34: what's the cure for psychopathy?

My first thought is that everything hurts.

I peel my eyes open, my body giving in to an involuntary shudder as I do. There's pillows underneath my head, a wool blanket pulled up to my shoulders, a low warble of voices echoing somewhere. The lamp beside my head floods the area with warm, yellow light, and I blink, realizing I'm in my old bedroom.

I sit up, slowly, and notice the humongous blood stain across the front of my shirt.

Fantastic.

It's not like I liked that shirt, or anything.

Any hope that all of this had been a dream goes out the window; the evidence is literally all over me. Rocco lied to me the whole time. Then I killed him.

It sounds so much simpler than it is.

I'm sitting there in my old bed, a rickety twin-sized one that I outgrew when I was twelve but used long after that (thanks, Sybil), when the voices beyond the door resolve into concrete words. "I'll go check on him," someone says, and then the door creaks open and I lay eyes on my mom.

I'm a bit surprised she's still here, but she is, her unruly hair raked back into a ponytail, her baggy sweatshirt replaced with an equally baggy T-shirt. There's a look on her face I don't recognize—not pity, but genuine concern. I can't remember the last time she looked at me like that, if ever.

"Hey, baby," she coos softly, and I almost want to snap at her not to call me that, since I'm anything but a baby, but I'm just too exhausted. "You're awake. How are you feeling?"

It's a dumb question, and I think she knows it.

I collapse back onto the pillows with a sigh. "I just murdered my best friend. I feel like shit."

She's my mom. She's supposed to reprimand me for being profane. But then I remember she's never been the run-of-the-mill mother anyway, and she just eases herself on the edge of the bed and says, "That's fair."

"He lied to me," I murmur, and when Mom slips an arm around my shoulder and leans my head against her chest, I don't even fight it. I let her sit there and hold me like I'm a toddler and I feel like an idiot and and yet I also feel like I'd hate it if she let me go. This is what it's like, I guess. To be supported. "The one person I always trusted was never afraid of me was more afraid than all the rest. And I—I killed him."

"You did what you had to do," Mom reassures me, stroking my head like she would a cat's. "That makes you strong. So strong, Grey. And tell you what, I'm not even surprised about that. You've been strong your whole life."

I want to ask her how she knows that. How anyone could know that.

"I don't feel strong at all," I say, my voice pretty much hollow at this point. And I hate it, and I feel like a nitwit, but I burst into tears, unable to fight the sniffles anymore. It's not a subtle cry, either. It's pathetic. It's ugly, heavy, boo-hoo crying. But I can't help it. His blood's all over me. All over me. I'm never going to be able to forget it.

She somehow gets me out of bed and into the kitchen, where it looks like we interrupt a very awkward exchange between Dad and Jamie. By exchange, I mean silence. Dad's flipping through one of Sybil's cookbooks (he doesn't cook) and Jamie's just sitting on a stool, his mismatched eyes scrutinizing the floor. A bloody nick at his ear stains a few white hairs red.

When Mom and I come in, the two of them look up. Dad smiles at me, but it's the tentative kind, the one that says I don't know what to say to you more than I'm happy you're here.

Jamie, on the other hand, is beyond exuberant. His narrow shoulders spring up like a budding flower, and he practically charges me, throwing his arms around my torso. I'm startled at first, but I chuckle, patting his head.

"I'm so glad you're okay," Jamie tells me, speaking into my shirt. "I was so worried. I was so worried you were hurt, which would suck, because I don't want my friends to be hurt."

He separates himself from me, seemingly wary of the eyes on him. Dad has the look on his face I probably had when I first met Jamie—pure confusion at how this kid and Bullet are the same person.

"I'm glad you're okay, too, kid," I say, then look up, glancing around. "Where's everyone else?"

Mom snaps her fingers at Dad, who jolts visibly. "Allie, get him some water or something; don't just stand there."

She waits until she sees him make an obvious to move to do as she says before turning back to me, taking my hand in hers and rubbing her thumbs over my knuckles. She's never been so affectionate before, and it's giving me the heebie-jeebies. "Sybil and Midge went to repair the city's energy source; apparently Rocco's meddling upset it quite a bit. River tagged along with them."

I pause. "And Safi?"

Mom opens her mouth, but Jamie cuts her off. "She said she had an errand to run. No one knows where she is."

A centimeter of frustration, just barely one, appears within me. Everyone else is trying to help and she just decides to disappear. I try to get along with Safiya; I do. She just does things sometimes that make it so hard not to be upset with her. Like randomly disappearing and leaving her door open when she's eating people and stealing my hand soap.

"Why am I not surprised?" I say, but it's not a question.

Dad slides a glass of water across the counter to me. "I'm sorry about Rocco, kiddo. I had no idea—"

"Yeah, no one did, Dad. That's how he wanted it."

"Oh."

"Oh?" I repeat, raising an eyebrow. I lift the glass towards my mouth, but hesitate, setting it down again. "On second thought, maybe water isn't the best idea at the moment."

Both my parents look confused about that, but it's too long of a story to get in to right now, and I just don't feel like it. I don't feel like doing anything, except maybe crying. And sleeping. And taking a shower; I smell like gore.

Before I can decide which of these three things is going to be my next course of action, the front door opens. If it can be called a front door—front doors are usually visible, not hidden in subway tunnel walls.

Sybil leads Midge and River through the doorway, the dark circles beneath her eyes revealing just how exhausted she is. She's not the only one; all three of them look like they've just been mauled by a bear. Well, by three bears.

"Oh, Grey!" calls Sybil with mock enthusiasm as she sees me. It's nice that she's trying, but at the same time, I can't stand it. Something happened. Everything happened. So there's no point in acting like nothing happened. "You're awake. You okay?"

"Not really," I answer. "How about the city? Has it stopped dying?"

Sybil pushes her hair behind her shoulders, twisting her wand in her hands. "I think so. Couldn't have done it without the help of these two, though."

My stepmom gestures towards River and Midge; River avoids eye contact, but Midge looks at me like I'm the only thing she'd been seeing anyway.

"Living room," Midge says then, and strides past me without another word.

I follow her to the living room.

The magic window's painted pink and yellow, just the beginning of sunrise, and it dusts everything in gold: the walls, the furnitures, Midge. It's calm and it's quiet and the storm's over, but all I feel is strange, like I've missed something. Like it's not okay anymore.

As soon as I'm there, Midge yanks me toward her, pulling me into her arms and not letting go. It's the second time a person has hugged me in the past five minutes, but I'm still not prepared for it.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "I'm sorry. I should have—God, there must have been some way for us to know. You shouldn't have had to—"

"Midge," I say, smoothing her hair back and kissing her gently upon her forehead. She tenses against me. "I'm okay. I mean, not right now, but I will be. I will be okay. Don't worry about me. Just—the spell. Can you do it?"

She steps back, collapsing in the nearest arm chair, a green paisley-printed one that's much too bright for the dark mauve paint of the den. I kneel beside her, resting my elbows on the chair's arm, peering up into her face because it's the only thing that feels alright. I'm without her and everything sucks. I'm with her and everything doesn't feel so bad.

"The sooner I cast it, the easier it will be," she muses, her eyebrows furrowed, "but a memory spell's no small feat. I'll have to be somewhere up high, and it's going to take a while."

"I'll be with you," I say. "I'll be with you the whole time."

She runs her tongue along her lips, then leans over, resting her forehead against mine, so close that it only looks like she has one eye. "Are you sure about this?"

My thumb brushes the skin beneath her lower lip. "No," I say, "but I'm more sure about it than anything else right now."