A few miles down the road we found the Lynn Inn, a freakishly purple, seemingly ritzy colonial-style hotel. It was a bit pricey compared to the places we'd normally stay, which further convinced me Dean was just showing off. However, we were in a hurry to get to work, so I knew that also played a small factor in the decision making.
We rented a single room, not much thinking about sleeping arrangements. Our only immediate concern was getting cleaned up and finding the police station before 5PM. The sooner we were presentable the sooner we could find some answers, solve this mystery, and move on.
I shaved while Dean showered and Mariah made a few phone calls.
I could hear her on the phone, though I could not make out much of the conversation over the running water. Had I wanted to, I could have moved closer to the door and eavesdropped, but I felt I owed her privacy. Plus she sounded fine—neither angry nor upset—so I assumed everything was fine and focused on the task at hand.
I squirted another dollop of shaving cream onto my fingertips and brought it to my cheeks, pausing as the blade of my razor caught my eye. I pushed aside a horrid thought and continued spreading the cream over my skin, then looked up at my reflection in the mirror. Fuck the razor, I could have ripped my own throat out right then and there. The very fact that I could stand there with not a scratch on my face or blemish to my image, while a young woman… While Kiers. I forced a breath, forced myself to walk away from that thought. But bile rose in my throat and my insides felt crushed. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I needed to smash something. I needed a release. I needed to cry, or kill something, or a train to jump in front of.
It didn't make sense. I mean, what had she seen? What could anyone have seen in me? I was a liar. A cheat. A monster—a monster that killed things for a living. One destined to become so nefarious none others would speak of my intended havoc. My insides burned with disgust. I hated me. The very sight of me was...
A knock on the door jolted the self-hatred right out of me. It was a reminder of two things—one, that I was not alone on this planet and any attempted suicide would undoubtedly be foiled by my brother, who stood inches from me in the shower. The second being that Mariah was on the other side of that door counting on me to save her sister. Counting on me to do MY JOB and fix all this.
The pity train would have to wait.
Briskly, I finished up my shave and hollered a "Be right there," to whomever had knocked. Room service? No, Mariah would have answered that knock. Could there have been a problem with our credit card? A new panic rose in my chest as I grabbed a soft blue face cloth from the counter reached for the door.
Dean mumbled something behind the curtain, but I was too preoccupied to care. I could picture the manager questioning Mariah about our "credit card" and her insisting he had the wrong room—that we were not "the Schmidts" without it ever dawning on her that our entire existence depended upon fraud and deceit.
Instead I opened the door and found the living quarters of our room strangely quiet. "Mariah?" I questioned, though it was apparent she was no longer present. I rubbed the blue cloth against my cheeks as I made my way to the door. The knock repeated a third time, and without bothering to check the peep hole, I opened it to see Mariah warding off a look of embarrassment.
"I forgot my key." She said suddenly distant. I could tell just by her voice that something more was wrong, but her eyes told me that it was her secret to keep. That I shouldn't ask. That I should just move out of the way and let her into the room.
Suddenly aware of the fact I was still blocking her in the doorjamb, I let the door swing open and stepped aside. "Everything ok?" I ask anyway. Her body tenses a bit and she swings her arms but she turns to me with a polite smile.
"Yeah. Everything's fine."
I was sure she was lying, but I didn't pry. I tried reading her face, not that I knew it well. She didn't seem upset, or angry, or anything but tired. Tired and tense.
"I guess I'm just still trying to process everything." She sighed, and maybe that was the truth. It was a lot to process. I crumbled the blue cloth in my right hand, wishing I had something more to add.
"Well, for what it's worth, Dean's right. You're taking it all pretty well." I smiled, and as if on cue, the bathroom door swung open and out came my brother, shirtless, and smiling.
"What am I right about? Never mind. Hurry up, Sam, we need to get a move on."
But I'm still frozen. Of all the things I could have said, and of all the times I could have said it? What an idiot I was to third-person her like that—to talk about her through my brother, as though I'm incapable of making the same deductions—and Dean? Had he just coincidently picked that moment to burst in, or had he been waiting for a chance to make such a grand entrance?
For a brief second, I see that she's laughed off my oddity, and perhaps forgiven me for the awkwardness in the doorway. Perhaps she even realized I had not helped my brother stage his grandeur return, and was coming to realize he was just the ham that he was. Or maybe she was just being polite. Pretending to hide her disdain for me.
In the bathroom, I could hear them talking. They waited until I had turned the water on, which I found strange. I took my shirt off slowly, hoping to hear a bit of their conversation, but it was so hushed I would have had to either gone out there or shut the shower off to hear them. Plus, I had a feeling if I had done either of those things they would have stopped talking anyway. I decided it wasn't worth it, and that if anything important had happened, Dean would tell me later.
The reflection of my bare chest in the mirror caught my eye. Not a scratch marked my skin, not a bruise or any other record of what had happened despite the stain it bore on my memory.
"You lost a lot of blood," Kiers had said to me—panic surged in her eyes. I was light headed, and remembered the pain that spread across my stomach. I remembered coming to in the warmth of her arms and the alarm of her delicate fingers pressing into my side. Those bloody fingers she'd wiped upon her jeans. All the blood—it came from somewhere, but searching for wounds at this point would be pointless. I knew there were none.
A slamming door brought me back to the hotel room. I could hear Dean cursing as though he'd done something wrong. I almost called to him, but I didn't care; all I could think about was the door Kiers had slammed in my face, when she'd tried protecting me from Dean. Brought tears to my eyes as I tried repressing yet another memory of her. This needed to stop. I grabbed at my wrist, but soon realized the mark my nails left on my skin would signal a message I'd rather not send.
Instead, I hopped in the shower and let the water burn my skin. The pain helped me forget everything, but it didn't last. In fact, no sooner than I'd gotten out, I felt weak again. Looking in the mirror and seeing myself made me feel sick.
I changed, and we were on the road again.