As she turned, she glimpsed Elijah’s face. Just for a second. She was too furious and embarrassed to pause and examine his expression. But in that moment, his look wasn’t one of anger at Rob or sympathy for her. It was astonishment, as if he’d suddenly realized something about her that he hadn’t known before.
“Smooth, Rob,” she heard Shane say behind her.
Then came Rob’s footsteps. “Holly. Why are you shy all of a sudden? You don’t have to be in the same room with my friends to perform for them. They just have to be able to—”
At the sound of him gaining on her, she skittered into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
“—hear you,” Rob called through the door.
Holly crossed to the far end of the narrow room, sat on the closed toilet, and pulled her phone from her purse.
Rob tried the knob, then pounded on the door. “Holly. Come here. Come here and open the door.”
“I need some privacy,” she muttered.
“Are you getting ready?” he asked in a hopeful tone.
“Yeah.” She reached over to turn on the water in the bathtub. Yeah, she was freshening up for sex with him. Being called a whore in front of her high school crush turned her on. She texted Kaylee.
Rob is being weird/threatening/drunk. Can u come get me? Near the Strip, street with huge doughnut sign on corner, cop car in driveway. Or is my MAD acting up?
While waiting for the response, she had the foresight to turn off the volume on her phone so it wouldn’t make the sound of Tinker Bell’s magic wand when Kaylee replied.
It’s not ur MAD. That guy’s spooky. I’ll be there in a sec with the goons.
Holly sighed her relief. She was saved. Then she frowned at the phone and typed with her thumbs:
When u met him last week u said u liked him!!!
And got this reply:
That’s what’s spooky. I don’t like anybody.
True. Kaylee was suspicious of everyone. But spooky or not, Rob hadn’t done anything to deserve Kaylee’s squad of burly, suit-clad security guards breaking up his housekeeping. And she wasn’t sure what would happen to Elijah and Shane in the fray. She texted Kaylee back.
Well don’t come inside. Let me see if I can get outside to u. He has 2 cute roommates and the goons r not surgical.
Holly slipped her phone back into her purse. The tub still gushed, which would mask any noise she made in her great escape. She stood on the toilet, unlocked the tiny window, and slowly, carefully, silently slid it open. Then she folded her body through the dark space. Another girl the same size might have doubted she could get through, but Holly had been taught by the best. She landed on her high heels on the gravel outside, purse in tow, and tiptoed toward headlights approaching up the street.
Her parents would have been so proud.
4
Elijah watched Rob pound on the bathroom door and listened to him shout, “Holly! Open up!” Elijah thought he should intervene. Holly might have burned him back in high school, but her bubbly laugh—not to mention her long legs and high heels—made his chest ache. He should step forward, stop his suddenly insane roommate from pounding on the door, and let her out of captivity in a civilized manner. Maybe he would even play the protective hero card and make sure her cell phone number hadn’t changed since ninth grade. He’d never dared text her since the night of his breakdown, but he still had her number saved in his phone.
However, he couldn’t intervene. He stood paralyzed with shock. Holly was in his brain. Not on his brain, in it. He’d missed a dose of Mentafixol the previous night for the first time ever. And he’d awakened in the middle of the night absolutely certain that he was experiencing Rob’s dreams from the bedroom next door. He’d known it wasn’t possible, but the vision had been so vivid that he’d rolled onto his stomach and put his chin on his hands like he was watching a movie on his cell phone as Rob dashed through a Chicago subway station to save innocent commuters from a terrorist’s bomb.
The dream had faded. Elijah had hoped that would be his only withdrawal symptom before he could locate more Mentafixol, and he’d finally made it back to sleep. But all day he’d felt flashes of other people’s emotions—not nearly as strong and clear as they’d been that fateful night in ninth grade when he’d first come down with MAD, but stronger and clearer by the hour.
And now, standing at the entrance to the hallway with Rob pounding on the bathroom door, Elijah was certain Holly had jumped out the window and run away across the yard.
“Holly!” Rob’s face turned a frightening red. Elijah had worried about other men who looked this way, guys losing at his mom’s casino table. Sometimes when his mom dealt to a man like this, Elijah sat down and played at the table for a few minutes, just to make sure the guy didn’t take his frustration out on his mom. Rob pounded harder on the door. Elijah would have been thankful Holly had escaped, except he knew his feeling that he could read people’s minds was only a delusion.
“Fuuuuck!” Rob roared, flattening his hand for one last slap on the door. He turned to Shane, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “Sligh. You call to her.”
“Why should I call to her?” Shane asked. “You think your date might be avoiding you because you suggested she was a prostitute? Nah, she’ll come around. Pound on the door some more. She seems to like that.”
Rob cursed at Shane, and the pounding on the door resumed as Elijah left the house. He glanced down the street. Only the streetlights stared patiently back at him through the still, hot night. No Holly. He knew his MAD caused delusions, but he couldn’t shake the certainty that she was gone.
He had to be sure. He stepped off the porch and crunched through the gravel to stand beneath the small square of light from the open window. She might still be in the bathroom, hiding from Rob. Or something could have happened to her. She might be unconscious with her shiny brown curls spilled across the tile floor.
He put both hands inside the window frame and, arms straining, pulled his whole weight up the stucco wall to peer through the tight opening. Now he could see into the bright, empty room, but not through the opaque shower curtain to the inside of the bathtub. The window frame scraped both his shoulders at once. He was too big to fit through, but he had to know. She might be in trouble. She might need him.
He eased one shoulder through, then the other. He had nothing to brace himself against while he pulled his legs through. How had Holly done this in reverse? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was still in the tub. He wiggled through the window, extending his hands, until he reached the toilet. He managed to break his fall that way. Picking himself up from the floor, he raked back the shower curtain.