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.I labored to stem the epidemic nothingness, to hold my focus, to return to some port or place of safety, but I could not find my beginning.I awoke in pitch dark.The air was murky and cold.Denny was there, holding me.Behind his shoulders, I recognized the bare yellow bulb of the darkroom.I wondered who had moved the ceiling fixture to the wall.“I’m going to lift you honey, okay? Ready, here we go.” I felt his arms slide under my back, and as he straightened his knees to raise my body, the bulb disappeared upward in a fluid arc.He eased me onto the stool and asked what had happened.I said I didn’t know.It was not good to sit.My head throbbed.I reached to touch the place that hurt, and it hurt worse.Denny moved my hand away and measured the knot.It seemed to be about the size of a lime.“I can’t tell if it’s bleeding.I think it’s bleeding,” he said.“It’s like a lime,” I asked, “isn’t it?”“Okay,” he said, searching nervously around the unoccupied darkroom for someone to consult, someone other than me.“I’ve got to get you out of here.” He wagged his hand in front of his nose.“This air is poison.How many times have I told you—Solvents kill.”Denny ducked beneath one of my armpits, and he lifted me.Denny was strong.When he hugged you, it was like entering a whole new room.Once he heaved Nico into the air and smashed his head three times against the lockers—boom, boom, boom—saying, “You filthy runt.You’re lucky I don’t toss you under a fucking car.” I didn’t see it, I just heard about it, not from Denny but from basically everyone else in school.Denny didn’t mention it because he was a gentleman, and it had to do with me.On the same day, L.B.Strickland got two broken fingers and a dislocated shoulder.We stopped at the main office.Denny leaned me against the door frame while he ran in.“How can I help you, Mr.Marshall?” one of the secretaries asked as he hustled past her to the nurse’s office.“Just getting an ice pack, Mrs.Miller.” He went through the side door of the unattended infirmary and came out right away, blue plastic bag in hand.“No need to exert yourself on behalf of an injured student.Here,” he said to me, handing off the pack, sweeping up my body, glancing back over his shoulder and shooting a last look at the women inside.“God forbid they should burn a few calories.”In the car I placed my head on his leg.During the drive home, he talked incessantly but lovingly, the way some dogs bark.“You shouldn’t have been there alone.What if I hadn’t come? What if you tried to get up then fell again? You’re lucky you don’t have a concussion.And the chemicals! Don’t you know that every egg you’ll ever have is in your ovaries already? That room has no oxygen supply.Tack on your history of low blood pressure and sleep deprivation, and you’ve got the recipe for disaster!”Denny was good in science, particularly in regard to the body and how it worked, but you had to be careful not to act impressed or say, You ought to be a doctor! Though all his test scores had been nearly perfect, he refused to consider a career in medicine.“I just spent eighteen years pretending to be straight,” he said the day we drove to the post office and mailed his application to Fashion Institute of Technology.“Medical school would kill me.” He acted like he was happy that day, but I knew he was not.When he pulled into my driveway, he was explaining the phrase “mad as a hatter.” Something, something, he was saying, and, licking mercury.“Okay.Time to get up.”“But we just got here,” I said, looking up from his leg.“I know, but now I’m late.I didn’t expect to have to stage a rescue this afternoon.”“Late for what?” I asked.“Do you have a date?”“I do,” he said with a nod.“A Valentine’s date?”“Yes,” he said, “a Valentine’s date.And you are not invited.Let’s go.”I stirred, and the upholstery squeaked.He slipped carefully out, then bounded around to the passenger side to help me out.I tried to recall the last time I’d had as much energy.It seemed like such a long time ago that it must have been never.“There, there,” he said, hugging then releasing me in one motion.He pointed me toward the house and gave me a tiny shove.I hit the hedges, missing the path entirely.“You’re breaking my heart,” he moaned as I stumbled along to the front porch.“Sneak in back.In back,” he directed, throwing a loud whisper over the top of the car.He waved his arm in frustration when I reached the steps, and in his normal voice said, “Too late.You’ll never sleep now.”Kate was stretched across the couch in the living room, phone in hand.It occurred to me to run back out, but Denny was already gone.He’d tapped his horn before taking off down Osborne Lane.I shut the storm door behind me.“Got to go,” Kate said.“Evie’s home.”I waved, signaling to Kate that she shouldn’t get off the phone on my account.She hung up anyway and sat upright.On the shoulder of her sweater was one of the Valentine roses from school.“I got it anonymously,” she said, coming to show me.“But I think it’s from Harrison Rourke.”The lump in my head throbbed and also vessels in my temples.I wondered if it was possible for the veins behind my eyes to rupture [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]