Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 45: I Have Another Fight

"Are you trying to drown yourself? C'mon, save some lukewarm water for the rest of us!"

Shiv stands behind me in the shower, exaggerating how much she's shivering.

"Sorry," I say, wringing out my wet hair. "Shower thoughts."
"You didn't even notice how cold it's gotten, did you?" Shiv asks, pushing me aside so she can take my place. "Let me gets the suds out and then I'll leave you to it. You've gone full Twilight Zone again." As she rinses her hair she snorts.

At first I think it's just because she's got water in her nose, but then she says: "You might actually like Ad-Seg. Being left alone with your thoughts? Free to zone out entirely without anyone else noticing? All yours–" she says, stepping out of the stream again.

Still dazed, lost in my head, I let her push me back under the water.

"I lo– like you."

"The person I'd care most about is you."

"I have to take the fall for her..."

"Doubt that you like me back..."

Steak liked me, enough that he'd started to write the word love. But that wasn't what I was thinking about, now... I was too distracted by the thought that Steak needed–

The thought is slammed out of my head as it collides with the shower floor. Sputtering, I spit blood out of my mouth into the drain. Someone's foot is pressing on the back of my neck – my nose fills with water – I gurgle, struggle, trying to sit up –

The foot grinds my face into the drain again, then steps off. Blinking bloody water out of my eyes, I look:

It's a perfect, foot-porn, foot...

Grifta.

Kristina Kelly is right beside her, leaning cooly against the shower stall. They allow me to sit up.

I spit a bloody loogie on Grifta's feet and she recoils, shrieking, "What the fuck?"

"You didn't get sent to Ad-Seg," Kristina Kelly rolls her eyes at the both of us. "Congratulations! We wanted both you and Shiv to get caught. Get the two of you away for a few days, sneak in, have our words with Steak..."

"I did ask nicely, first," Grifta teases, batting her wonky eyes at me. Mine are still stinging. I wipe blood out of them. "I asked you nicely to pass notes for... us." (She'd almost fucked up. She looks at Kristina Kelly out of the corner of her eye, to see if she noticed: Grifta had almost admitted that she'd asked Shiv to pass notes while Kristina Kelly was gone...)

"I don't understand why you need my room to do it," I say. "Pass your notes to your own upstairs neighbors, have them run them to Steak."

"I don't trust middle men, anymore," says Kristina Kelly and Grifta flinches again. "I like to do my own dirty work."

"That's why it was your foot on my neck," I scowl. "Right, right..."

Kristina Kelly steps into the shower, in all her clothes, and crouches beside me, putting her face right up next to mine. The water hits her face and makes her make up run.

"Next time you cross me I'll shove my foot right up your–"

There's a noise in the hallway. More girls, coming to shower, or Garda Girdle checking why I'm taking so long... Kristina Kelly doesn't wait to find out. She whistles for Grifta, like she's a dog, and they hurry out of the room, leaving me alone on the floor.

Head still throbbing where it hit the shower tiles, I climb into bed early. I don't have enough energy to tell Shiv what happened and I'm embarrassed that, once again, Grifta and Kristina Kelly attacked me and I didn't know how to fight back...

In my dream there's a curse with a time limit. I'm in a tower, with thorns on the windows that thrash around like snakes. Below me there's brimstone on one side and a churning ocean on the other, the tower rising perilously out of the waves. But Steak gets inside of it easily – no physical obstacle's a problem.

Except for the stairs.

I hear his feet at the bottom of the spiral. He's close. Closer.

Not close enough.

There's a clock in the ceiling and it's ticking furiously. Time is running out.

If he could just call up from the staircase – if he could just tell me he loves me the curse could be broken...

But for some reason, he can't talk. He can't call out to me. And the stairs keep getting longer.

I pace furiously, wringing my hands, feeling a pit growing in my stomach. He's not going to get to me in time, he's not going to get to me.

He summits the stairs, panting. His eyes are wide and wild. He points to his throat.

It looks normal to me. He points inside his ears, his mouth, up his nose. Shakes his head as if signaling that something's got hold of his brain.

I step closer and check his ears again –and then I see it.

Like the thorns on my windows, something's wound its way inside Steak's head. Some writhing, spiny-legged tangled snarl. He opens his mouth and his tongue's turned black.

His eyes bulge, he gasps.

He falls to his knees on the tower floor, trembling.

He can't speak. He can't think.

The curse! The curse!

...What was the curse, exactly? If he can say he loves me, it's broken... If not...

"Jos! Wake up!"

In the flicker of time between waking and dreaming, I realize what the curse means: I'll be stuck in the tower forever, heart-sick and helpless, having to watch Steak tortured by his ADHD.

"Get up!" Shiv slams her pillow against my face. "You look like death."