“Are you awake?” Mason asked. His voice seemed far away.

“Mason?”

“Todd?”

The bathroom faded from my sight, torn away like a discarded canvas, and was replaced by the pale white of a hospital room. I heard the whirring of machinery, and felt the pain of a needle in my arm. It wasn’t a proper hospital room – that much I could tell. At my feet I could see a blue curtain, the only shield between me and a bustling emergency room.

Mason was sitting beside the bed, he looked uncharacteristically concerned. He wouldn’t be so concerned if he knew the truth.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The hospital dude, what happened to you?”

“I know that,” I said sharply. “Which hospital?”

I have no idea why it mattered which hospital we were at.

“Um…Woodcrest, where else?”

“Right.”

“Dude your phone’s been buzzing like crazy, someone named Tiffany keeps texting you – I didn’t know you talked to girls.”

“What?”

“I don’t know man, I thought you were gay there for a while.”

I blinked.

“Mason, I will get off this bed and—”

Before I could finish my sentence the curtain flew open, and Julia Stenson strode in. Still in plain clothes like the last time I saw her, but this time her badge was clearly visible.

“Okay,” She said to me, as she wasted no time pulling a notepad from her blazer pocket. “We’re going to make this short and sweet. You tell me what happened and –”

“I fell,” I told her as I looked at the ceiling.

“Oh no,” She said, shaking her head. “No no no, we’re not playing that game. You’re going to tell me exactly what happened to you.”

“Nothing happened,” I said in a monotone voice. “I just slipped in the bathroom.”

“You slipped and fell, in the bathroom,” She repeated after me. “Did the bathroom punch you in the face?”

“It was particularly aggressive.”

“Dude,” Mason said softly. “You didn’t fall. This didn’t happen because of a fall.”

“I’m clumsy, you know that,” I said quickly. “You saw me at the cave, I’m like a bull in a china wagon.”

“Cupboard,” Mason corrected.

“What?”

“Bull in a china cupboard. What the hell is a china wagon?”

Julia closed her eyes briefly and raised her hands in the air.

“Okay,” She said. “Todd, you listen to me, and you listen to me closely. No one is after you, except maybe the person who did this to you. I get it, you’re not going to tell me. I have a feeling I know why, but I want you to know, right now, here, that I’m going to find out.”

I stared at her coldly, my eyes betraying no emotion.

“I fell.”

“Yeah, I get it,” She said, slamming the notepad shut and placing it back in her pocket. “You’re not going to talk to me for whatever reason. Maybe you don’t like me, maybe you’re afraid, I don’t know what your reason is, but whatever it is, you WILL talk to her.”

She motioned toward the open curtain. I looked. Tiffany stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. How had she found me this fast? Of course, Julia had called her. Why did they have to have a friend who worked at the police station? I closed my eyes in utter defeat as Julia left the room and Tiffany strode toward the bed.

“Dude,” Mason said. “THAT Tiffany? You know THAT Tiffany? Who are you? I don’t even know you anymore!”

Tiffany pointed at Mason.

“You, out,” She snapped at him.

“Hey, Todd is my best friend, I have as much right to-“

“Out!” She repeated louder. Mason backed away from the hospital bed, nodding.

“Alright, alright lady, you don’t have to tell me twice.”

She waited until he was gone and then briskly walked over to close the curtain.

“I want a name,” She said as she walked back to the bed.

I stayed silent.

“Let me try this again,” She hissed as she grabbed the side of my pillow and glared at me. “I don’t like you much, I think you’re a bitch, I think you got more sympathy than you deserved, but Aleah likes you, a lot. I don’t know why, but because she likes you, I’m going to get to the bottom of this, for her.”

I shook my head and pulled myself up, trying to push one of legs off the side of the bed. I had to get out of there. Like lightning, she was standing in front of me, but she didn’t make a move to stop me. She simply watched as I struggled against the mattress which seemed to be swallowing me up every time I tried to lift myself.

“Did we do something wrong?” She asked me.

I stopped.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, did we do something wrong, to you?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“When you snuck into our house and played dress-up in Aleah’s clothes, did we…have you sent to jail?”

“No, but –“

“Did we somehow hurt you by letting you help us at that party, and letting you be who you really were for an entire day?”

“No!”

“Do you feel as if we violated you somehow?”

I shook my head. She stepped closer to me, her gaze cutting through me like a million knives.

“Then sit down, AUDREY!” She shouted, practically at the top of her lungs. Her voice rang throughout the slam concrete room, I swore I heard the world come to a pause for a moment behind the curtain as patients and medical staff tried to figure out what the screaming was about.

I fell back into the bed. My head slammed against the pillow. I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for breath. She knew my name. I’d said it so many times on the forums, I’d signed posts with it, I’d even named my in-game character after her, but I’d never uttered it out loud, and I’d never heard anyone else say it. Of course she knew it; she’d read the forum posts. There was no way she wouldn’t know it…but she hadn’t used it until now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, seeing the fire and absolute anger in her eyes as she towered over me.

“If you don’t want to tell me, then you don’t want to tell me,” She said, letting go of the bed and pacing around to the foot of it and leaning down. “But there are going to be consequences.”

Was she actually threatening me? No, of course she was, why was I even asking that.

“From now on, you don’t go anywhere alone. You’ll be with one of us-“

“That’s not going to work,” I said. “I have to go my dorm at some point-“

“And you will, but one of us will be by in the morning to walk with you to class when it starts. When you need to go somewhere, you text one of us. Don’t leave on your own; we’ll know if you do.”

“This is bullshit,” I said, though my tone was one of utter defeat.

Tiffany stepped close to me and sneered.

“Let me fill you in on something,” She said. “In case you didn’t know, you walked into our house, and you started this. Then, Aleah gave you a way out. You could have walked. Now here’s another hard truth. We know who did this, we know exactly who did this, but since you won’t tell us, there’s nothing we can do about it. No proof, no crime, right? So we’re going to do everything in our power to protect you, even if it smothers you, because we bear as much responsibility as you do. Even if Aleah has other reasons.”

Other reasons? What other reasons did Aleah have? I felt like I wasn’t supposed to ask, so I didn’t.

“I don’t want to help you,” Tiffany said. “That’s all there is to it really. You put us in the middle of this, so you’re going to be as miserable as I am. They’re discharging you in about an hour. I’ll drive you home. Don’t leave your dorm.”