You Fight For All The Wrong Reasons

What are you looking at?
Sometimes the things behind us,
They remind us of that
No one ever told us

-Anesthetic Parade by We Are The Fury

Between staying with Mitch and making up for lost time with Cam, the weeks flew by. But every time I walked through Mitch’s door, and every time my lips met Cam’s, I knew I was further entangling myself in the mess that I had created. Cam’s words were always in the back of my mind, but I soon realized that I didn’t care, and that somehow I could keep both of them. Was I being selfish? Nonsensical? Probably both. Still, this didn’t seem to bother me. Cam had said that I would know when to take action, and that one sentence was only thing I was relying on.

************************************************************************

It was a week before Christmas, and I was helping my next-door neighbor’s kids make gingerbread houses. I was saving up for a pair of boots that I desperately wanted, and I got paid $6 an hour for babysitting Jilly and Zach. Besides, these kids were a blast to sit for, so it’s not like I was spending five hours wallowing in a living hell.

“Uh-oh,” Jilly said, licking icing off of her finger. “My roof’s falling apart.” Her wide, brown eyes looked up at me for assistance.

“Oh, what happened here?” I inspected Jilly’s construction. “Oh, you need to actually put the roof together. That’s what the icing’s for,” I showed her. “See? You’ve gotta put it in between the cracks, and then it’ll stick. Ta-da. All fixed.”

“Yeah, Jilly,” Zach repeated. He loved to use anything I said as a downgrade against his five year old sister. “That’s what icing’s for.”

“You’re not doing much better,” I said, and couldn’t help grin at the rainbow of colored icing smeared across his face.

“But it sure does taste good.”

“You’re supposed to eat it after,” Jilly reminded her older brother.

“Your sister’s got a point, little man,” I said.

I heard Lady GaGa’s voice drifting in from the family room. “Let me go check that,” I said. “It’ll only be a couple seconds. Be good, okay?”

I really hate answering calls on my cell phone when I’m babysitting. And usually, I ignore my ringtone and let the call slide. But with Mitch being sick and another raid against Cam’s coven in the near future, it could be important.

I saw Christina’s name and face pop up on the Caller ID.

“This had better be important. I’m sitting for Jilly and Zach Benoit, so make it snappy.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I mean, I have really good news regarding Mitch. So it can wait, if you want.”

I glanced in at Jilly and Zach, who were watching me curiously. “Good news?”

“Yeah. Really good news.”

“Okay…let’s hear it.”

“Okay! Daddy says that we can take Mitch off of oxygen! For good! The chlorine’s out of his system, and he’s fine! I mean, we’ll obviously have to be cautious the next couple of days, but he’s going to be okay!” Christina’s voice escalated about three times in pitch and volume. “He’s okay!!!”

I gasped, ecstatic. “Oh my gosh! That is so great! That’s…wow…” I laughed as I felt a month and half’s amount of worry and burden lifted off my shoulders. “I am so glad you called to tell me this.”

Christina giggled. “Well, I’ll let you go now.”

“I’m coming over to Mitch’s house first thing tomorrow.”

“Alright! See you there!” I heard her shriek with joy before she hung up.

I snapped my phone shut and clasped it to my chest. “Yes.” I spun around and walked back into the kitchen, still beaming.

“Who was that?” Jilly asked. “Your mommy? Your daddy?” She gasped and her eyes grew big. “Your boyfriend?”

I laughed. “No, not my boyfriend. That was my friend, Christina.”

“What did she have to say?”

“Well…a friend of ours was really sick for the past month and a half, but we just learned that he’s going to be okay.”

She smiled. “That’s good. He was sick? Why? With what?”

I tried to summarize a complicated sentence into a few words. Jilly probably didn’t even know what chlorine was. “A lung infection.”

“Oh.” Jilly made a face. “Well, that’s good that he’s okay now.”

I returned her smile. “Yeah. It is.”

************************************************************************

I stood on the doorstep to Mitch’s house, bouncing up and down. What was taking them so long to answer the door?

I tried the knob, and to my surprise, it was unlocked. I stepped inside and made sure to lock the door behind me.

Absolutely silent. The lack of noise and motion was unnatural. Frowning, I looked around for any signs of life.

Nothing.

Nervous, I made my way up the stairs. Finally, a sound broke the uneasy silence.

Alicia’s rapid footsteps soon made way to her face, which was stricken with trepidation. She saw me and jumped, her eyes panicky.

“Oh, Audrey,” she breathed. “It’s just…it’s just you. Okay.”

“What happened, Alicia?” I could tell something had gone terribly wrong.

“Mitch,” her eyes darted to the ground, then wandered to my face, then escaped my gaze again.

My heart was slowly sinking in my chest. “Yes?” I urged her on.

“Mitch is in a coma.”

I stared at her, unable to fathom what she had just said. “A coma?”

Alicia nodded sadly. “Apparently he stopped breathing in his sleep, and for a while too. We were able to bring him back, but he probably won’t wake up for a while. His entire body’s on overload.”

I was missing something here. “What do you mean? Christina told me last night that all of the chlorine was out of his system.”

Alicia’s face grew even more sinister. “That was last night. We think someone switched the oxygen tank with a chlorine canister.”

My lips formed words that my vocal cords refused to verbalize. “That’s ridiculous,” I sputtered. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what I said, too. But Dr. Kostick tested what was inside the canister and he said it was chlorine. Oh, and you know the valve where the tank’s hooked up to? He said that was loose. Someone had to have switched out the old tank and replaced it with one that looked exactly the same. The material on the tank with chlorine in it looked a whole lot newer than Dr. Kostick’s tank.” Alicia bit her lip.

“But…who switched it?”

“I have no clue. You think it would have been Cam’s coven, but Mitch’s room smells perfectly normal.”

“It wasn’t one of us!” I cried.

“Oh, I know Audrey. But people are beginning to point fingers. Do you want to see Dr. Kostick?”

“Yeah. And then Mitch.”

“Come on. He’s in the garage.”

Alicia and I ran outside and onto Mitch’s driveway. In the garage was Dr. Kostick, who had his back turned to us. He was fiddling with one of the canisters. Suddenly, he turned around, and the look on his face told me that something had sparked.

“Girls!” he called out as he capped off the canister. “Smell this. I want to make sure this isn’t just me.”

“The outside?” I asked cautiously.

“Yes,” he said, handing me the heavy metal cylinder.

I lowered my face to the cold metal and immediately turned away. I wrinkled my nose. “Definitely that vampire coven,” I confirmed. I turned to Alicia. “I knew it was them.”

“Let me smell,” Alicia said. She took a whiff at the metal shell and nodded. “Vampires.”

“Okay,” Dr. Kostick said. “Let’s bring the news to Trey before he accuses anyone.” He grabbed the canister and left the garage.

“Man, what is with them and chlorine?” I wondered aloud. “There are faster ways to kill someone.” Alicia gave me a look and I stopped.

I paused before asking the next question that was haunting me. “You don’t think Cam was involved in this, do you?” I asked.

“I doubt it. But I don’t know, Audrey. I can’t understand how you can trust him in the first place.”