Saving Quinton (Nova #2)(55)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

I press my fingers to my temples and let my head fall forward. I swear to God, it feels like I’ve walked into a minefield and one wrong step and I’ll set off a bomb. Only the steps are words and the bombs are moody, strung-out people, either high or craving to get high.

It doesn’t help that I’m cranky, too. I seriously consider going out through the front door and back to my car, driving off into the sunset, not stopping until I reach it, forgetting about all of this, like it would be that easy, when it wouldn’t. Besides, I couldn’t even reach the sunset if I tried, since it doesn’t really exist. It’s just an illusion that paints the world with its pretty colors just before night comes and covers it all up with darkness. It reminds me that walking away, pretending Quinton doesn’t need my help, isn’t going to get me anywhere, other than maybe to another video, recorded moments before he dies.

So I end up going down the hall toward Quinton’s room. As I pass by the shut door of the room Quinton locked himself in the first time I came here, I hear people arguing behind it. Their voices are muffled so I can’t tell what they’re saying, but it sounds like things are heated. It makes me a little nervous and that feeling only grows when I reach the end of the hall. Quinton’s door is cracked and the one to my right is wide open. What I see inside makes me seriously wish I had picked the delusional sunset.

Tristan is sitting on the floor just inside the room with a rubber band around his bony arm and he’s flicking his vein with his finger as he opens and closes his fist. It reminds me of when I slit my wrist open, only he’s preparing to sink the syringe that’s beside his foot into his skin.

As if he senses me watching him, he glances up and our eyes lock. It frightens me how cold and empty his are. Before I can say a word, he moves his foot and kicks the door shut in my face and suddenly I understand his erratic behavior a little bit more. It hurts, more than I thought it would, and opens my eyes a little to a much bigger problem. If I save Quinton, help him, there are still so many others slowly killing themselves like Tristan. It feels like such a lost cause. One I can’t change, but desperately want to.

I squeeze my eyes shut, telling myself to stay calm. Shut it out. Focus on one thing at a time. Breathe.

But the yelling in the room gets louder and I hear something crash against the door and shatter. My eyes shoot open and I turn around as the sound of crying flows through the door, and then it opens up. Dylan strolls out wearing a white tank top and a pair of jeans held up with a frayed belt. He glances at me frigidly as he shuts the door, giving me no time to see what’s going on inside.

“You looking for something?” he asks, relaxing causally against the door like nothing’s going on at all.

I shake my head, my nerves bubbling inside. “I’m just here to see Quinton.”

He points at something over my shoulder. “His room is that way, not over here.”

I hesitate to turn around and only do when the crying stops. I feel Dylan stand there behind me for a while until finally he goes back into the room.

I free a trapped breath, my muscles unraveling. “What is wrong with that guy?”

“Delilah and him fight all the time.” Quinton appears in the doorway of his room, wearing only his boxers. I can see every scar, every sunken-in area, the weight he’s lost, the sheer lack of health. His eyes have dark rings under them and they’re filled with the same unwelcome look that was in Tristan’s eyes. “I feel bad for her and tried to help her once, but she won’t leave him…” He shrugs. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Maybe I should go in there and talk to her,” I say. “See if I can, I don’t know, do something.”

“Always trying to save everyone.”

“Everyone I care for,” I say, meeting his gaze.

He gives me an indecisive look and then sighs, submitting. “What are you doing here? I thought we ended stuff the other day on the roof.” He says it like he seriously believes that he thought our fight on the roof was the end of things.

It takes a tremendous amount of energy to shrug off his ass**le comment. “We didn’t end things,” I say. “We just had a fight and now I’m here to apologize.”

“Apologize for what?”

“For making you mad. That is why you’ve been avoiding me, isn’t it?”

He cocks his head to the side, looking at me like I’m a foreign creature. “No, you didn’t make me mad. You just made me realize that I don’t want you hanging around…that it’s not good for me to be around you.”

“But I want to be around you and you told me you would let me visit you before I go home, which is soon.” The last part is a lie because I honestly have no clue when I’ll head back—when I’ll be able to accept that things may never change. Give up hope.

He studies me even more closely, seeming conflicted and a little irate, and all I want to do is step to the side and let the wall block me from his unrelenting gaze. “You can stay and hang if you want to,” he says as he reaches for a pair of jeans on the floor. “But I…I have to do a few things first.”

“Like what?”

He doesn’t respond, but he does take out a tiny plastic bag filled with white clumpy powder. He holds it up and raises his eyebrows inquiringly, like he’s testing me, daring me to give him a reason to send me away, back out to the other side of that cracked door.

I feel myself curl into a ball inside but outside I stay tall. “Do you have to?”

He nods with need in his eyes and I force the lump down in my throat and don’t say a word when he starts to open the bag and then shuts the door. At least he does me the courtesy of not doing it in front of me this time.

I stare at the cracks in the wall as I wait, tracking them with my gaze, not counting them even though I desperately want to. Then the bedroom door swings open, the one Dylan went in. But he’s not the person that steps out.

Delilah is.

She’s wearing a see-through shirt and her shorts look more like boy-cut panties. Her auburn hair is matted and her cheek is a little swollen. But she seems more alert than the last time I saw her.

She starts to head in the opposite direction from me, ashing her cigarette on the floor, but then pauses when she sees me. “So the rumors are true,” she says, sniffling, her nose red, and I’m unsure if it’s because she’s been crying or because she just snorted something.