The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [118]
I heard my door open again. I thought it was the nurse until I heard Callum say hello to Stephen and ask if I was okay. I managed to extract myself from the gooey pull of the druginduced sleep. Callum was pushing Boo’s chair. As soon as they were over the threshold, Boo took over, wheeling herself up to me and clonking into the side of my bed. Her eyes were solidly red and her face was streaked with the remains of her eye makeup. She grabbed my hand.
“I didn’t think you’d come out of that room,” she said.
“Surprise,” I replied.
“I went into the toilets after they took you out. I saw the mirrors and the window. I smelled the air. And Jo . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I told her where you were,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I saw her go in. That’s what she’s like, you know?”
Some heavy tears ran from her eyes. We all had a silent moment for Jo. Callum put his hand on Boo’s shoulder. I had a feeling he was thinking about the fact that he was the only one out of us that had been unhurt. Stephen was barely upright, Boo was unable to walk, and I was flat out in a hospital bed. But he may have been in the most pain.
“We found the terminus as well,” Callum finally said. “Boo managed to get it out before it was bagged up as evidence. It doesn’t work anymore. I tried it. It’s not just the battery in the phone. Something’s happened to it.”
He reached into his pocket and produced a diamond. It had gone a strange smoky shade, like lightbulbs do when they’ve blown out.
“One terminus down,” Callum said. “Poor Persephone.”
“Where are the others?” Stephen said, rubbing his eyes. “God, I’d forgotten . . .”
So had I. They didn’t even know the worst of it yet.
“He threw them into the river,” I said.
Two tiny diamonds somewhere in the Thames. One tiny diamond filled with smoke.
“That’s us finished then,” Callum said quietly.
“It’s not,” Boo said, dropping back into her chair. It almost got away from her, but Callum steadied it in time.
“No terminus?” he asked. “No us.”
“There was a squad before the terminus,” Stephen replied. “There will be one afterward. The Ripper is dead, and we’re all still here.”
The drugs were creeping into the edges of my thoughts again, but it was warmer and more pleasant now. Everything started to go a bit slower, and things were running together. The tubes were a part of my arm. The blanket was a part of my body. But I don’t think it was the drugs that made me think that I was a part of the “we” now.
37
WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, IT WAS DAYLIGHT. I WAS uncomfortable. My stomach was itchy.
“You were trying to scratch at your stitches,” someone said. The voice was American, and very familiar.
I opened my eyes to find Stephen, Callum, and Boo were gone. In their place, I found my mother.
“You were trying to scratch at your stitches,” my mom said again. She was holding my hand.
“Where did the others go?” I asked. “Did you see them?”
“Others? No, honey. It’s just us. We got on the first train. We’ve been here since this morning.”
“What time is it now?”
“It’s around two in the afternoon.”
I desperately wanted to scratch at my stitches. She steadied my hand again.
“Dad’s getting a coffee,” she said. “Don’t worry.
He’s here. We’re here now.” My mom sounded so . . . Southern. So soft. So out of place. My mom was home. This was an English hospital. She made no sense in this context.
My dad joined us a minute later, bearing two steaming cups. He wore his slouchy dad jeans and Tulane sweatshirt. My dad never went out in the Tulane sweatshirt. They both looked like they had dressed in the middle of the night, in whatever they could find.
“Hot tea,” he said, holding up the cups. “It’s just wrong.”
I smiled a little. We were iced tea drinkers, all of us. We’d joked about how disgusting it would be to drink our tea hot, with milk. That is just not how we do it. We had iced tea with every meal. Unceasing rivers of iced tea, even for breakfast, even though I knew that unceasing rivers of iced tea will stain your teeth a fetching ecru color,