Read Clearer in the Night for Free Online

you. Right? Like you’ll never be clean. But he’s the one who’s dirty. He is, not you. If you tell them what happened, they might be able to help you.”
    She huddled as small as she could against the pillows, pale under her tan and wash of black hair. “What, did you read that in a book or something?”
    “No,” I said. It had been in that same journal article that Mom had written. Totally different.
    She was dissolving into tears again. “I wasn’t raped,” she said, but she flinched when I tried for her hand again.
    “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry for misunderstanding.” The flashes in her mind—they were not open to interpretation, at least not from where I was sitting. But what else could I do? Pushing her to admit something she wasn’t ready to talk about would do more harm than good, and besides, I could hit the call button on the sly, and the nurse could get someone who actually had a degree in this crap to help her.
    “I didn’t say no,” she told the wall, as I sat down on my own sheets. “It’s not rape if you don’t tell him to stop.”
    “Maybe not in a way the police can prosecute,” I said. “But maybe you still weren’t the one in the wrong.” I hit the button with my thumb, my hand behind my back, where she couldn’t see. “You know?”
    She offered me a tired, weak smile. Her thoughts were completely clear, though her lips didn’t move at all. If only . The words echoed through my mind and left a bitter, lime-rind sort of flavor on my tongue.
    “My name is Caitie,” I said. I almost corrected myself, and then I let it stand. It was how I thought of myself, anyway. Most of the time. When I wasn’t disparaging myself. Which wasn’t all that often. The pause stretched into awkward silence before she sighed and said, “Liz. Elizabeth Grace.”
    “Nice to meet you, Elizabeth Grace,” I said, trying to be funny.
    She shuddered. “Liz, I think. Just Liz.”
    “Okay.” And then the nurse bustled in, took in the scene—Liz with her tear-stained cheeks and red eyes and the torn up bandages on her wrists, and the empty chair by the bedside—and her lips pursed. She bustled right back out again.
    “How did you know, anyway?” Liz asked, her eyes anywhere but on my face.
    “What?”
    “How did you know? About—him. No one else could tell. Everyone else thinks we’re perfect together. So what gave it away?” She glanced at me with hollow eyes. “You can’t tell just by looking at me, can you?”
    My pulse picked up, and I hugged my knees. “You were talking in your sleep,” I said, shooting in the dark.
    She snorted. “I know that’s a lie. I haven’t slept in a week.” Since it happened .
    “That’s a long time to not sleep.”
    She shrugged. Better than the dreams , I heard.
    “True,” I said, without thinking.
    Her eyes got huge and wide and terrified again. I pressed my hand into my belly, trying to calm the circling and twisting. “How are you doing that?” she asked. “I think you’re reading my mind.”
    I scoffed, but I wasn’t convincing either one of us. “That’s impossible,” I said.
    “Are you an angel?”
    “Definitely not.”
    She smiled for the first time. “I don’t think I believe you,” she said. The nurse was back then, with fresh bandages, and a middle-aged woman in a turtleneck and slacks in tow. The woman should have had shrink tattooed on her forehead. I did my best to fade into the background while the nurse re-bandaged Liz’s wrists, and the shrink spoke quietly with her.
    Then an orderly came with a wheelchair. Apparently there was an opening on the psych floor now, and she was off. As she got settled, she looked at me, and her eyes narrowed. Her voice exploded in my head, so loud that I understood why Sam Tate had gotten a nosebleed. I won’t tell them about you , she thought, probably as hard as she could. Ow. “Get better,” I said out loud. I didn’t rub my head until they wheeled her out. It didn’t seem right