Friday

  Between the damages inflicted to her apartment, the shattered bookshelves, the piles of debris, the pool of rainwater and the smears of blood on her wooden floor, her cat sitting next to her looking at her with tranquil curiosity, Eugenie spent a moment of undetermined time staring at Barry. He looked peaceful in the middle of her mount of books, his hands relaxed on his lap, his face tilted down, some silent drops of water launching themselves from the hair on top of his forehead, shaking it in the process almost imperceptibly.

  She knew he was not dead because she could see the frail rise and fall of his chest. She could also see that the stain of blood on his stomach was not getting smaller or drier, but again, he was so soaked that it was difficult to tell.

  She was aware that given the task that he had assigned to her, she was being a bit extravagant, letting the minutes go by this way without any action, but she couldn’t move. She kept thinking about how she could just put an end to this terrible story, and she tried very hard. Call the police.

  No, the boy is not a criminal.

  Breaking and entering?

  He didn’t break in, I let him in, I opened the window.

  Just entering, being the victim of a crime? Involved in a shooting?

  She shuddered at the word shooting. No no no no, she couldn’t stop begging no.

  Think. Call an ambulance.

  No. Barry said he trusted me.

  How does this even hold any sort of importance?

  He said—

  It doesn’t matter what he said! He’s a child! You don’t fucking know him.

  I don’t not know him.

  You don’t owe him.

  I don’t owe him.

  You don’t owe him shit.

  But he said he trusted me. She started crying again.

  Who the fuck cares? Call an ambulance, what else are you going to do?

  I don’t know.

  He’s going to die if he doesn’t go to the hospital.

  But he can’t go there. It’s dangerous.

  He will thank you later.

  No, it’s dangerous.

  Why the fuck is it dangerous?

  I don’t remember the story he told me about why it is dangerous.

  You can’t fix him, come on, it’s madness.

  Actually I … can.

  HOW?

  Maybe I can. I have skills.

  Oh, from nursing school? The voice thought it was hilarious. GIRL

  I can help him, if I remember… things.

  HOW?? You need to find people to help you. His Team. On Google.

  That wasn’t a bad idea. Barry had said that his mutant peers had vanished without a trace, but he could be wrong, after all. He had been busy being shot and perhaps even falling off a building, if his tale could be believed. Eugenie sniffled loudly and started getting up, eyeing her laptop still open on top of her couch. Get to the laptop, type some things on the keyboard, find some information. Barry. She couldn’t leave him like this while she was just typing on a keyboard and hanging out on the internet!

  But, what will you do, you crazy apricot bitch?

  She closed her eyes. No no no no, she repeated NO inside her head for a couple more minutes and after five thousand more nos, she opened her eyes. I don’t have a choice.

  Why not?

  Shut. The. Fuck. Up. She groaned powerlessly and got up. Her legs were hardly carrying her, so she held herself against the wall, took some zigzag steps towards the kitchen door. Without taking her eyes from Barry as if he was one of these Australian jumping spiders about to pounce at her while she fetched a newspaper to squash it, she paced backwards. Into the little adjacent room, where she reached for her counter top, seized a pair of matching rags with some cute little spring cherries on them, then walked back to the living room.

  She used the corner of one of the rags to dry her tears, breathed out, the air trembling at her lips, her jaws aching from masticating at nothing, then she turned around and opened the skinny closet tower behind her. Some tape, there, an almost expired roll, and a brand new one wrapped in plastic. She unwrapped it, admired its shine under the lamp of her ceiling.

  She used to say to her students, the ones whose upbringings had not apparently included learning how to whisper during tests or slide shows, ‘imagine that there is a napping baby that you don’t want to wake’ OK. She really meant imagine that there is an intruder with an AK-47 in the hallway next to the classroom and the door is open, you little shits, but she would have gotten into a wall of trouble.

  Ok. Quietly. As if not to wake a napping baby, she approached Barry walking on the tip of her socked feet, her heart filled with sadness and dread, the fear screaming inside her ears. She crouched down on top of him and froze for another precious five minutes. He was absolutely drenched, delivering with him his own ocean of water and smelling like a wet ferret after rolling in grass. There was also the particular copper scent of blood in the mix, if you had a good sense of smell, she saw. His lips were turning a light hue of purple, some dark circles digging themselves under his shut eyes. His skin was the color of dirty snow.

  He was hurt but he was also marinating in a lot of very cold rainwater. There was no time for googling or looking up anything, she had to help him now, at least not to perish from blood loss and hypothermia. No no no, she felt the alarm stir inside her heart again, STOP IT, she said to herself. No more nos.

  Why the fuck do you care that he trusts you?

  He said that he trusted me.

  Why in the world do you care?

  Not a pharmacist, not a vet. He had nowhere to go. Barry Masquevert, she wasn’t particularly fond of him from their previous school relationship, hell, she would be totally fine with the perspective of never seeing him again and forgetting he even existed, but he was here now. He was not a bad boy. He was even a pretty good one, if he was truly the Bolt!

  Do something. But what? Where to start? “Are you really the Bolt?” she asked him softly. Her eyes went down his legs, examining the trousers she had noticed earlier and didn’t take time to observe. They were indeed very unique, dark color and some unseen before patting on the sides, bright orange. She tried to remember the suit the Bolt was wearing when people filmed him in action, on the news. Something similar, she agreed. Something like that. Was he the Bolt?

  How about the way he bolted through your bookshelves?

  Do something. He had nowhere to go. How many people knew his real identity? She touched the fabric of his suit, it was quite spongy, lightly bouncy, something she had never touched before. She had not paid so much attention to the stories about the specimens of the Team and what was what and who was whom and how they came to be or their sense of fashion, but she remembered her students talking about suits, during a science fair. ‘Some of those supersuits are woven in materials similar to the ones worn by astronaut at the moment of atmosphere re-entry’ She didn’t know what that meant, she should have asked, she should have paid more attention.

  Stop wasting time, and what was she thinking? That searching for information about the Team online, she’d be given a phone line? An email address? ‘Dear Mr Hobbes… Hello, my name is Eugenie White’ YEAH RIGHT, you dumb bitch, you fucking d— “I’m sorry, Barry” she whispered. Her heart broke in silence. He didn’t have anywhere to go, no vet, no pharmacist, no dentist. He didn’t care how awful of a nurse she was, “well that’s good cause I’m a pretty shitty nurse, Barry”, she said.

  How much blood would he lose because she was still frozen in shock, how many more degrees would his body drop down to because she was donating all her time to the void, pondering things and trying to escape reality? This was her reality now. ‘Stop shaking your head’ he had said, so she stopped, and nodded hesitantly. She let the tears fall freely on her cheeks. She got up, switched on the radiators of all the apartment, then raided her bathroom boards for some old and scratchy towels, the ones that absorbed humidity the fastest and the most efficiently, added her hair drier and a pair of gigantic scissors –all teachers owned one, and a teacher who’d deny it would be lying— to the pile, then sat back down next to Barry. “I’m going to unzip you, alright?”

  She advanced her hand towards the zipper of his big sweater under his chin but then he opened his eyes wide, and they both gasped, and his hand snatched hers in the blink of an eye. Then, in an entrancing vision, Eugenie saw some blue iridescent lightning bolts appear around his face, rendering his paleness ghastly, buzzing in the air with electricity,

  “Holy cow” It was very beautiful and haunting, but she was too preoccupied by the turn the events were taking to continue contemplating the phenomenon. Before she could utter another word, she found herself projected against the wall behind her, her head and her butt colliding hard against the concrete, “Bar—” he closed his second hand on her throat, a wilderness in the eye, like he was seeing through her, “B—” Her feet pedaled in the emptiness under her as he lifted her against the wall. With both her hands she tried desperately to scratch off his fingers from her neck but he was immensely strong and those fingers were locked.

  Their eyes finally met “Eugenie Wh—” he gulped, astonished, “Eugenie White!”

  One of her dancing feet kicked him in the stomach out of sheer accident, as she was not even trying to defend herself, monopolized by the task to ask herself how things in her life had become so bizarre and precarious, but Barry deflated in a hiccup and let go off her throat, collapsed to the ground while she slid pitifully against the wall like a spat of molten cheese, coughing for air and fanning herself. She landed next to him. He bent forward until his forehead touched the floor and held himself with both hands.

  “Ms White” Barry whimpered, “sorry what have I done”

  “Barry, you’re okay Barry?” she asked between two coughs, fighting against the instinct to kick herself as far away from him as possible.

  “What are you doing I’m so sorryy” he was progressively losing altitude again and merging with the floor.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “NO stay up, don’t fall Barry, don’t fall” Eugenie groaned, blinked away some dizziness; her butt was burning, her neck was aching, I’m too old for this shit, she extended her hand, “can I touch you”

  “I didn’t mean to attack you I didn’t rememb—”

  “Don’t fall Barry wait” she breathed in deeply, she slid one hand under his arm “I’m trying to help you”

  He raised his head to her, distracted from his ordeal for a second, his face illuminated by some merry disbelief, “you… came around!” he cried with joy.

  “iiiiyeah?” she sang, unsure, “I did?”

  He dug himself back into the collar, “it huurts, it hurts so m—”

  “It’s going to be alright”, she heard her voice say.

  I’m sorry. Why are you saying this to him? In which dimension is anything going to be alright?

  “Look, since you’re awake, I’ll carry you to the table, you can lie there, comfortably”It’s probably going to be the opposite of comfortable but—

  “No I’m not moving, aiille—” he protested when she lifted his hand to roll it around her neck, “no please, not that”

  COME ON NOW YOU SAID YOU NEEDED HELP I’M HELPING YOU, “just a little push, I will get us up” and she straightened her knees with all her strength, her butt and neck very sore. She encountered massive resistance on the side that was transporting Barry “I can’t actually” she chuckled. Why are you laughing how are you laughing “You are too heavy, you have to stand up too, come on, push on your legs too”

  I’m in shock, I’m in sideration, it’s a well-known thing triggered by highly unusual situations, “just a little push”

  He did as ordered, grumbling, panting, one hand hanging on her shoulder and the other clutching his stomach, and they conquered the two steps to the dining room table, “it hurts a lot, like a lot”

  “It’s going to hurt no matter what Barry, there is nothing I can do for you”

  “Make it stopp”

  Now that was Barry Masquevert, the kid she had known as the nagger and the pesterer in her classroom for three whole years. ‘Here is a Kahoot game’ she had said and, ‘make it a movie’ ‘make it a bag of chips’ he would have demanded. Eugenie saw that her life was a disaster and that the stars had aligned against her, like one would pray for on the cosmic plane, but for the worst. Don’t think about that, continue with the sideration, she told herself. “Lie flat on the… table” she said, breathless. She was old and aching and out of shape. Her bones were inflamed, the stiffness radiating through her entire being. She should have done more yoga, she should have jogged more.

  “There is a lot of shit on your ta—”

  “I know, just… go” she dropped him quite violently against the table and pushed him forward, then grabbed his legs and delivered them like a package at the other side of the table. Trying to follow the motion and spread himself in a horizontal position, Barry flapped his arms and knocked down her lamp, another plant in a small pot that had been decorated by her nephew, oh shit, not that, a pencil box and a fucking glass bottle of water, which oscillated in an elegant curb before falling with the rest of the items and smashing on the ground. More noise, more cacophony.

  “Your neigh… neighbors”

  “Barry, lie flat”

  “You should pp p play some music, to drown out the—”

  “You are talking too much” she pressed gently on his shoulders, “I cannot multitask like you do, I have an old brain. By the way, how are you still so strong?”

  “My power it…” he closed his eyes, bit his lips, “makes my body recharge quickly, especially when I sleep”

  “Let me just get my cat out of the way” she caught the fluffy animal and ran to her bedroom, where she stopped and, caught aback again, glitched in front of the sight of her bed. Something tugged atrociously at her heart, the vague memory that she had looked forward to sleeping on it, on that very bed, her cat next to her, at the end of a Friday evening full of healing and relief and fried nuggets. She deposited Terence on it and locked the door behind her. “Rejuvenating, you were saying?” she popped back on top of Barry.

  “Rejuwhat”

  “Push that, strong” she pressed the two rags in the middle of his stomach and added his hand on it. Barry wriggled in pain and shoved his other hand into his mouth, gnawing on his fingers. She looked at the roll of tape and thought what the fuck am I doing. “Listen I will have to disinfect everything and proceed very carefully, but first I must go to school and get some supplies from the infirmary”

  “L Leave me?”

  “It’s alright Barry”

  “You’re going to call the police” he cried

  “No”

  “You’re gonna”

  “I promise that I won’t”

  “Don’t… leave me”

  “It’s alright” she wiped the water and the sweat off his forehead in a gesture that meant to be comforting but that only managed to spread more sticky blood to his face “it’s going to be alright”

  Are you out of your mind, she heard her inside voice rise up

  STOP DISTRACTING ME, she continued talking to Barry: “I will have a look at you and then I will decide what to do, I’m going to unzip you, this time, okay? You just have to lie here and keep your hand like that, pushing, I’ll go under it”

  Two sparkly tears appeared at the corners of his eyes and dropped heavily, “you’ve ever helped some people who had been shot when you were a nurse?”

  “Just don’t punch me or slap me or come anywhere near my face with your hands, keep them down”

  He swallowed what seemed like a mix of saliva and dry couscous, “you’ve ever saved anyone who had been shot before?”

  “No” she pinched the little zipper at the start of his neck and worked down.

  “You’ve ever seen someone who had been shot when you were a nurse?”

  “Yes” Eugenie spread out the hoodie and lifted his hand. Under that, his suit. This time, she recognized it at first glance, “holy shit”

  “WHAT” Barry panicked and raised his head.

  “No no no” she pushed it back against the table, “it’s just crazy to see that… uniform. I’ve seen you on television before actually”

  “You’re freaking me out”

  “I’m sorry it’s just… intimidating”

  “What did you think when you saw me on television” he asked

  “I thought uh” Eugenie brought her mini radiator closer to the table, programmed it to the highest level.

  “You thought it was pretty cool didn’t you”

  “Yes Barry I… thought it was pretty cool”

  “You remember Dave?”

  “Dave?”

  “From Geo class. He called me a l l l loser every day--”

  “But he wore a Bolt tee-shirt!” Eugenie exclaimed. They both burst in a sudden laughter.

  Barry gobbled on his breath crookedly and clung to the table under him “fuuck why am I laughing”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay” she hovered her hand above him like it had some magic healing properties, grabbed the scissors with readiness, “how attached are you to this suit?”

  “I only have this one. It was a gift”

  “Have you ever heard of minimalism”

  “Mimi… minimi…” he tried, went cross-eyed

  “Spiritual detachment”

  “Spp p—”

  “Barry, I need to cut through the suit, unless you have a way to take it off?”

  He shook his head, “I can’t… move my ass” One more tear detached from his eye, very round, very sparkly, “It’s okay, do it”

  “I need to examine you and I need you to dry, seriously”

  “I’m scared”

  “Me too” she tilted the scissors and started cutting. It was more difficult than she thought “hang on”

  “You’ve ever seen someone who had been shot die when you were a nurse?”

  “No” she lied.

  *

  “Eugenie, are you happy at the hospital, doing this internship?” Dr Brugg had asked her in her office some fifteen years back. He was ambidextrous, which sometimes led him to take a pen from his box while he was already holding a pen in his other hand without realizing it. She had admired once more the Latin American style of the decoration of his office, the warm wood, the delicate intrusion of some mate metals here and there, the soft light falling on the massive oily plants. It had happened to her before that she thought she could see those plants breathe.

  “Hmm”

  “I mean, I don’t intend to put my nose in your personal business, but you seem… unsure”

  She had not been happy at all and at the young age that had been hers, she had despaired. So many years of studies, so many sleepless nights, so many chemical bubbles of energy drinks inflicted to her digestive system, and she was failing miserably. What would she do? Was her life over?

  Eugenie eyed the gaping hole in the middle of Barry’s stomach after turning the top part of his superhero magic suit into shredded cheese and discarding it. Underneath, his shirt was blackened with old blood mixing with the new, redder, flashier, wetter. And yet, Barry was right about one thing, she had indeed seen some shit when she had attempted to be a nurse and failed at it. She was not someone who fainted at the sight of blood or guts, or protruding bones. She wasn’t bothered by it, only concerned that it was there, in such huge quantity.

  She rolled up Barry’s shirt, saw that a touch of purple was pulsating at the center of the hole. Now, in the absence of scanning equipment, she was going to have to figure out where the projectile that had dug that hole was located, and in a completely different way. You seem unsure. She was quite fucking unsure.

  She cleared her throat. Barry lifted himself up on his elbows in fright, clenched his teeth, “WHAT is it is it like is it bad”

  “No no no, no looking” she pushed him back again “Barry, I need to ask you a very important question. When those ro… those r—” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word robots and not think that she had followed Barry into madness and had begun to lose her mind too, “when those uh things shot at you, did the bullet come from an angle? Or from in front of you?” She felt bad interrogating him this way, recalled that, at school, memorizing things had not been his forte, “maybe you don’t know I mean—”

  “Oh I know v vvery well” he retorted with a scandalized tone “because when it h hhappened, I was still inside the bolt bubble, so I saw it coming in total slow motion, right in front of me”

  “You are pulling my leg”

  Barry shook his head in utmost seriousness, angered at the events he was recounting “for real. But I want to c c cclarifffy that” he closed his eyes and reopened them, appeared to think about his story “there were like twenty five of those motherfuckers, and I d d dod dod dod—”

  “Dod what” Eugenie encouraged him

  “Dodged them all… except that one”

  She did her best to smile at him with warmth, “you did well, and you remember well, this is very helpful, Barry, now” she had to get started “tell me who gave you that suit”

  “You’re trying to d distract me”

  “Yes” she hurried to run her fingers around on his stomach, pushed, pressed delicately, and then hard, “just uh hang on”

  “Fuuu— Hobbes gave g—”

  “Hobbes gave you the suit?”

  “Y y y yes” Barry’s hands rolled into fists, one of them punched the table with refrained force, “Holy shhh”

  “He sounds nice, that Hobbes guy”

  “No he’s” he gasped, “he’s an ass”

  “Almost finished, hang on Barry”

  “He told me… if I needed the suit to feel like the Bolt, then maybe I shouldn’t have it”

  “Wise words” Eugenie didn’t really care about the tale, so she completed her examination, replaced the two rags on top of Barry’s abdomen, seized his right hand, “un-fist your hand Barry, come on, try to relax now” she pulled hard on his fingers to unroll them, topped the pile off dust cloth with his hand, “hold yourself like this. Listen, this wound, it’s not deep, actually, just some five or six centimeters. Your suit is very thick and it helped you a lot. I can feel that bullet with my fingers”

  “Oh yikes” he said, disgusted

  “Yeah, but that’s good news, perhaps you didn’t suffer so much uh, I don’t know… internal damage, I mean hopefully” Unsure. Unsure.

  “So…” he was drained now, exhausted, slurring his words, “like a flesh… flesh wound”

  Eugenie squinted, “yes uh… like a uh… flesh wound” not really but okay

  “So you mean” she could hear the feeble hope in his voice, some vague cheer, “I kind of… overreacted?”

  “Mmmm?” she looked at the ceiling, unsure, “look, you did something earlier, you told me, in a bathroom, to patch yourself up?”

  “I went to a brasserie and” his eyelids flickered, “rolled myself into some tissues, but I lost them later, when I… walked to here”

  “How did you get into a brasserie”

  “I uh… bolted”

  “Ah yes, of course. You did extremely well, muchacho”

  He smiled in his drowsy state, “I had forgotten you’re… Spanish”

  “I’m Swedish. Barry, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to trash that old wet hoodie that’s covered with blood, sandwich you under some towels, and you will dry. Alright? You have one job: to dry off”

  “Dry” he repeated obediently. She had not seen obedient Barry before. It was troubling her.

  “If you are cold, you can use that blow drier here” she plugged the device into a cord, “and then I’m going to tape you to the table so you don’t fall off while I’m gone”

  “GONE” He squealed in apprehension.

  “To school, I need some things, like a lot of things. I need to sanitize this whole room before I can do anything to help you. I’m not going to be long, and look at this thing” she waved the phone receptor in front of his eyes, “I will call you steadily on this device to check on you every ten minutes, have you ever seen this before?”

  “Yes it’s a landline”

  “I never know with you teenagers”

  “Noo don’t leave me please don’t leave m—”

  “It’s going to be fine, Barry, I’ll be very quick”

  He swallowed what seemed to be some very thick stale bread crums, “Can you bring some painkillers”

  “I don’t think they have very strong ones at… at school” she almost said our school. Eugenie ran to the entrance of her apartment and picked up a huge puffy jacket that her uncle had forgotten a couple years before and that she loved to wear during the cold season. She eyed it, between her hands, thinking that she might never flaunt it again at the park smoking a cigarette and looking up at the crisp sky. Opening it completely, she shoved Barry’s right arm into the left sleeve of the jacket so he would wear it in an inverted position, like a blanket, “you need to get warmer, as soon as possible” The skin on his bare chest and stomach was covered with goosebumps. The hand she pulled out of the sleeve presented her with a thumb up. “Don’t fall asleep, Barry, now, let’s see, you said you were shot in the arm too”

  “I guess it was two bullets” he said grumpily, “but that second time, they attacked me from behind, those c c cowards”

  “Shitbags” Eugenie agreed, “HOLY MOLLY” She lifted his arm up a little bit, his skin pasty with some darker blood, some of it crusty around two very clean holes, another projectile having gone through the part between his elbow and shoulder almost impeccably, as if the shooter had wished to show great precision skill. She didn’t know anything about guns but, at least, the damage was drier.

  “Gross”

  “Does it hurt, your arm?” She grabbed another square of cloth and wrapped it around it.

  “No”

  “No?”

  “Only when I’m breathing”

  She squeezed his hand affectionately this time, pet it like a little hamster, “always hilarious, it seems, Barry Masquevert”

  “I still beat you at arm wrestle”

  “You’re a tough cookie” she smiled an honest smile, “high five”

  “No please not one of your stup—”

  “GOOD JOB” she teased him. What are you doing

  Obviously I’m trying to keep his spirits high, what do you think I’m doing

  You’re hoping this is going to work out. While you’re leaving him here pinned and taped and exposed on your dinner table with a hole in the middle of his body and surrounded by potential incendiary machines “GOLD STAR” she recalled he especially hated that expression when he was a student in her class.

  “Uuuhghhgh, cringe” his face crumpled like a raisin “damniit”

  “Stay still” she pushed his left arm into the right sleeve of the sweater.

  “I wasn’t planning to m mmove”

  “Who will clean my house? It looks like a war zone”

  “Oh my gggod. I’m so sorry”

  “Hey that doesn’t matter, I’m kidding. Barry, stay still, lie flat. I will be back, so remember? You have to stay still and DRY”