I turned and walked back to the storage room to see what Naomi had left behind. It looked like one of the playsets we used to play with when I was little.

Except this time all the boy dolls were missing their heads.

24

This had to stop. I was so exhausted by the constant stress and trauma of it. I called over to Goldshire and scheduled an appointment to meet with my aunt, just me and her. When I got there, I found her sitting in the Headmaster’s office looking as if she was the queen.

“Where’s the Headmaster?” I asked.

“Sleeping,” she said nonchalantly. “He sleeps a lot.”

“You’re insane,” I said quite frankly.

“Ouch.”

“Which mental institution were you in?” I asked.

“I really don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Her voice was getting agitated.

“Okay look,” I said as I sat down in the chair in front of her. “I have been through way too much shit as it is. Tell me what you want and what it will take to make you leave me alone.”

“I want you to be the Headmistress, something that your mother never had the chance to do because of her ridiculously abusive and manipulative husband.”

“Fine,” I said. “Done. I’m already the Headmistress. I’ll stay on as Headmistress for longer than a year if it will get you to leave me alone.”

“Good,” Naomi said. “I think being Headmistress suits you. You also need to lose all the guys that hover around you like flies on meat. Men are a distraction, unless you heavily sedate them.”

“No,” I said. “The guys aren’t going anywhere. They’re staying with me.”

“No, they’re not.”

I got in her face and stared her down. “Yes—they are.”

“I think you might want to be careful, then,” Naomi said as she stood up and hovered over me. “Now get out!”

It was the craziest meeting I’d ever had, and that was saying something since I had definitely had my share of crazy. I had exhausted all of the ideas that I could come up with and didn’t know what else to do. Maybe the solution was to leave and go really, really far away like to another country or something. I took the long path home because I wanted to see if the stone room was still there, which it was. I didn’t want to look inside, I just wanted to see if the structure itself still remained.

Then I peeked in on the garden on my way to make sure the plants hadn’t been uprooted again and I was pleased to see that the garden seemed to be untouched, at least for now.

As I walked up to the apartment, I felt an impending feeling of dread the closer I got to the door. I tried to tell myself it was just nerves from meeting with Naomi since it was such an insane and emotionally taxing encounter. But that didn’t lessen the feeling I was having. I went inside the apartment and it didn’t look like anyone was home. They were probably all out looking for me since we were supposed to all be staying together and I had left without telling them I was going to meet with my aunt. I even left my phone behind on the counter so that they wouldn’t track me to the Goldshire campus and show up there making things worse. They were probably worried sick, and I felt bad for doing that to them. So, I picked up my phone from the counter and called Michael first.

I knew that he would probably be freaking out the most.

But when it started to ring, I heard his phone coming from inside the bedroom.

Weird, I wonder if he’s still home.

I walked into the bedroom and screamed as I ran up to where he was lying on the bed. The entire mattress was soaked in a pool of blood.

“Michael, wake up!” I shouted as I checked for his pulse and listened for air coming from his mouth. “No, no, no, no!”

I dialed Adam’s phone and my bloodied fingers slipped on the keypad.

“Lisette,” he said sounding worried. “Where are you, we—”

“Adam!” I screamed into the speaker. “Come home now, please!” I cried.

I dropped the phone as it slid out of my hands and then picked it up again to call 911. I wasn’t thinking straight.

“911 what’s your emergency?”

I couldn’t speak, all I could do was cry.

“Hello?” the operator asked

I screamed and sobbed as I held Michael’s head up to my chest.

“Okay ma’am just hold on. Help is on the way to your phone’s location.”

I frantically looked over Michael’s body. I tore the shirt off him and threw my hand over my mouth. There were so many bullet holes in his chest that they were all bleeding together.

“No, Michael please, not you. I can’t lose you too, I can’t…”

I pressed my face against him as I held him and tried to force him to stay alive by sheer willpower alone. I was covered in his blood. I could see it on my hands and taste it on my lips. There was too much of it, too much of it that should have still been inside his body.

I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the faintest sound of his heartbeat.

I will die if he dies. It will be over then. I can’t lose him too.

“Holy shit!” Rob exclaimed as he and Adam ran into the room.

Adam ran up to me and tried to see if Michael still had a pulse. Rob picked up the phone and started taking to the 911 dispatcher. I heard Adam tell me that he thought Michael was still alive and I closed my eyes and held onto Michael as Adam held onto me, until the paramedics arrived.

This is my fault. Again.

I couldn’t let any more of this be my fault.

Hospitals were the most scary and uncomfortable of places, at least that’s what I had always thought. They were full of sickness and death, and they always smelled like a science lab.

They had taken Michael into surgery hours ago. So many hours ago that I had lost track of time. I sat in the chair with Adam for a while as he held me and rubbed the side of my arms and told me that everything would be okay; that Michael was tough and that he would pull through. That sounded like the same kind of crap they told people in the movies right before someone they cared about died.

The only good part about those movies was that usually—after the hero or heroine lost their one and only true love, or their child, or their mother, or someone of the utmost importance to them—they would go through a period of desperate sorrow which was always followed up by them becoming some sort of “fuck it all” vigilante.

I got up from Adam’s lap because if I had to hear any more positive reassurance I was going to throw up. Also, he was so nervous as well, that he was rubbing my arm so hard that my skin was about to come off. I started pacing the halls of the waiting room and then I paced right out the doors and into the halls of the hospital. Rob saw me and tried to get me to come back into the waiting room, but I gave him a look equivalent to the one where the little possessed girl’s head spins around full-circle and then he left me alone.

I knew now how it was that those movie characters ended up going rogue on such morally jaded paths; because after you’ve lost so much you just don’t give a fuck anymore.