x
Dysrhythmia
Where is the future,
We long for in life.
Miss you from the bottom of my heart.
And as the light of day moves faster I feel,
The loss of...
They washed away the evidence,
In the river joy;
Nothing is left of it,
Just the pain of guilty eyes,
And I follow, follow them down
- Mire Kay
"Wait, where did you get a phone?" Beca asks as she examines the list of things they're going to need.
Aubrey places her hand on top the hospital notepad, covering half the items she had written down, including the one that says 'phone' and its location. "Don't worry about it, Beca. Just text my dad and tell him you need something from the apartment and you have to go get it yourself."
"So, we're still keeping secrets?"
"I got it from the airport, okay? I just don't want my mom to know. Now will you do what I told you?"
Beca picks up Julia's phone, glancing up at Aubrey as she types. "You're not as well-behaved as everyone thinks. I'm starting to like you." The wink she gives is nowhere near as charming as it is when Chloe winks at her.
"Gross. Please, don't."
"He asked why he can't just bring what I need to me," Beca says, reading the text back, "What should I say?"
Aubrey takes the phone from her and utilizes the first excuse that comes to mind. "Alright, that should do it."
Cautious, Beca slowly pulls the phone out of her hand and turns it to read the message. "I need to sort through my tampons? Seriously? …and, he agreed." She looks disappointed.
"It worked, didn't it?" Aubrey leans back into her pillow with a satisfied expression that slowly turns serious now that she had broached the subject, "Can I ask you a personal question?"
Beca flips the phone face down on the table. "We're already on the topic of sorting my tampons; how much more personal can we get?"
"Have you had your period since…" Aubrey doesn't exactly know what to call what happened. "Well, since you know…?"
"Uh…" Beca pauses like she has to think about it. "Kind of? It was spotty for a few days – so, yes but not really?"
That sends some relief through her. "I've never been this late before, and I know I'm not pregnant – unless God decided I haven't been cursed enough the past few weeks and chose me to birth the anti-Christ."
"Dude, didn't you learn about this sort of thing in Sex Ed?"
"Birthing the anti-Christ? No, but that's exactly what my parents said those kinds of classes taught. And high school was years ago at this point, Beca."
"I must have been attending the wrong school, because it sounds like yours was way more interesting. And aren't you the person who saves everything you've ever been taught in some sort of mental filing cabinet?"
"You had to get a permission slip signed to attend that class. My mother preached abstinence and my father's version of sexual education was openly threatening to shoot the knob off of any boy who even so much as looked at me. He kept a rifle by the door for when his friends brought over their sons my age."
"I don't think we have time to unpack all that right now," Beca says, waving her hand around in a circle, "But, seriously, we learned that if you're stressed out, your body goes into fight or flight, and that can shut down your period because your uterus realizes it might not be the right time to be leaking blood or popping out babies. It stops ovulation or some shit."
"Oh." Aubrey looks toward the wall, a little embarrassed she didn't already know that. But that's one less concern, at least.
"A rifle though? Really?" Beca circles back, "I thought my dad was bad for having one of those baseball bats that said 'birth control' on it next to the door – and I didn't even live with him."
"That actually sounds way more embarrassing," Aubrey points out, "I think I prefer the rifle. Did you have boyfriends?"
"A few. You?"
Aubrey shakes her head. "Occasionally a boy would try to woo me in hopes of having sex. It only almost worked once."
"He must have been special."
"Not really."
"You're actually lucky Chloe was your first. Having sex with a teenage boy is mostly just being masturbated on."
"I did not want to know that," Aubrey replies.
"Me neither. I always felt like a dead fish – occasionally flopping up and down, but mostly just laying still while waiting for it to be over."
"How old were you?"
"Fourteen, the first time," Beca answers.
"That's so young."
"Maybe where you're from, but where I'm from we had to have the 'no hand jobs in the bathrooms' assembly in fifth grade – which is actually how I learned what a hand job was. Up until then, I thought people were just getting in trouble for making elaborate handshakes in the bathroom when they should have been in class. That assembly changed my life, and I'm not entirely sure it was in a positive way. What was your first time with Chloe like?"
"Amazing." Aubrey was just going to leave out the fact that she had cried. "It was so….undemanding. It felt like I'd been in love with her my whole life." The sensation of Chloe's fingers laced through hers returns in her casted hand again. "It was like we were soulmates. Until we weren't anymore…"
"I don't believe in that whole soulmate shit or love at first sight or whatever," Beca says, "Love takes work – and either you're willing to put in the effort or you're not. And isn't that better – someone wanting to put in the work? Jesse always said we were soulmates, that loving me was effortless or some shit, and I know this is the reason I chose him, but it was so boring. There was no passion. I felt like a domesticated housewife from the moment we started dating."
"Can you go get me Chloe's computer?" Aubrey asks.
"Uh, yeah." Beca stands up then retrieves it from the other side of the room.
"I have just the song for you." Aubrey pries open the top and waits for it to boot up. She kind of likes this – communicating in song when words don't seem to work. Music was always a big part of her life with Chloe, but it was never this second language like it's becoming with Beca where she can just pull out a song to say she understands where she's coming from.
"It's going to be Taylor Swift, isn't it?" Beca makes a face. "This is Chloe's computer; I know it's going to be Taylor Swift."
"Uh huh." Aubrey goes through her playlist until she finds the right song.
"How did I know?" Beca flops back down onto the bed next to Aubrey's legs, "Do you even listen to Taylor Swift, or is this involuntary knowledge?"
"Both," Aubrey admits and clicks on The Way I Loved You.
"This is creepily accurate," Beca says with a shudder after a few seconds of listening, "Turn it off."
Aubrey turns off the music with a smirk and leans back against her pillow in a sudden loss of energy now that Chloe is back on her mind. "I'm going to send myself to the next dimension while you're gone." Maybe she'll hallucinate her again.
"Do you want me to wake you if you're out when I get back?"
"No."
"Alright. I'll take my time then."
"Don't do that either."
"Why not? Are you gonna miss me when I'm gone?" Beca holds up her hand for a high five like her lame idea of a joke should be positively reinforced.
Aubrey presses the little button beside the bed then waits a moment. "I think I need something stronger to alleviate the pain." She looks up at Beca. "Because, for some reason, you're still here."
xxxxx
Aubrey doesn't dream of Chloe. She doesn't even fall asleep. Instead, she stares at the ceiling in a strong daze, replaying every second of being on that island in her head, looking for something, anything, that she might have missed. Did Nikki know whatever she gave Chloe to drink was going to make her vomit that night? Was it some kind of hint about what was going to happen to Aubrey – or maybe a warning? In the woods, while choking her, Luke had said he never meant to kill anyone; that it wasn't his choice. He had said he was trying to help her. Then he shot Nikki and killed himself. Why? Had Jesse convinced them to kill people – and, if so, how? And why, of all people, had he chosen Nikki and Luke?
These were important questions.
She gathers her strength and lucidity and presses the call button for the nurse. "May I speak with Nora?" she asks Preston when he appears in the doorway.
"I'll see if she's available."
"Thank you." If only in the midst of it all she had thought to look around more. The whole thing had been so sloppily executed that there was bound to be clues and evidence all over the place. Did the cops even have any idea what they were looking for besides searching for Jesse? Where was he? Did he survive or did someone move him? How many people were potentially involved in this?
There's a knock on the door then Nora lets herself in. "Hey, Aubrey. You wanted to talk?"
"Do you have journals that lock?" Aubrey jumps straight to the point.
"I might. Did you want to fill out the paperwork about being a client again as well?"
"Can I have one?"
"I'll check and see what I have. Are you doing okay?"
"I'm fine. I just need a journal with a lock."
"Let me see what I can do." Nora lets herself back out and shuts the door behind her. When she returns several minutes later, she's carrying a large blue box with snowflakes on it. "This is the best I got."
Aubrey looks down at the customizable Frozen journal set – containing three lockable journals equipped with separate keys, five glitter pens, and over one hundred stickers.
"On a positive note, you can have the whole set."
It'll have to do. Aubrey picks at the tape with her thumbnail. "I got it," she says tersely when Nora tries to step in to help her, then calms herself back down, "Thank you." She manages to scrape the tape away enough to be able to rip it open with one hand then spreads the contents out across the table – too distracted to even look up as Nora leaves once more. They're thick journals at least – with at least a few hundred pages per book. She picks up one with Olaf on the front and stares at it in disdain. Well. She knows which one she's giving to Beca.
xxxxx
"What's this?" Beca walks in to see Aubrey peeling stickers off a page. She drops the bag of items Aubrey requested on the bottom of the bed to pick up a glitter pen between two fingers and hold it out in front of her.
"You don't like it? I made this one for you." Aubrey finishes adding the 'A' to Beca's name using stickers on the front of the Olaf journal. "I decided to take that Elsa conversation we had in the bathroom more seriously."
Beca doesn't even need to speak. Her face says it all. "Why?" she whines and takes the journal as its handed to her. "This is going in the trash where it belongs."
"No!" Aubrey grabs her arm before she can trash it for real. "We need that."
"Did something happen while I was gone?" Beca asks pityingly, "I knew I shouldn't have left you alone." She slowly takes a seat and places the journal and the pen on the table.
"Yeah, you left and I just had this revelation about 'letting things go'. Here's your key." Aubrey drops the Olaf keychain in front of her. "The pens are scented, by the way, and there's stickers."
"Why are you doing this to me?" Beca whispers.
"Not everything I do is done with the intent to torment you, Beca."
Beca raises both eyebrows and holds the journal up next to her face. "Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't do this to torment me."
This may have not been Aubrey's doing, but she'll take the credit for it. She looks between Beca and Olaf. "I'm sorry, which of you is which?" she asks before breaking the act, "We do need these. We need to keep track of what we know, and it might be best if no one else stumbles upon it."
"And you think that's going to take up three of these?"
"No." Aubrey picks up a pen for the sole purpose of using it to tap on one of the journals. "I'm going to write down everything I can remember. And I suggest you do too."
"Why can't we just do it together?"
"Because," Aubrey answers, "We weren't always in the same place at the same time. And this way there's less chance of skewing each other's memories. So pick a pen color."
Beca uncaps the purple pen and lifts it to her nose to smell it. She shrugs.
"Hand me my phone," Aubrey demands. She opens one of the journals as Beca digs through the bag and begins to jot down her questions. Mid-sentence, she stops to take a break, her head foggy and eyes exhausted.
"You know we could do this later, right? Like when you're feeling better? Right now, we could just, I don't know, radio and chill?"
Aubrey lowers her eyebrows and looks up with a pinched expression.
"I meant in the literal sense." Beca holds out the phone. "And I don't know why you're looking at me like that; we already had sex, recently, so you're clearly not that opposed."
"I was proving a point about where I am on the rating scale." Aubrey places the phone down next to Julia's, lining them up side by side so they're even. "And I succeeded." She finishes writing down her thoughts then opens Julia's contacts list and scrolls until she finds Naveen. Seeing his name causes her to pause – but she refuses to hesitate. With a deep breath, she copies his phone number into her phone.
"Who is this person?" Beca asks.
"I don't know," Aubrey answers, "But, apparently, he is in Seattle and he can help us. "
Beca doesn't look so sure. She pulls her legs up to sit crisscross in the bed, half sitting on one of Aubrey's legs. "And you think we can trust him?"
Saying yes outright is difficult when Aubrey has virtually no idea who this man is outside of his connection to Julia. After what Beca has been through, she can't imagine trusting anyone is going to come easy – not right now, maybe not ever. "I think you can trust me," she answers, "I'll worry about him." Her words cause Beca to shift around a little. "Beca, I would never hurt you." She has to know that. Sure, Aubrey loves fucking with her, but not in a way that would ruin her life forever.
"Yeah, no, I know. Let's just do this."
Aubrey makes the decision to text him first with a message that says: 'This is Aubrey Posen. Please call when you have the chance.'
"You mean you don't start all your texts with 'Aubrey Posen texting'?" Beca asks in mock surprise.
"Do you enjoy having intact vocal cords?"
"Yes, but I also don't see any wolves roaming the streets of Manhattan."
"You know I'm not the person who invented that oath, right?"
Beca blinks. "Wait, really?"
"It was passed down through the generations," Aubrey replies, "I have no idea who decided on it being wolves."
"That actually makes a lot of sense. Because if you had made it, you would have ripped out people's vocal cords yourself rather than trusting a pack of imaginary wolves to get the job done – or kept a wolf chained up where we could see it at all times. Or turned into one under the full moon."
"Shut up; he's calling." Aubrey answers the call and quickly places it on speaker phone. "Aubrey Posen speaking." She shoots Beca a hard glare before she can comment.
"Hello, Aubrey. How are you doing?"
"I'm great," Aubrey answers then gets straight to the point, "I wanted to make a deal."
"I'm listening," Naveen says.
"I'll work on a fully detailed written account of what happened if you answer any questions I have," she offers.
"Deal."
That was simple enough. If they're going to do this, they might as well start at the beginning – or, the first thing Aubrey knows about. "Are you able to find me information on someone?"
"That all depends on the information."
"I need to find a way to get touch with my brother." Aubrey holds up a hand to stop Beca from speaking. "Liam Posen. He was speaking with Jesse in the months prior to this over some sort of Dragons and Dungeons thing."
"Dungeons and Dragons," Beca mutters.
"Ah, yes. Were you made aware there was a third person in their chat from time to time?" Naveen inquires, then continues on without waiting for an answer, "I've been able to confirm your brother's and Mr. Swanson's identities in their group, but the third remains untraceable. He or she was very good at covering their tracks – and it appears this person was neither Luke nor Nikki. Do you have any idea on anyone else who may have been involved? Think hard, Aubrey."
Aubrey's stomach drops and the tube running down the back of her throat suddenly feels very uncomfortable. She looks at Beca and shakes her head.
"I have no idea," Beca agrees out loud.
"Is that Beca?" Naveen asks.
"Yes," Aubrey confirms.
"It's nice to meet you, Beca. I'm sorry for what happened. And I will get the two of you in touch with who you need to be in touch with. The moment I have a phone number, I will send it your way. Is this a good number to contact you in the future?"
"It is," Aubrey confirms, "Thank you."
"Keep me updated on your written account," Naveen says, "We'll speak soon. Was there anything else you needed?"
"No, Sir."
"Have a good day, Girls. Stay safe."
"You as well."
"Another person?" Beca mouths while Aubrey hangs up the phone, "What the fuck? Who?"
"I don't know, Beca." Aubrey pushes the table off to the side and sinks down into the bed. Beca's 'radio and chill' suggestion doesn't sound half bad anymore – the literal meaning behind it or not. She just needs something to mend her frayed nerves. "I need to think." In actuality, it might be better if she stopped thinking for awhile and came back to it with a clear mind, but no drugs out there could be strong enough to achieve that.
Beca flops down on her back at the bottom of the bed and folds her hands over her stomach as she stares up at the ceiling in silence. A few seconds pass before she lowers one hand and rests it on Aubrey's knee, slowly caressing her bare skin with her thumb. "You need to chill before you send yourself into cardiac arrest," she mumbles, alerting Aubrey to the fact she's anxiously shaking her foot. They're both shaking in one way or another though – Aubrey's foot, Beca's trembling fingers. Maybe Beca's insides are quaking like there's an internal earthquake rattling everything around just like Aubrey's have been for weeks and they're both on their way toward having heart attacks. "Do you want some music?"
Aubrey nods.
What she really wants is room at the top of the bed for them both.