"Isa-chan, I mean Isobel, I just call her Isa-chan, you know..."
"It's all right," said Meredith. "Just say what comes naturally. Go on."
"Well, Isa-chan only has her grandma, and Grandma Saitou doesn't even come downstairs much. I made her lunch a while ago and she thought I was - Isobel's father. She gets...confused."
Meredith glanced at Bonnie, and said, "And Isobel? Is she confused, too?"
Jim shut his eyes, looking utterly miserable. "I wish you'd go in and, well, just talk to her."
Bonnie's bad feeling was only getting worse. She really couldn't stand another scare like the one at Caroline's house - and she certainly didn't have the strength to Call again, even if Damon weren't in a hurry to get somewhere.
But Meredith knew all this, and Meredith was giving her the sort of look that couldn't be denied. It also promised that Meredith would protect Bonnie, no matter what.
"Is she hurting anybody? Isobel?" Bonnie heard herself ask as they crossed through the kitchen and toward a bedroom at the end of the hallway.
She could hardly hear Jim's whispered, "Yeah."
And then, as Bonnie groaned internally, he added, "Herself."
Isobel's room was just what you'd expect from a quiet and studious girl. At least one side was. The other side looked as if a tidal wave had picked everything up and thrown it down again randomly. Isobel was sitting in the middle of this mess like a spider on a web.
But that wasn't what made Bonnie's gut churn. It was what Isobel was doing. She had laid out beside her what looked a lot like Mrs. Flowers' kit for cleaning out wounds, but she wasn't healing anything.
She was piercing herself.
She had already done her lip, her nose, one eyebrow, and her ears, many times. Blood was dripping from all these places, dripping and falling onto the unmade sheets of her bed. Bonnie saw all that as Isobel looked up at them with a frown, except that the frown was only half there. On the pierced side, the eyebrow didn't move at all.
Her aura was shattered orange with black lashings through it.
Bonnie knew, all at once, that she was going to be sick. She knew it with the deep knowledge that overcame all embarrassment and which sent her flying to a wastebasket she didn't even remember seeing. Thank God, it had a white plastic bag lining it, she thought, and then she was completely occupied for a few minutes.
Her ears recorded a voice, even as she was thinking she was glad she hadn't had lunch.
"My God,are you crazy ? Isobel, what have you done to yourself? Don't you know the kind of infections you can get...the veins you can hit...the muscles you can paralyze...? I think you've already pierced the muscle in your eyebrow - and you shouldn't still be bleeding unless you've hit veins or arteries."
Bonnie retched dryly into the wastebasket, and spat.
And just then she heard a meaty thud.
She looked up, half knowing what she would see. But it still was a shock. Meredith was doubled over from what must have been a punch in the stomach.
The next thing Bonnie knew, she was beside Meredith. "Oh, my God, did shestab you?" A stab wound...deep enough into the abdomen...
Meredith clearly couldn't get her breath. From somewhere a bit of advice from her sister Mary, the nurse, floated into Bonnie's mind.
Bonnie pounded with both fists on Meredith's back, and suddenly Meredith took a huge gulp of air.
"Thanks," she was saying weakly, but Bonnie was already dragging her away, away from the laughing Isobel and a collection of the world's longest nails and the rubbing alcohol and other things that she had on a breakfast tray beside her.
Bonnie got to the door and almost collided with Jim, who had a wet washcloth in his hand. For her, she supposed. Or maybe for Isobel. All Bonnie was interested in was making Meredith pull up her top to make absolutely, positively sure that there were no holes in her.
"I got it - out of her hand - before she punched me," Meredith said, still breathing painfully as Bonnie anxiously scanned the area above her low-rise jeans. "I'll have a bruise, that's all."
"She hit you, too?" Jim said in dismay. Except that he didn't say it. He whispered it.
You poor guy, Bonnie thought, finally satisfied that Meredith wasn't perforated. What with Caroline and your sister Tami and your girlfriend, you don't have the first idea of what's going on. How could you?
And if we told you, you'd just think we were two more crazy girls.
"Jimmy, youhave to call Dr. Alpert right away, and then I think they're going to have to go to the hospital in Ridgemont. Isobel's already done permanent damage to herself - God knows how much.All those piercings are almost certainly going to be infected. When did she start this?"
"Um, well...she first started acting weird after Caroline came to see her."
"Caroline!" Bonnie blurted, confused. "Was she crawling?"
Jim gave her a look. "Huh?"
"Never mind Bonnie; she was joking," Meredith said easily. "Jimmy, you don't have to tell us about Caroline if you don't want to. We - well, we know she was over at your house."
"Doeseverybody know?" Jim asked miserably.
"No. Just Matt, and he only told us so that somebody could go check on your little sister."
Jim looked guilty and stricken at once. The words poured out of him as if they'd been bottled up and now the cork was out of the bottle.
"I don't know what's going on anymore. All I can tell you is what happened. It was a couple days ago - late evening," Jim said. "Caroline came over, and - I mean, I never even had a crush on her. It's like, sure, she's good-looking, and my parents were away and all, but I never thought I was the kind of guy..."