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“Heather!” I hit the door with my palm.
No one answers.
I hit it again. “Open the fucking door.”
I hit it once and learn two things. The frame is reinforced, and Heather expects me to use my body before my brain.
Fuck that.
“You hear me, bitch?”
I turn around and take inventory.
There’s another door beside the wardrobe. I cross the room more carefully this time and open it onto a bathroom with no window.
I start with the cabinet over the sink. It’s empty. The drawers give me towels, washcloths, and toilet paper. There’s soap and shampoo in the shower and an empty toothbrush holder beside the sink, but nothing that helps with a locked door.
I crouch and open the cabinet beneath the sink. More nothing useful.
By the time I stand again, I’m breathing too hard for someone who crossed a bedroom and searched a bathroom.
I brace my hands on the sink. My reflection looks like shit. My hair is flattened on one side. My eyes are bloodshot. There’s a mark on my cheek, and something dried near the corner of my mouth. I grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles ache.
“Heather!”
“Simon?”
I straighten so quickly my head swims again. By the time I get back into the bedroom, the voice has moved closer.
“Are you awake?”
It’s coming through the door.
I cross the room and stop with one hand against the wood. “I’m not Simon.”
“She says you are.”
I stare at the door.
The man on the other side lowers his voice. “We have to use her names.”
The floor is steadier than it was five minutes ago, but not by enough. “Who the fuck is we?”
“I’m Jamie. I’m right outside your door.” He lowers his voice even more. “Please don’t yell. Sound carries up here.”
“Then open the door, Jamie.”
“I can’t. I don’t have the key.” He’s quiet for a second. “I wouldn’t if I did.”
I hit the door hard enough to make him go quiet. “I didn’t ask whether you fucking felt like it.”
“Listen to me,” Jamie says. “Tomorrow, when she comes in, you need to be good.”
For a second, I wonder whether the drugs have somehow made me hear him wrong. I lean my forehead against the door, mostly because the room won’t hold still. The wood is cool against my skin. On the other side, I can hear him breathing. I lift my head. “Good?”
“Eat what she gives you. Say thank you. Don’t throw anything. Don’t be ugly.”
“The fuck does that mean?”