly to the right to look at Mia, but she's not looking at me. She's staring at something behind me, her face drained of color and her eyes red shining against the florescent light, but she doesn't look like she's been crying. She looks like she's been trying not to cry.

And, in that second, for the first time since I met Mia, I feel a tremor of fear running its finger down my spine. I don't know her. I don't know what motives she has.

But Karen...

And Madele...

"Are you even listening?" Megan is still talking. She hooks both thumbs in two of her belt loops at either side of her waist and says, "Tom, where the fuck are you?"

I blink at her. At Mia. At the florescent light above our heads. And stand up. "When you two are ready to tell me what the hell is going on, you know where to find me. Until then, don't even bother showing your faces at my front door." I put my hand on the doorknob and twist it. "Oh, and Mia, this time when you leave for Paris or wherever you're going, don't come around again."