The Infinite Sea(57)

            I waited. I didn’t push him.

            “They made a major mistake,” he blurted out, “the dumb bastards, when they didn’t start by killing you first.”

            “Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone’s ever given me.”

            I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth.

            “You know,” I whispered, “a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that.”

            He shook his head. “Not worth it.” And, for one–ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead.

            “Get out of here,” I told him. “And if you let anything happen to my little brother, I’ll hunt you down like a dog.”

            “I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”

            He disappeared into the absolute dark of the stairwell.

            I went back to the room. I couldn’t do this. I had to do this. Evan scooted back in the bed until his butt touched the headboard. I slid my arms beneath Megan and slowly lifted her, turned, and then lowered her carefully onto Evan, leaning her head back into his lap. I picked up the spray can of air freshener (A Delicate Blend of Essences!) and saturated the washcloth. My hands were shaking. No way could I do this. No way I couldn’t.

            “A five-pronged hook,” Evan said quietly. “Embedded beneath the right tonsil. Don’t try to pull it out. Get a good grip on the wire, make the cut as close to the hook as you can, then pull the hook out—slowly. If the wire comes loose from the capsule . . .”

            I nodded impatiently. “Kaboom. I know. You already told me that.”

            I opened the med kit and took out a pair of tweezers and surgical scissors. Small, but they seemed huge. I clicked on the penlight and stuck the butt end between my teeth.

            I handed Evan the washcloth reeking of pine. He pressed the cloth over Megan’s nose and mouth. Her body jerked, her eyelids fluttered open, her eyes rolled to the back of her head. Her hands, folded primly in her lap, twitched, became still. Evan dropped the cloth onto her chest.

            “If she wakes up while I’m in there . . .” I said around the flashlight, sounding like a very bad ventriloquist: Eh chee wecks uh . . .

            Evan nodded. “A hundred ways it can go wrong, Cassie.”

            He tilted her head back and forced her mouth open. I stared down a glistening red tunnel the width of a razor and a mile deep. Tweezers in my left hand. Scissors in my right. Both hands the size of footballs.

            “Can you open it any wider?” I asked.

            “If I open it any wider, I’ll dislocate her jaw.”

            Well, in the grand scheme of things, a dislocated jaw was better than being able to pick up our pieces with this pair of tweezers. But whatever.

            “This one?” Touching the tonsil gently with the end of the tweezers.

            “I can’t see.”

            “When you said right tonsil, you meant her right, not my right, right?”

            “Her right. Your left.”

            “Okay,” I breathed. “Just wanted to make sure.”

            I couldn’t see what I was doing. I had the tweezers down her throat but not the scissors, and I didn’t know how I was going to stuff both in the tiny mouth of this little girl.