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“Hey, Oz,” Alice Vessalius announced, barging into the men’s bathroom in Pandora’s Box as if she owned the place, “I sterilized the needle or whatever like you asked. Can you do the thing now?”
Oz looked up from where he was curled against the wall. He smiled at Alice, another one of his small sad fake ones, where he couldn’t quite stop pretending but still wasn’t really hiding anything from her. “Almost,” he said. “I’m gonna have to guide you through it this time, if you’re okay with that.”
Alice balled her hands into fists to stop them from trembling. “No,” she said. “No way. That needle’s going into your skin, Oz. I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“I can’t use one of my arms, Alice.” Oz’s voice was gentle, coaxing, just like Dad’s when he was acting like they were a family of two and wanted her to play along and play nicely. “If anyone’s gonna do it, it’s gonna have to be you.”
“No,” said Alice. “No way. I won’t hurt you like that.”
“It’s not hurting me, Alice, it’s literally holding my skin together—”
“It’s stabbing you with a needle a whole bunch of times!”
“If that’s your problem, why didn’t you say anything when we were giving each other stick and pokes with Elliot and Leo last summer?!”
“That was different,” said Alice. “Anyway, why don’t you ask Elliot and Leo for help with this instead of me? They wouldn’t hurt you.”
Something flickered in Oz’s eyes.
“Or do I need to beat their asses?”
“I told you, don’t go near Elliot and Leo,” said Oz. “I’m handling it. Besides, Elliot and Leo drawing a rabbit on my ass with a needle is one thing and stitching up a few cuts is another. They’d ask questions.”
“Maybe they should.”
“You don’t really think that,” said Oz.
“Yeah, I do!”
“You know what happens when people ask questions. Jack gives them answers they like and they stop caring about us, that’s what always happens.”
“Or they try to kidnap you.”
“That’s just Break, and Break’s insane,” said Oz. “Elliot and Leo wouldn’t react like Break.”
“Well, why not get Break to stitch you up, then?” Alice said. “Or Gilbert, even. I sterilized the needle with his lighter, you know.”
“You did?” said Oz. “What does he think we’re doing with it?”
“More stick and pokes,” said Alice. “I told him Elliot and Leo were here already, so it’s fine. But, you know. He wouldn’t ask questions.”
“Yes, he would. Not even Gil could convince himself that this was something totally normal and fine that he should just ignore. It’s you or nothing, Alice.”
Alice bit her lips together and glared at the sinks. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to be like their dad. She didn’t want to hurt Oz and pretend like it was for his own good. But some of his cuts still hadn’t closed up, even though they were days old, and Alice had punched enough glass to know that stitches hurt, and for Oz to know that stitches helped close up your cuts faster, and so here they were, at an impasse.
“…Are you sure we can’t tell Gilbert?” Alice said. “He’d do it a lot better than me. He knows how to sew.”
“Telling Gil would be inviting more trouble than it’s really worth, Alice,” Oz said. “It would just upset him, and then we wouldn’t get to see him again. You don’t have to stitch me up if you don’t want to. We could give you another stick-and-poke.”
Alice scowled harder. Right now, the cut they were going to stitch was bandaged with an Always pad and duct tape, because unlike bandages Dad wouldn’t ask questions about where pads went or how often Alice used them. Even with that safeguard, though, there was every chance that they’d get caught, and every time Alice had been forced to get stitches in the past they’d said is was so that the cut would heal faster and safer.
“…No, I’ll do it,” said Alice. “But you owe me.”
“Thanks, Alice,” Oz said with naked relief, pushing up his sleeve and picking at their makeshift bandage, wincing as he did so. Alice waited until it was gone and then she fumbled with the needle and thread for a few minutes until she was finally able to get it through and then tied the ends together in a knot.
“…I really don’t like this, Oz,” she said.
“I know.”
“What if I make it worse?”
“You won’t.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She took Oz’s arm and pretended not to notice him tensing up. The arm itself was hot to the touch, and his skin was pink and stretched like an overfilled balloon. The cut was shallowest near his elbow and wrapped around to the fleshy underside of his arm, deepening as it went. If his arm hadn’t already been broken, he wouldn’t have been hurt this badly by the glass, but it was broken and he was hurt badly and nothing you could do to change it or fix it other than hurt him more.
They both ignored the hiss of pain Oz let out when Alice stuck the needle into his arm; Alice pretended not to see him dig his teeth into the strap of his backpack as she pushed it out again on the other side of the cut, the first half of the first stitch. Fresh blood was already bubbling up, no warmer on her fingers than Oz’s skin already was.
How many more will I have to do?
There was no way of knowing. Oz never had Alice watch when he stitched himself up in the past; when Gilbert had mended clothes in front of her in the past, all his stitches had been tiny and perfectly even. These were not tiny, and they were not even, and it was not cloth she was sewing but her brother’s arm.
“I’m gonna make Gilbert teach me how to sew for real after this,” said Alice, and she pushed the needle back into Oz’s skin; Oz hissed, and he said, “Well—for your first time—you’re doing great.”
Oz was bleeding even more now, all over Alice’s trembling fingers. She couldn’t help but feel as though she were making it worse, even as she pulled the edges of Oz’s skin closer together. As she got closer to Oz’s wrist where his arm was the most swollen and the cut was deepest, little noises began to escape Oz’s mouth like the squeaking of an injured animal, like the sounds that he’d made in the laundry room after Dad had come home from his Open House, laughingly cruel, coldly furious. Alice paused; Oz sucked a breath in through his teeth.
“Keep going,” he said. “This part—is the most—important. Deepest. Hardest to heal without stitches. You can—do it.”
Alice sniffled, and nodded, and clenched her jaw as tight as she could, and pushed the needle into Oz’s skin again. Her fingers slipped on the blood, but she pulled the thread taut once more; her fingers slipped on the blood, but she pushed the needle back into Oz’s hot meat and tried to ignore the sounds coming out of his mouth as she did so. It would be worse for both of them if she acknowledged it.
“…I think I got to the end of it,” Alice said, finally.
“Great,” said Oz. “Now cut the thread, and tie the end that’s in my arm into a knot so it can’t get out. As big a knot as you can get it.”
Alice nodded, and did as she was told; Oz hissed a few times as she pulled the knots closed, but otherwise all was silent in the bathroom, and he took his teeth out of his backpack, leaving behind a half-moon tear and a wet spot.
“Thanks, Alice,” Oz said, and this time when he smiled at her he made it was bright and happy as possible. “You did a great job. You’re a really good girl.”
“Yeah, I am,” said Alice, nestling next to Oz as a warm and fuzzy glow grew a little in her chest. “Now you owe me.”
“Yep, I do! What do you want? Steak from Gil? Hot dogs? Pork?”
“I want to know who broke the windows and graffiti’d our house,” said Alice.
“Wh-what? Why would I know tha—”
“You do. You and Dad both do. It was obvious. You guys weren’t even trying to hide it. So who was it? I’ll kick their asses for getting you hurt.”
“You will not,” said Oz.
“I will so.”
“Will not.”
“Will so.”
“Will not.”
“Will so.”
“Will no—”
The door to the bathroom opened and Elliot Nightray screamed like a little girl. Oz groaned, rolled his eyes, and got to his feet.
“What are you doing here?” he said, and Alice stiffened, surprised at the sudden hostility on Oz’s voice. Oz loved Elliot. He thought the sun shone out of his ass. Why was he so upset now? It wasn’t like Elliot had seen anything he wasn’t supposed to. They’d already finished up with the stitches.
“Gilbert called and told me to come and said I was late for something,” said Elliot, his voice high and panicked. “Why is Alice in the boy’s bathroom?! And why is there blood everywhere?!”
“We were giving each other stick and pokes,” said Oz, “because usually you can get privacy in here, since nobody trusts that Break doesn’t have cameras in the stalls. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Does Break have cameras in the…?”
“Why don’t you try your luck and find out?” said Oz.
“Uh, yeah, no thanks, that sucks extremely,” said Elliot. “Also, you were clearly not doing stick-and-pokes, there’s no ink here and blood all over Alice. What’s really going on?”
“None of your—”
“Some assholes threw rocks through our windows last week and Oz got a nasty cut so I gave him stitches about it,” said Alice, “and now Oz is about to tell me who it was so I can kill them. Wanna come with?”
Elliot’s face went grey.
“Come on, it’ll be fun. And we haven’t seen you and Four-Eyes in forever!”
Elliot started to look distinctly uncomfortable, and took a step backwards.
“If you’re worried about murder don’t be. Oz could’ve died if the cut was any worse—”
“I would not have, I was fine— ”
“It was a lot of blood and you made me give you stitches about it,” said Alice. “It sucked major ass and I want to kick the butts of the people who’re responsible. It’ll be fun.”
“—It was my idea,” said Elliot. “Leo and I saw what you guy’s dad did to Oz’s arm, and so we wanted to fight him, but when we came by there wasn’t anyone at your house. So I threw a rock at the window, and things kind of…escalated from there. Sorry.”
“You should be,” Alice snapped. “Oz got hurt because of you. And why did you want to fight Dad about what happened to Oz’s arm? That’s was Oz’s own fault.”
Elliot flinched as though she had slapped him. “What the hell do you mean, Oz’s fault? There’s no way in hell that was Oz’s—”
“It was,” said Oz. “I went behind our father’s back and broke his trust. Alice is exactly right.”
It hurt to hear Oz refer to Dad as ‘our father’, as if something in Alice’s chest were withering and dying. He’d called him Jack for as long as she could remember; it felt a little sickening to hear Oz refer to him as a member of their family.
“That’s bullshit.”
“It’s not. You just don’t understand anything.”
“Goddamn it…then make me understand, Oz! Actually explain it, instead of just shutting us out every time! We’re your friends, so trust us a little!”
“I told you, no.” Oz stood, hoisting his backpack onto one shoulder. “Come on, Alice. Let’s go do our homework somewhere else.”
“You’re—!” Elliot’s gaze flashed between the two of them, his face flushed with impotent rage. “Damn it. God damn it. Look…Oz…is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”
“Sure,” said Oz, brushing past him, Alice hot on his heels. “Don’t tell Gil.”