Free Whisper to Me by Nick Lake Page B

know this is not helping you to forgive me. But bear with me, please. I promise you, things are more complicated than you realize.
    Well, you know that already, now.
    But there’s more.
    Oh, there’s so much more.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    More:

 
    The day after you arrived, I went to the library. I walked, as usual. Mist had rolled in from the Atlantic: the ocean invading the town, sending smoke ahead of it to hide its troop movements. The street was full of cars now, and almost none of them were rusted. Tourists.
    I waited until someone was talking to Jane, but just as I walked past, the woman turned and walked away.
    Jane waved. “Cassie!” She’d redyed her hair; it was green now. Her nails looked like she’d painted them with Wite-Out. She was wearing a T-shirt with an old Moby-Dick cover on it.
    I tried to keep walking.
    “Cassie!” she called again, waving even more.
    ****, I thought.
    I turned and smiled at her. I felt like I was stepping in front of a bus. I went closer.
    “Hi,” I said.
    Waited, tense.
    No voice.
    Not yet.
    Jane beamed. “ Hi! I haven’t wanted to disturb you. You’ve seemed like you wanted privacy. But you were passing and, well, I’ve missed you.” I could hear tinny music coming from the iPod buds hooked around her neck. It sounded like the Smiths.
    “You too,” I said truthfully. “Sorry, I’ve been … I don’t know.”
    “Okay,” she said. “You like the Murakami?”
    “Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was great.” I hadn’t read it of course.
    “The Manchuria part is dark, right?”
    “Hmm.”
    “And school’s out for the summer, that’s cool, huh?”
    “Yeah, cool.”
    All the time we were speaking I was wondering what the voice was going to do to me.
    “So what have you been researching? Murder? You planning to commit the perfect one or something?”
    I smiled, but I don’t think it looked right; I think it looked fake. “Watch out,” I said. “I’m kind of an expert now.”
    She laughed softly. “Just warn me if you’re going to go Jeffrey Dahmer on my ass, okay?”
    Even at the time this didn’t sound totally like a joke, but I kind of did one of those “ha” laughs that isn’t really a laugh.
    “Anyway, it’s good to see you,” she said. “I mean, properly.”
    “Yeah, you too.”
    “You’ll be here more now school’s out?”
    “I think so, yes.”
    “Good. I look forward to seeing even more of you.”
    A man with glasses and a loosely tied tie was walking up to ask her something, so I smiled and walked over to my usual seat, hidden in the corner, beneath a READING OPENS DOORS poster.
    I opened my bag. It was the same bag I used for school and right at the top, in its own little pocket, was my EpiPen. The world contracted around it, a pupil narrowing in bright light. Fuzzed at the edges.
    “Take it out,” said the voice. “Take it out and inject yourself with it.”

 
    “I can’t,” I said. “It’s for an emergency. For anaphylaxis.”
    “You think it might hurt you if you inject it when you are not suffering an allergic reaction?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. So do it.”
    You know this part.
    Me: “Please.”
    The voice: “No.”
    Me: “Please. Don’t make me.”
    “You ignored me. You ignored me and spoke to that girl with the stupid hair. You remember what happened to your mom? That was because you didn’t listen to me.”
    “What?” I said, under my breath. “I didn’t hear you back then.”
    “Yes, you did. See? You’re so ******* pathetic, you don’t even remember **** like that. I was there.”
    Confusion seemed to blur the edges of everything. “No … you came … after the foot. On the beach.”
    “Wrong. Take the EpiPen.”
    “It could kill me. Give me a heart attack.”
    The silence of thought.
    “Well,” said the voice. “Let’s take the risk. Or this time, I will kill your father. I will make the guy he had a fight with come back with a knife when the restaurant is closed.”
    “You can’t do