Delirious: 60

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Shane came to Girl's room to make sense of what she had read. Despite the degree to which she was ignored, she could find only trivia about Kevin Hawkes. She was not surprised to discover that he dropped out last semester. He had been on an athletic scholarship that rivaled Shane's academic one. Despite the stereotype Shane nurtured, he made good grades. If, as Eliot told her, Kevin had not been naturally bright, he either put forth more effort than she could muster or had dirt on just about everyone who counted.

She found no smoking gun, missing piece of the puzzle, other shoe dropping or any other cliché that would meaningfully unite Kevin and Gabe. She knew she couldn't outright ask Gabe if he knew Kevin. She even tried convincing herself, entirely as a mental exercise, that Eliot had been mistaken. A trip through old copies of The Phoenix proved that the resemblance was beyond coincidence. The fading monotone pictures may have well shown Gabe dribbling a basketball.

The games were videotaped for posterity, though the library records showed sporadic and steadily tapering interest in the recordings. Shane had little trouble in finding what she needed. In the editing lab of the communications lab, she played the games, slowing the action when Kevin came near the camera. The boy on the screen appeared lively and happy, very young. Gabe could pass for his older, jaded brother, but Shane could not imagine that they were the same person. Besides, Gabe had been around longer than Kevin had been alive. It didn't add up no matter how Shane reconstructed it.

As Shane went over the possibilities yet again with Girl to try to find a way this new hitch made sense, she noticed Girl's furtive eyes watching her. These same eyes that wore lust and affection, laziness and fervor, carried this secret badly. Shane kept speaking, the words queued to be released automatically, but watched Girl carefully to deduce her intentions. She drank her tea slowly and deliberately, trying to seem casual and unassuming. And, just as she was about to relax her guard and decide she was being paranoid, she saw it and rose from the floor. "I'm going to the bathroom. When I come back, will you be done trying to slip whatever you have into my tea?"

Girl froze in her fidgeting with her bell sleeves. She looked not quite trapped or guilty, but relieved of the burden of being otherwise.

"It's okay," Shane assured her. "Whatever you are trying to do, you'll do it anyway, right? When I'm not looking, when I sleep, you'll put something on my tongue. So, my options are to stop drinking, tape my mouth shut and wither away in my remaining time or to trust it is in my best interests to play along. So, I'd rather speed the process along if you don't mind." With this, Shane kissed Girl on the forehead and walked from the room. She didn't need to go to the bathroom, but went through the motions obligingly not merely for the benefit of Girl, but because it felt like the only thing to do. To sit and read the blank wall, hungry for a message and left unsatisfied. As she washed her hands with the hottest water, the gurgling of the water swallowed by the drain and the fizzing of her skin restoring, she stared at her face in the mirror and saw the waves and ripples of the daemonic reflected.

Shane returned to the table, looking in vain into Girl's unflinching, violet eyes for confirmation. She picked the mug up and swallowed it in one long gulp, feeling as though she hadn't tasted liquid in days. She neither smelled nor tasted it, nor did she care to. When the mug emptied entirely, she placed it back in the ring it made on the tabletop and folded her hands. She expected a lurch in her gut or the world to flicker and fade. Instead, she got, "Goodnight, Sha…"

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