Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“Shut up. I don’t want to have sex with you, Eason. I don’t want to have sex with anyone. So you’re safe. I just think…” She sits up a little and twists her body until she can see me. “There’s something wrong with you. I said something last night. I’m not sure what it was, but something we talked about changed you and this”—she pans a hand at the bed—“is you coping. And that’s fine. We’ve all been there.”
Who is ‘we?’ Then I realize it’s not me and her she’s referring to, but her crew. The kids in the camp with her. They’ve all been here where I am. Wanting to sleep away the day. Stay in the dark. Stop eating. Hoping for death.
“But you don’t get to check out if I don’t.”
I scoff. “Do ya wanna check out with me?”
“No. But if you want to sleep today, I’ll sleep with you.”
Sleep with me. She means it literally, not provocatively. I play her words back, suddenly filled with questions. “Do you really not wanna have sex?” Irina’s laugh is so immediate and childish, I can actually picture the blush on her cheeks. “I’m not talking about with me, Irina. I mean, you don’t want to have sex with anyone? Ever?”
“Just shut up and sleep.”
I smile, despite the encroaching darkness that wants to cover me like a cloak. It’s dangerous to give in to the urge to stay in bed. After my surgery I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t walk for nearly eight months and then there was constant pain with every step. Bed was my answer. Not bed, really. Sleep.
I don’t take drugs recreationally. Ever. But I can see why people do.
Sleep is more than rejuvenation for some people. It’s a black hole of emptiness that fills in for death while you wait for that Grim Reaper to come and make it all final.
That’s what it is for me. Sometimes.
I’ve gotten better. When I get up before the sun, things go better. And if I just keep training, I feel like I have a purpose.
When I got news of Irina, that… I dunno. Gave me something else. A new goal. Irina was going to fill in for sleep and death, at least for a little while.
But it’s all ruined now. Nothing they told me about what happened that day, or what came next, was real. They lied. About all of it.
Cort was buying his freedom.
There was never going to be a thirty-seventh fight for him. He was out.
And this changes everything.
CHAPTER 11
When I wake, Eason is gone, but I can hear the shower going in the connecting bathroom. The AC has made this room frigid and even the down comforter covering me isn’t enough to keep the chill away.
I’m facing the bathroom door so when it suddenly opens, I’m looking right at him when he walks through a cloud of steam. He’s already dressed in a pair of training shorts, but he’s still wet.
His eyes find mine immediately. “Lazy. Are ya gonna get up or not?”
It’s not me who’s being lazy. It’s not him, either. It’s not about laziness. It’s about depression. It’s a problem for him. Probably a constant battle.
I’m not prone to it like some people. I feel it. I feel the hopelessness and the futility of it all. But it doesn’t ever get a hold of me the way it did some of the other kids.
I wish it did. I wish I could just lie in bed and sleep the days away.
Rasha, Paulo’s little sister, did this when she was younger. She was always depressed. We used to run laps around the camp every morning and every afternoon. There was a footpath worn into the dirt from so many feet running in the same loop over the years. Rasha would cry—sob, really—the entire time she was running. Morning and evening.
Everybody knew she was doing it. But she never did it any other time, not even at night. So no one ever said anything about it. Staying in bed in Cort’s camp wasn’t an option. And anyway, she had Paulo to keep her focused. He pulled her through those dark times. She was a good fighter too. Obviously, since she’s still alive. The only other time she would cry is after she came home from a win.
We all understood crying about that. Though I don’t think anyone else ever cried like Rasha did over her dead opponents.
The last time I saw Rasha she was twelve and teaching herself to speak French. She and Paulo were both born in Brazil and already spoke Portuguese, Spanish, and English, so I’m sure she’s fluent by now. Nandy would probably give up her firstborn son for an opportunity to interview the kids in Cort’s camp for her linguistics thing. Hell, Anya would blow her mind. She speaks seventeen languages, not even including sign language.