Helena's dreams were as vivid as her waking world had been blurred, but the intensity of the colors was almost dazzling in its own way.
She dreamed she was driving with Amber. In the logic of dreams, they'd gotten back together. Amber had forgiven her, and she had forgiven Amber, and everything was perfect again.
Only she had suddenly forgotten how to drive.
She heard the tires scraping against the asphalt, and panic raced through her. She fumbled with the controls, but anything she touched just seemed to do the opposite of what she meant it to. As the car started to go out of control, she turned and saw Amber's face.
And Amber looked so disappointed in her, Helena burst into tears.
She knew now that she was dreaming, but that just made it harder to think clearly. Amber just looked even more frustrated with her. Helena tried to explain, but none of it came out as anything more than muffled mumbles. Amber's red hair burned like wine in firelight.
Amber opened the passenger door of the car. She said something cruel--Helena didn't know what, only that it felt like a hammer strike to the stomach, and it felt familiar. Then she stepped out of the car.
Helena had driven right onto on a railroad bridge, she realized, and she felt a rush of embarrassment as Amber looked back at her, annoyance etched in her meticulously flawless features.
Fuck. Helena was so stupid. She couldn't do anything right. She could only watch as Amber calmly stepped right off of the railroad ties.
Those perfect dancer's feet settled on thin air. Amber made her way down an invisible staircase, and she didn't look back.
Panic overtook Helena. At first she couldn't move, and then she had moved, she had moved too far, she had launched herself off the bridge--and of course
she
couldn't find the stairs, of course
she
was too stupid to use them, of course she would fall,
fall,
fall
--
Helena's scream pierced the veil of sleep, and her eyes flew open with a strangled cry.
She was not falling. She was in a big, soft bed, under heavy, sweltering blankets. Her clothes were drenched in sweat. It was pitch black in the room, which felt odd to her, because she always slept with a nightlight. It must have died during the night.
Her heart was still racing, and she felt smothered under the sweat-sticky sheets, so she flung them from her, gasping for clear air.
Instantly, the night chill rushed in. It was brutal. It was
freezing
tonight. She could swear she heard a heater running, but it might as well have been the air conditioning. If it weren't so dark, she'd have assumed windows were open. She was already shivering.
Relief lasted for about five seconds--she tried to wait for her heartrate to slow, made herself count the sixteen beats--before she could take it no longer and had to burrow under the covers again.
She was starting to feel a familiar swimming ache throughout her body. Even moving the weighted blankets aside had been exhausting.
Normally, Helena always went for a walk after having a nightmare. She'd walk through the halls of her dorm, maybe get a cup of hot apple juice, and try to browse on her phone for a bit, to let the dream fade. But she couldn't imagine leaving her blankets in this cold, especially with a hangover. She couldn't even feel her phone on the nightstand.
The bed smelled strongly of her own sweat, along with a thick, heady cinnamony scent. It was almost hard to breathe, but Helena felt too weak to pull any off of them, to separate the layers and get rid of the unnecessary heated blanket that seemed to be folded between them.
Every muscle in her body felt limp and asleep. Fuck, how much had she had last night?
Wait. She managed to force her head above the covers, gulping in fresh, clean, dry air. It tasted like air conditioned air, but that wasn't what she was registering.
These weren't her blankets.
This wasn't her cinnamon perfume.
She didn't... wear perfume.
This wasn't her room.
The realization set in like a headache, dull at first and then pounding, splitting, incessant and overwhelming.
She was in Professor Wood's guest bedroom.
She tried to sit up in bed, but the aches set in harsher, like binding chains constricting her every motion, like pulsing drumbeats in her mind. The only lights in the room were the glittering sparks filling her vision, and...
... and then the pain ebbed, it all fell away, and she felt sudden, seeping relief. She let out a sigh, stretching happily.
A moment later, she realized it was because she'd let her head fall back down against her pillow.
But she couldn't just stay there. Her memories of last night were submerged beneath a pool of some of the smoothest, sweetest, strongest liqueur she'd ever had in her life, blurred in a sweet, bubbly strawberry-amber glow. She knew she'd humiliated herself, though. That was clear enough from where she was and how she felt.
She'd relapsed. She'd relapsed into drinking, and she'd done it in front of the professor she'd come here to confront. Something in her felt soft and weak as her mind cringed away from vague memories of leaning right into Diane's arms. She'd admitted such... shameful things.
And Diane had
put her to bed
. Helena could melt from shame.
But there were also other memories. Memories that made her not embarrassed, but afraid.
Diane had kissed her, she was pretty sure. Or she'd kissed Diane. But she'd been drunk, and Diane had poured her the drink, and... and Diane had
known
that. That she was an ex-alcoholic.
But hadn't she told Diane it was okay?
But why had Diane even asked, if not to gain the advantage? To ply her? So many things Diane said sounded so different when Helena played them back, but they also sounded faint and staticky, muddled amid dreams and half-memories.
It was a breach of professional boundaries, at least. That was for sure. Did that become okay if Diane knew she was about to be fired?
Helena rubbed her eyes, trying in vain to get them to adjust. There wasn't even a crack of light peeking from under the door.
Had Diane been trying to convince her not to tell anyone? Was Helena remembering that right? She hadn't fully registered it at the time, but when Diane had asked for her...
Her heart stopped. The phone.
She reached over to the headdesk, pinpricks traveling up her arm from the chill, muscles aching horribly. Her hand groped for her phone, and then for a light switch, and then for
anything
. She could feel a lamp, but it seemed to be the kind turned on by a wall switch.
