Earthbound
Page 19

“He’s kind of different,” I say, stalling for time.
“Is he good-looking?” Elizabeth asks with one eyebrow raised and a girlish lilt to her voice. I can’t help but smile, and maybe blush a little, as I think of his silky blond hair, his pale green eyes.
That perfect physique.
Now I’m getting warm.
I describe him to Elizabeth in general terms: tall, blond, kinda tan. But those parts don’t add up to him. He’s more. Infinitely more. My fingers trace the edges of the table, pulling the pen and legal pad closer. “He has this look to his eyes,” I say, and I barely watch my own fingers as they shape the planes of his face—those dramatic angles that are so unique to Quinn.
I’m halfway done with the rough sketch before I realize I’m drawing.
I’m drawing.
My hands begin to tremble so hard I can’t put the pen back on the paper without making wavy lines. I came here thinking about Benson and now I’m drawing Quinn. Drawing, for the first time since the accident, and—
I slam the pen down on the table.
“Tavia.” Elizabeth’s voice is so quiet my ears barely hear her, but my mind latches onto her words like a lifeline, holding tight to stave off the panic that’s threatening to crush me. “It’s okay. It’s just a sketch. A tool to let me know what you saw.”
I look up at her, awareness dawning in my eyes. She put down her legal pad. Close enough that I could instinctively reach for it. To make me draw without thinking. “You did that on purpose.”
Her lips hold a ghost of a smile. Her tone is casual—as if we were discussing the decor. “Maybe. Tavia, it’s just a tool. Would you like to finish?”
Her quiet question calms me. I look back at the rough sketch and do as she asks, though my lines aren’t as true as before. I don’t draw much more, but enough that Elizabeth could probably pick him out of a crowd—or a lineup.
Enough that I know I can do it.
“This is amazing, really,” Elizabeth says when I put the pen down. “You have a real gift.”
I shrug.
“He must be someone very special to break through your artist’s block like that,” she adds in a soft voice. “What’s his name?”
“Quinn. Quinn Avery.” It’s the first time I’ve said his full name aloud and it echoes in my head, setting off a mass of tingles in my brain, like static electricity trying to escape.
Elizabeth nods. “So you’ve spoken to him. That’s reassuring.”
“There’s … there’s actually something else,” I say, suddenly desperate to not talk about Quinn anymore. Part of me wants to change the subject to Benson—to get Elizabeth’s advice about him. But how would that look? Not going there.
“I think … I think I’m seeing things,” I force myself to say before the terror can seal my throat.
Elizabeth leans forward. “What kind of things?”
I meet her eyes. “Triangles.”
Her head tilts ever so slightly to the side, but she doesn’t break eye contact. “Triangles?”
“On his house,” I add, trying not to sound completely insane. I don’t want her to tell me that triangles are everywhere. These triangles are different. “There was a triangle over the door of the house where I first saw Quinn.”
“Have you seen that triangle again?”
“On another house. Down on Fifth Street—in the old section of town. I like to take walks there. I didn’t notice it at the time, but I found it later in a picture I took.”
“Can you show me?”
I nod and pull out my phone. When I reach the right photo, I zoom in on the white wood above the door and point. “There,” I whisper.
Elizabeth looks, squints, looks again. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she doesn’t see it. My hearts slides into my stomach and I want to crumple into the couch.
After zooming in and out a couple times, Elizabeth hands the phone back. “Why didn’t you want to tell me before?”
“I was afraid,” I admit in a whisper.
“Afraid of what?”
“That you would say I was crazy. Or worse, that I needed to go back to the neurologist.” There’s a long hush, then I rush on. “After everything that’s happened, you would think that would be the least of my worries. But when it feels like nothing else in my body works, at least I’m still sane and if—if you take that away …” I can’t finish. There are no words for the darkness that losing my mind represents.
The darkness that feels like it’s looming, waiting to devour me.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Elizabeth says gently, but with a firmness that tells me she’s telling the truth. Or, at the very least, that she thinks she’s telling the truth. “You’ve made so much progress lately that I’ve actually been expecting you to start experiencing some … some changes.”
“What do you mean, changes?” Like my pockets of infinite ChapStick? Should I tell her about that too?
But even as I think it, I know I can’t. Seeing things? Well, that can be explained. Hallucinations are an ordinary side effect of traumatic brain injury. Magic pockets are not.
“I want to continue to explore some of these things. Quinn, the triangles,” she says, not really answering my question. “And Tavia, you might have more strange things happen. Unexplainable things. And that’s okay. Just know that you can trust me and that I’ll do my best to get your life back on track. That’s what I’m here for.”