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“Very well done, Miss Belrose,” Sam said. “Please return to your room and wait for dinner.”
Doing as Sam instructed, I thought about Drake again. The music faded from my mind, replaced by the image of his bloody, pierced hand. I wanted to see him, to make sure he was all right.
Once I was back in my room, I wondered about who provided medical treatment for us. Drake’s burn had been bandaged. After Elise had stabbed Liam, he’d returned with a patched-up leg. And who had taken care of Jeffery after he’d been poisoned? Did Sam himself do it?
He’d released gas into my room the first night to knock me out. Maybe he did that to everyone. Snuck into their quarters and doctored them up before the next meal. So strange. Why bother if all you were going to do was torture us and make us do twisted things to each other and other people too? Seemed like it would be better, and simpler, to let us die off from blood loss or infection. Maybe he was doing all of this for a reason and needed to keep us alive for his nefarious purposes, whatever those could be.
An hour after I got back to my room, the alarm went off for dinner. I was out the door before it was even fully open. I almost sprinted down the hall, trying to get to the dining room. All I wanted was to see if Drake’s hand was okay. He’d done it for me. If not for him, I had no doubt Jeffery would’ve nailed my hand to that table the same way he’d done Drake.
I was the first to arrive, but he wasn’t there. I’d harbored some hopes that he’d been chilling out, waiting for us like Jeffery had at lunch. Once I saw that he wasn’t there, I went ahead and took my usual seat to wait.
The rest of my housemates trickled in. My heart lurched and hammered when, after a few minutes, the door to the dining room slowly swung shut and locked. Drake wasn’t coming. I had to clamp my teeth onto the inside of my cheek to keep from freaking out. A hundred images played out across my mind. Drake being operated on by some masked and shrouded figure, having his hand amputated. Drake in the playroom and Jeffery peeling his skin off with a filet knife until he bled to death. Sam punishing Drake for saving me by locking him in his room until he died of starvation.
The others grabbed food and ate like nothing was wrong, like one of our own wasn’t missing. None of them looked guilty. Even Jeffery’s earlier rage and anger seemed to have subsided. Every time the place couldn’t get crazier, something like this happened.
A small thought wormed its way into my head. Maybe I was dead. Maybe Carlos had gotten so angry at me for breaking up with him he’d come back that night. He’d hit me over the head and killed me. I was dead and this was Hell. That idea made about as much sense as anything else.
Shaking it off, I tried to put Drake out of my mind. Remembering the awful workout this morning, I forced myself to eat. Dinner was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I ate enough to get full, but my worry about Drake made it taste like nothing more than wet paper.
On the way back to my room, I realized that I’d started to rely on and care about Drake. I wasn’t used to that. I had people I liked, like Marie and Clint, but they were distant. Employers and pseudo-parents. This was different. I leaned on Drake to help me here, and I wasn’t sure if that was safe. It was like Liam said. What if Drake was fine, but tomorrow Sam would make us hurt each other? It was something I didn’t want to even think about.
Maybe Sam’s warning was right, and I needed to distance myself. Maybe Sam was an insane motherfucker and I was crazy to think he might be right.
I collapsed into bed and fell asleep before the lights even had time to dim. My mind was a whir of dreams, nightmares about running and rowing and burpees. Dreams about getting out of the dollhouse alive and horrible flashes of the tortures that Drake might’ve been enduring.
The next morning, I again sprinted to the dining room. If Drake wasn’t here for this meal, then he probably wasn’t coming back. I wanted to know one way or another so I could work on coming to terms with his death. I’d have to build the walls that I’d need to get through this place alone.
My fingers tapped nervously on the table as the others came in yawning and stretching. Then, right before I decided he was truly gone, Drake stepped into the room. He walked quickly and looked a little panicked. When his gaze locked on mine, the tension in his shoulders and face faded, and he walked toward me. He almost looked like he thought I was the one who wasn’t going to be here.
He walked around me to get to his seat and slid a hand gently across my shoulders. I could hear the faint electric sound as his cuff sent a shock into his arm. He grimaced but managed a smile as he sat. Sam hadn’t shocked us the other day when we’d gotten each other off. Why shock him for touching me now? Maybe because the others could see it here.
The group started eating. A sausage, egg, and potato casserole from the looks of it. Relief that Drake was okay spiked my hunger, and I took a hearty serving onto my own plate.
“Good to have you back,” Liam said to Drake.
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. There wasn’t a sneer or sarcastic grin on his face when he said it, so I had to assume he was at least a little sincere.
“Yeah,” Drake said, “pretty hungry, I have to admit.”
Jeffery took a few bites of his food before dropping his fork then looking at Drake sheepishly. “Hey, man. Sorry about yesterday.”
I gaped at the man and the contrition on his face. He was being serious. It was a surprise given how angry and bitter he’d been the day before, and how gleefully he’d stabbed into Drake’s hand.
“I’ve, uh, got issues,” Jeffery went on. “Sometimes they get the best of me.”
Drake looked at the other man and nodded. “I get it. High-stress situations and past trauma, it can make even the best of people snap. It’s what’s happening to each of us.”
“Past trauma?” Jeffery said, laughing. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Okay,” Bri said, “let’s hear it. We can all talk about how shitty our lives outside these walls were.”
Jeffery sucked at his teeth for a second before shrugging. “Yeah, okay. Why not? I watched my old man kill my mom when I was eleven. Blew her brains out with a shotgun because,” he shook his head ruefully, “she had the gall to tell him to stop fucking the sixteen-year-old neighbor he’d been banging for the last two years. She threatened to go to the cops about it. Dumb-ass old fuck. Like, did you not think the cops were going to be even more pissed about you killing your wife than you fucking a sixteen-year-old girl? Seriously?” He laughed, but the sound was anything but pleasant.
“Anyway. I got passed around to different relatives, but none of them wanted me, like I was stained in some way. Like they couldn’t look at me without seeing my dead mother’s face or my dad’s angry eyes. I had nightmares for years. Kept seeing her head explode. Got into drugs to try and drown out the thoughts. Rehab and therapy finally helped a bit, but here I am. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d OD’d.”
He stabbed his fork into the casserole. It was a lot like what he’d done to Drake. Maybe he’d seen and been through some shitty stuff, but it didn’t excuse him for what he’d done to Drake of his own free will. Nobody had made him do that shit.
“Fuck.” Elise sighed like she understood what he’d gone through. “That’s some shit right there.”
