When the cab pulls up, Dawn leaves the taxi without even waiting for any change. She runs for her building, desperate to make it to her room before she breaks into sobs.
She gets as far as her floor. Valryn is returning from the soda machine with her standard Diet Cherry Coke, and by then Dawn is crying so hard she can't even form words. She wants Valryn to leave her alone, but she follows to Dawn's room and tries to tease out her story.
"Is it this Ethan? He's just a creep, forget about him."
"You don't know a fucking thing about it." This, at least, she manages to make comprehensible. "Go away."
But Valryn stays, trying to make her see reason. She doesn't leave until Dawn rises and shoves her out the door.
She sobs until her head throbs and her breath hitches uselessly. For the first time in days she falls asleep before three or four. For the first time in years she dreams about Glory.
Well, not Glory, but the tower. The sway of it, cobbled together by madmen and women. The chill of the wind up there, or maybe it was just the fear that made her shiver so violently. In the dream, blood wells and drips from her forearms where Doc sliced her skin. Shallow cuts, shallow cuts. The blood vanishes into thin air, but doesn't. It's like acid, eating away at this dimension. Each drop of blood creates a little hole in the fabric of the universe, and soon Dawn is staring at an opening the size of a bucket, seething and edged with a brimstony red.
She gazes at it and her eyes fill with tears. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.
***
Dawn decides she owes herself a day to stay curled under the covers and cry. The sobs have given way to quieter weeping that produces a kind of altered state as the day wears on. It's almost comforting.
Valryn checks on her in the late afternoon. Dawn doesn't throw her out, but she doesn't respond, either. She wraps herself in her comforter and weeps through Val's pep talk, and then her annoyed lecture. "What's the matter with you? You're making yourself sick over some stupid guy who doesn't even notice you." At last she leaves and Dawn locks the door behind her, curling back up in bed.
She dreams again about the tower. The seething tear in the universe is bigger now, and she wills herself to bleed faster, open it wider. When it looks large enough, she opens her arms in a kind of embrace and dives into it.
But something goes wrong and the opening snaps shut on her as she's halfway through. She's suspended between dimensions, red hot blades slicing through her where the portal has closed on her.
Gasping, she wakes, bolting upright in bed.
Her skin feels like it's on fire.
***
Val stops by to see if she's going to their first class, finds her pacing her room. The pain is all Dawn can think about.
"I told you you were going to--"
"Just shut it," Dawn snaps.
"Tell me what's wrong."
"Everything. My head feels like it's full of broken glass, and my skin hurts."
"You think maybe you have shingles?" She tries to lift Dawn's oversized tee.
Dawn grabs at Valryn's wrist. "Don't. The air hurts it worse. I don't have a rash or anything."
"Get your coat and boots. I'm taking you to the clinic."
"I'm in my pajamas."
"Like half your classmates don't wear theirs to class. C'mon."
Valryn bundles her into her coat and marches her across campus to the clinic. While they walk Val calls their prof and makes excuses for them both. "I don't feel right just leaving her there. When I'm sure she's okay I'll check in for the assignment." She snaps her phone shut. "See? Easy."
Nothing seems easy but this. Letting someone else decide what must be done and letting them do it. She even lets Val push the elevator buttons to get to the fifth floor clinic, lets her talk to the receptionist and fill out the paperwork while Dawn sits huddled in her coat.
Though Val tries to impress on the staff that things are dire, it still takes more than an hour to call her in. Actually, she leaves it up to Val to track how long they wait, too; she only knows because every fifteen minutes Val stomps up to the desk and says how long it's been.
After the third time check, she leans her head on Val's shoulder and tells her about Ethan. The whole story.
"He sounds like less of a creep than I've been thinking," Valryn grudgingly admits.
"I could stand it if he were a little less honorable," Dawn retorts.
"Don't say that."
"Why is it okay to go out with guys my age who want to ram their tongues down my throat five minutes after they meet me, but a man who's older than me is automatically a creep? He's been nothing but concerned about my feelings and sense of safety."
She doesn't get an answer to that, because a nurse finally calls her into an exam room. Valryn stays in the waiting room with a battered People.
They poke and prod and stare down her throat, but they can't find anything wrong with her. They sell her a bottle of generic Tylenol for the pain and send her off.
Val walks her home and leaves her with orders to sleep, but as soon as she goes, Dawn pulls on a sweater and jeans and heads for the bookstore. The walk there feels miles longer than two days ago. She pauses just outside to catch her breath and summon as much calm as she can.
When she steps inside the buzz feels stronger -- that sense of power she'd gotten the first time she came here. It reduces the pain in her head and her skin to mere background noise. Though she's grateful for the relief, it also puts her on guard. What would Giles say about a place like this? Why is she in tune with this energy now, after so many years of registering nothing?
Sebastian emerges from the curtained back room, at first delighted to see her, then reluctant to give up the name of Ethan's hotel. She says somehow she ended up with an envelope with his name on it that she needs to return to him. Dawn's not sure how believable her story is, but it was the best she could come up with on the walk over.
Sebastian says he'd be happy to see that the envelope is returned to Ethan, but Dawn shakes her head. "I wouldn't feel right. I mean, he trusts you so I do, but I just wouldn't feel right unless I put it in his hands myself."
The shopkeeper chews his lip, considering. Dawn takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. The feeling of power here, of ancient mysteries, is too much for her. It grates against raw nerves, gathers in her throat until she feels she can barely breathe. She wants to reach across the counter and grab him by the shirt front.
"This is against my strict policy," Sebastian says. "But since he brought you here and introduced you as a friend, I'll make an exception." He produces a slip of paper from under the counter and writes in excruciatingly slow but perfect penmanship, while Dawn entertains thoughts about pulling his heart from his chest.
"It's just four blocks from here," he says as he offers the slip, and begins to launch into fastidious directions.
She has to get out. Dawn snatches the slip from his fingers and thanks him profusely, then turns and flees.
She knows the name of the hotel. It's not the most fashionable place, not anymore, but it's grand and expensive. Now and again when she and her friends feel like playing grown-up, they break out the panyhose (or ties) and go for one or two pricey drinks.
Everything rebounds on her worse now on the walk to his hotel: her pain, her misery. Dawn bypasses the front desk and goes straight to the gleaming brass elevators, tears starting to flow again.
By the time she reaches Ethan's door, her breath is hitching again. There's no answer to her knock, and she raises her hand again, pounding on the dark wood with the side of her fist. For some crazy reason she thinks of first grade, how Mrs. Herschel taught her to make seahorses by pressing the side of her curled fist into fingerpaint, then onto the paper. She keeps up the pounding until she finally hears the snick of the lock and the door opens a few inches.
"Dawn," Ethan says.
She tries for a deep breath, but the sound of snuffling snot wrecks any dignity she thought that might provide. "You are stupid and heartless."