Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[6] Nine of Pentacles, Reversed

[6] NINE OF PENTACLES, REVERSED

Rhys

Watch and wait really meant Jane would intervene before I had all the answers. I asked the wrong questions and my deck never gave me the 'your girlfriend will read your half-baked notes and force your hand in clairvoyant ultimatums' card. 

I understood Natalie's unspoken guilt more than ever. For our own parts, we each played roles in death. Action and inaction. Natalie's version of responsibility didn't suit me any better than dirt under my fingernails and figurative blood on my hands.

If I had a choice in the matter, it would be Jane. It would always be Jane.

There was no point in trying to sleep if I would have to face the idea of a future without her. There wasn't one. This was too hard to do alone.

Jane's outrage was mine too. Her fear was the same: how much could we endure before we broke? Maybe Jane could do it, but I couldn't.

"The microwave's trying to tell you something," Lucas said.

I didn't even hear his bedroom door open, or him pass right by me to open and close the microwave door. Only when the beeping stopped did I notice it had been there in the first place. I almost believed it woke Lucs up, if I knew what time it even was, or thought Lucas actually slept. He somehow always looked like he just woke up, and simultaneously had been forever awake. A name like Niequest sounded like it belonged to a night owl.

I should probably not have been judging him for that anyway.

My American history notes laid open in front of me and I couldn't remember actually reading it, or writing it for that matter.

Lucas wavered at the microwave.

"So...do you need to talk or something?" he asked.

We didn't have conversations like that. Our arrangement was symbiotic in a very different fashion. I couldn't stand to be alone and Lucas couldn't afford to be. Our kitchen felt more like a lunchroom at work than a shared home.

A watched him press his mouth into a line, trying to decide if that was really a conversation he wanted to have or his question was an attempt at a perceived obligatory human compassion.

The short answer was no because it had to be. The support Lucas clumsily offered probably wasn't prepared for the truth. My girlfriend was going to die and I couldn't figure out how to stop it.

That would be a little much to ask of my roommate of two months.

"I'm good," I replied. A better translation was there was nothing wrong that Lucas could fix, unless he had power over tan cars or red lines on brick walls.

I rubbed my shoulder, feeling for something that wasn't there. A knot or a stiffness from leaning pointlessly over a notebook all night.

"Okay," Lucas said, "we could get a pizza or—"

A scream interrupted, shrill and from below. Lucas stopped mid-sentence. He froze. The sound wasn't in my head. It wasn't just dreams inching too close to reality. Lucas heard it too.

The girls. The hands. The one night I wasn't there, of course it finally happened.

I jumped up, nearly knocking over everything on the table in the process.

Lucas' expression shifted from stunned to engaged, stepping back out of my way long enough to process his own thoughts before following me out the apartment door.