Root: Part I, Chapter 4

Hasta tries to deal with the aftermath of Robert's eerie disappearance, while Gillian tries not to deal with anything at all.

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4.0 Hasta

Hasta landed on her hands and knees and immediately threw up. She’d never felt so nauseated.

She scuttled backward from the puddle of vomit and shakily wiped her mouth. She looked up. Robert was nowhere in sight. What on earth had just happened? It felt like she’d pushed him somewhere—but how could that be?

Breathing hard, she climbed to her feet and leaned against one wall while a wave of dizziness passed. She forced herself to hobble back down the breezeway to the edge of the alley. She half-expected Robert to ambush her from hiding.

Hasta peeked into the alley. Gillian lurked a few feet away, pressed against the garage door. She jumped, and so did Hasta.

“What happened?” Gillian demanded. “Where’s Bobby?”

Hasta glanced the other way down the alley. No one in sight. “I—I’m not sure. I didn’t see where he went.”

Gillian sagged against the garage door, head back, practically swimming in her black leather jacket. “Oh, God, where did he go?”

Hasta wasn’t sure he was anywhere at all, but wasn’t about to say so.

Gillian pounded the back of her head against the wood. “He is so going to kill me.”

“Why?” Hasta said. She couldn’t stop shaking. “What’s going on here? What did he want with me?”

Gillian glared at her. Eyeliner streaked her blue cheeks, her eyes wet and red inside their thick black borders. She launched herself suddenly at Hasta, pummeling her chest and shoulders with frantic blows. “Why did you just show up like that? What were you thinking?”

Hasta stumbled back and raised her arms to block the attack. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I told him I hadn’t talked to you yet!” Gillian whined. “But then you just show up.” She dropped her arms and seemed to deflate. “Bobby’s going to think I’m lying to him. I don’t know what he’ll do.”

Hasta’s head hurt. She raised her palms. “Look, I’m really sorry you’re in trouble with your drug dealer, but it’s got nothing to do with me. Tell him that, okay?” But even as she said it, the principal’s words echoed in her head, how Gillian was in trouble and only Hasta could help.

Gillian didn’t seem to hear, though. “He’ll probably cut me off,” she said, her lower lip trembling, “and then I’ll wish I was dead. I can’t hack the nightmares anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” Hasta said. She was antsy to get moving, to get away. None of this was her problem. None of it was her fault. “I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”

Gillian took a cell phone out of her jacket pocket. She looked at it lying in the palm of her hand, and didn’t seem to notice anything else.

“It shouldn’t have gone like this,” she said, as distant as a girl trapped at the bottom of a well. “But you’ve really messed things up for me with Bobby. I guess you think we’re evens now.”

Evens. It was a word from their childhood meaning the scales of fairness were balanced. Hasta shrugged off the strange, poignant emotions it dredged up, memories of a lost time.

“I don’t think we’re anything,” she said.