The Book of Miranda | gxg | ✔︎

(23) Paper Doves

Exie's door slams behind Clarice as we pile into her room. Clarice locks the door. Exie spins me around and sits me on her spare bed.

"Show me your hands," she says.

I just look at her. Her words bounce around the walls like meaningless echoes behind the flashing memories of empty eyes and angel wings plastering my vision.

"Your hands, Des," she says again. When I still don't respond, she grabs them from my lap and checks them both. They're smeared with red. Did I kill someone? No, I don't even know how—other than burning them, and I'd need to have set a fire to do that. I can't smell smoke anywhere. Exie instructs Clarice to pour out fresh water into the little washbasin on her desk, then drops a cloth in it and wipes both my palms. They sting fearsomely.

"Oh thank God, it's not as bad as it looks," she says. Then, "Lie down, Des, you look about to faint."

I must not respond quickly enough, because she half pushes, half guides me down onto the mattress and rests my hands palms-up beside me, cadaver style. I watch the ceiling ballroom dance with itself until a sharp pain makes me hiss between my teeth. Exie smears a stinging antiseptic on each of my skinned palms, then an ointment of some kind, then wraps them with bandages she's pulled out of a hat somewhere. I joked once about her packing to hike the silk road, but she'd be better at that than me.

The stinging and the disappearance of my raw-red palms slows the world's roundabout. Or maybe I'm the one spinning, and the ride I'm on slows enough for me to finally get off. That dismounting is more of a messy tumble than anything I'd want to execute in front of a girl as cute as Exie, but I probably spent my dignity allowance on nearly fainting at the sight of blood.

"You're squeamish," says Exie when I manage to push myself up onto my elbows.

I grimace. I didn't used to be, but apparently stepping on a dead body's face will do this to a person. It's been six days, and I'm still uncovering new side effects.

"We lost Barnabas," I say. I'm exceptional at stating the obvious.

Exie nods. For the first time, I notice the pinched look in her expression, like she's trying not to cry. I try to sit up properly, and spit out another snake impression as my wounded palms make contact with the mattress beneath me. It's scarcely been ten seconds, and my panic-addled memory has already wiped the pain. Exie's eyes are bright with unreleased emotion. She spins away and fusses with the first-aid kit, a little purse-like satchel packed pigeon-nest-tight with bandages.

"We'll get him back," I say. Or rather, my stupid mouth says for me.

"No we won't," snaps Exie. My startle clears the world a little further. Exie buttons the satchel and jams it back into her bag with far more force than necessary. "He's gone like David, and I didn't even get to ask him for a contact outside."

Her crouch goes out from under her, and she jars her tailbone on the floor. She curls up and hugs her knees, rocking.

"Hey," I say. I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but actions speak louder than words, so I swing myself off the bed and test my shaky legs for standing. They score lower than my tenth-grade math marks. I look around helplessly for something—anything—that I can offer Exie to comfort her. When nothing presents itself, I reach out a hand and rest it awkwardly on her shoulder. She stops rocking, but otherwise doesn't move.

"Okay, maybe we won't," I say. "But if we're here to try and solve this, we can at least try. And if we find a way to get Barnabas back, we'll find it for David, too."

"The whole school is in on it. The cult."

"I know. We knew that from the start."

"I can't plan for all of them."