Chapter 76: Mandi’s Care

GEORGIA

She shows up with soup and an anger I didn’t know she had.

The door bangs open without a knock, exactly the way it always does when Mandi’s on the other side of it.

I’ve been staring at my phone for the better part of an hour. The screen is dark now, but I can still hear that automated voice in my head, replaying on a loop I can’t seem to shut off.

*The number you have dialed is no longer in service.*

Calm. Polite. Completely ridiculous considering what had happened right before it. I must have listened to that recording a dozen times, as if repetition might change the words, might make Whitfield’s voice come back instead.

My knee throbs beneath the brace, keeping time with my heartbeat, a dull metronome that never lets me forget.

Mandi walks in carrying a plastic container with both hands. Steam curls from beneath the lid, and for a second, the smell of something warm and real cuts through the antiseptic staleness of my room.

"I heard you didn’t eat dinner," she announces, her voice clipped and purposeful.

She sets the container on my nightstand hard enough to make the lamp rattle.

"So I stole this from the kitchen staff, who love me, by the way, and you’re going to eat every bite while I supervise. Apparently, somebody around here has to take care of you."

"Mandi, I’m fine."

"You are not fine."

She doesn’t even let me finish. Her voice is sharp. Not dramatic. Not playful. Actually angry, in a way that makes me sit up a little straighter, startled by the force of it.

"You’re limping around on a cane, skipping meals, and disappearing into your own head every five minutes. I’m not fine watching that happen."

I don’t argue. Mostly because I’m too tired, and partly because some small, guarded part of me is grateful someone noticed.

I pull the lid off the container, and the smell hits me immediately. Chicken. Rice. Herbs. Warm food that doesn’t taste like it came from a dining hall where everything has been sitting under a heat lamp since noon.

My stomach cramps, sudden and sharp.

Apparently, I am much hungrier than I thought. I haven’t eaten since a granola bar at lunch, and my body seems to remember that fact all at once.

"Okay," I mumble, picking up the spoon.

Mandi drops onto the end of my bed, careful to keep away from my injured leg. Then she grabs the blanket hanging over the footboard and starts folding it, her movements quick and unnecessary.

I watch her for a second.

She unfolds it.

Folds it again.

Then refolds the same section, as though the fabric might yield some answer if she just gets the corners right.

"How’s the knee today?" she asks without looking at me.

"Same as yesterday. Same as the day before that."

I take a bite. It’s really good, rich and warm in a way that almost makes my eyes sting, which is stupid, but I let it happen anyway.

I hate that I’m surprised.

"Thank you for this."

"Of course."

Her hands keep moving, restless, like they need somewhere to put all that nervous energy.

"You know I’d do anything for you, right?" she asks, still focused on the blanket. "Rides to appointments. Notes from class. Someone to yell at the dining hall staff if they ever try to give you cold soup again."

"I know."

I glance at her. She’s tense. Not regular Mandi tense, either, not the kind that comes from gossip or a bad grade. Her shoulders are practically up around her ears, and every few seconds her eyes flick toward my brace before quickly moving away, like she can’t stand to look at it for too long.

"Mandi?"

She keeps folding.

"Are you okay?"

"Me? I’m great."

The answer comes too fast, brittle at the edges.

"I’m not the one with a busted knee."

"That’s not what I asked."

She finally pauses, her fingers hovering mid-fold.

Her fingers press against the blanket, smoothing out a wrinkle that isn’t there, over and over, like the repetition might steady her.

"I just hate seeing you like this," she says, her voice quieter now, stripped of its earlier bravado.

"You worked so hard for that program. You were so happy right before. I could see it."

Her hands stop completely.

"And then..."

I wait, holding my breath without meaning to.

"And then what?"

I lean forward slightly, immediately regretting it when pain pulls through my knee, sharp enough to make me suck in a breath.

Mandi looks down, guilt flickering across her face before she can smooth it away.

"Nothing. Never mind."

She picks up the blanket again. This time, she folds faster, like speed might outrun whatever she almost said.

I let it go. For about twenty minutes, I let it go, watching her chatter and gesture, grateful for the distraction even as some small part of me keeps turning the moment over.

I’m scraping the last of the soup from the bottom of the container when Mandi launches into a story about a disastrous student council meeting. She’s animated again, waving one hand around as she describes somebody arguing over decorations for an event, her voice rising and falling with the kind of energy that used to feel effortless between us.

For a minute, she almost sounds normal.

Then she says, "And then I thought about the fall, and how it just doesn’t even make sense that..."

She stops. Again. The word hangs unfinished in the air between us, heavier than anything she’s actually said.

I lower my spoon.

"Mandi."

She closes her mouth.

"You keep doing that."

Her eyes stay on the blanket, refusing to meet mine.

"Doing what?"

"Starting to say something about the fall and then stopping."

Nothing.

The blanket sits forgotten in her lap. She won’t look at me. Instead, she stares at the wall across the room, her jaw tight, her whole body gone rigid in a way that makes my pulse pick up.

I’ve seen that expression before.

On Liam.

On the twins.

On other people here.

The second a conversation gets too close to whatever Rosethorne doesn’t want us knowing, everyone suddenly remembers how to shut up, like some invisible hand reaches into their throats and closes around the words.

My mind goes back to the technician. His voice dropping when I said sabotage. The hesitation. The warning. Then the call cutting off in the middle of a sentence.

Minutes later, his number was gone.

Not unanswered.

Gone.

And now Mandi is sitting on my bed, refusing to finish a sentence about my fall, her hands frozen around a blanket she’s folded a dozen times already.

I look at her, and something in my chest tightens, half fear, half something closer to grief.

"You don’t think it was an accident either, do you?"

Her hands stop. Completely.

She doesn’t answer.

I wait. Ten seconds. Twenty. The silence feels enormous, pressing against the walls of the room.

She keeps staring at the blanket, and I watch her throat move as she swallows, as if she’s holding something back by physical force.

The silence stretches between us until I realize I already have my answer.

Finally, she looks up, her eyes bright with something that might be fear or might be sorrow.

"Eat your soup."

Her voice is low. Final. Like a door closing gently instead of slamming.

I stare at her, my spoon forgotten in my hand.

It isn’t a no.