You look really great today.
Where is your cauldron and broom?
I spun around, trying to decide between playful annoyance and joy. He locked me with a wily half-smirk and bent back to his worksheet. I flipped the paper over and scrawled a message on it. I watched him read it with a faux-shocked expression. He wrote beneath my message and slipped it back to me.
I was late this morning and didn’t have time to do my hair.
Well, either that or I’m victim to some kind of witch’s curse.
Weird, huh?
I smirked at him, but when I turned back to write my own note back I gave a quick up-and-down of my outfit. It was a little proto-Goth I supposed, but the glaring pink top had to count for something, right?
Stupid boys.
I scrawled something equally inflammatory back to him on the already-crowded slip of paper. He handed it back to me, and my breath caught.
Benny is having a party at his place Friday.
You should come with me.
A party? I loved parties. And going with Zack would make it one of the better ones in recent memory. I wasn’t sure about the specifics, and I certainly couldn’t guarantee that as soon as my parents got over the
we were so worried
period and entered the
how could you
zone they wouldn’t ground me until next Christmas. It didn’t matter. I’d figure out the groveling later. I wrote an all-caps YES on the paper and settled into my worksheet with renewed, non-academically-inspired glee.
The glee disappeared with Geometry class. I sat, trying to endure the combination of soul-sucking boredom and bone-shattering cold. I flirted with the guy who sat next to me until he let me borrow the huge life vest-like parka he was wearing. It helped a little, and I even managed to ignore the fact that I looked like a bright red marshmallow in the comically sized jacket. Well, that, and the knowledge that I had just set the women’s rights movement back a good three months with a few well-timed fake laughs and arm-touches. I was ashamed, but I was warmer, so I clung to that.
When school ended the guy whose jacket I conned from him followed me half-way to my car before giving up. He started asking about my Winter Formal plans when I shoved the jacket into his hands, thanked him as sweetly as I could, and bolted to Mom’s car. I felt awful.
Girls are evil
. I admit it readily.
I slid into my mom’s car and jammed on the heater before I even looked around. Morgan was already in the car—Jacket-Guy had kept me later than I had guessed. I explained the situation to Morgan and Mom, who laughed and scolded me, respectively. I kicked the heater up to max, unsatisfied with its agonizing slowness.
“Hang on, Lulu,” Mom said, spouting a child nickname I didn’t particularly enjoy. “Relax! It’s not that cold.”
“Pssh,” I said. My teeth were rattling.
“I told you to wear something else.”
“Mom!”
We drove in relative, comfortable silence while Mom sang along to Elton John songs. We dropped off Morgan in front of her apartment/parental dungeon with a sad, reluctant wave. Mom parked, and as we climbed out of the car and scooted towards the front door of my house, trying to put as little distance between two heater-equipped areas as I could, the raw naked fear from the super-market hit me again.
I choked off a pained breath, grabbed Mom by the shoulders, and threw her down behind the hood of our car. She was fumbling with her keys when I grabbed her, and she fell to her knees with a pained yelp and flung them into the rose bushes.
Through the tiny space beneath my mom’s Green Goblin mobile, I saw the black tires of a white Lincoln turn onto our street. It rolled past my house without seeming to slow and swung left onto the street perpendicular to mine. When it was gone I jumped to my feet and ripped Mom back up to her feet.
“What the…Lucy!”
My eyes were locked in wide-eyed hysteria on the corner the Lincoln turned away on. I was frozen, and yet I couldn’t stop picturing the white Lincoln rolling backwards through the intersection. The street was empty, but my heart still raced like the devil.
“LUCY!”
I turned toward the screaming voice. The simple gesture broke the spell, and my lungs began to suck air again. Mom was the color of a freshly boiled lobster, and she cradled her badly scraped hand close to her stomach.
“Mom?”
“What the hell was
that,
Lucy? You almost broke my hand.”
She shoved her hand in front of my eyes. It didn’t look anywhere near broken, not even bruised, but it did have a nasty scrape creeping from knuckle to wrist.
“I’m…I’m sorry Mom. I just—”
I stopped. What had just happened? I didn’t exactly have a ready explanation.
“Sorry? Lucy, you just…you attacked me.”
“No, I was trying to hide you,” I said, and my voice sounded calmer than it should. I sounded crazy, even
I
knew that.
She puffed her cheeks and slammed her hands to her hips. “Hide me from what?”
“I thought—I thought I saw the car those guys had. The guys at the Set.”
Lying. Liar.
I had no idea if the guys who attacked me even had a car. But it just popped into my head—it was the only thing I had that
might
not make me look like a total raving psycho. But what if it was
them
? What if my…condition allowed me to sense my killers? Were they after me? Did they know?
“What? They had a car?”
“Uh—when they started to chase me. One ran to a car…but I think he changed his mind.”
“Lucy, are you okay?”
“Can we go inside?”
Mom frowned, clearly trying to fight between concern, anger, and worry that her daughter was a complete nutter-butter. Something won out, because she grabbed me by the elbow and rushed me into the house. It might have been none of those things, to be fair—it might have been the fear of a scene. Either way, when she shut the front door she spun the deadbolt closed without hesitation.
“Sit down, honey,” she said. “I’m gonna get you some water.”
I snatched the blanket from the couch and wrapped it around me tighter than a burial shroud.
“Mom,” I shouted. “Can you turn up the heater?”
“Sure, baby,” she said, though her voice sounded funny. Preoccupied.
In a couple minutes she brought me a glass of water, a cup of hot chocolate, and one diagonal of a turkey sandwich. She sat next to me on the couch with the other half of the sandwich on her plate and set it on the coffee table. I didn’t feel thirsty, but I quaffed the water to appease Mom. I clung to the burning mug of hot chocolate like the last train out of Hell. Though Hell was warm…
Hmm. Something to ponder.
Mom didn’t say anything for most of the night. She treated the scrape on her hand, ate her sandwich, and stared at me out of the corner of her eye. I wanted to be mad at her, but my brain was shutting down. I could feel it. The cold was pouring into every molecule of my body, and I couldn’t think beyond cold…cold…
cold
.
I skipped dinner, told my Mom I felt sick, and ran up to my room sometime before 7:30. A hot shower helped, but the chill of the water afterward shook my entire body with wracking muscle spasms. I put on two sets of long underwear, one of which I’d gotten last year from my uncle for a ski-trip to Big Bear. They were supposed to be rated for high-altitude mountain climbers. I threw my hugest pair of jeans over the long-johns, tugged on the big stupid furry boots that had been in fashion a year ago—but that I now despised—and pulled on a t-shirt, a flannel, a sweatshirt, and my giant purple parka. I even tightened the hood around my face when I jumped into bed. Sheet. Blanket. Comforter. Grandma’s quilt.
It took me half-an-hour to realize that I wasn’t warming up. I kept trying to deny it, trying to push away the ridiculous information. I knew that when you start cold and wrap yourself up it takes some time to get warm again, and so I tried to be patient and let it happen. It wasn’t happening. I waited another hour, curling my toes, rubbing my arms. I wasn’t too proud to get up, dig through my hope chest, and tug on a giant pair of mittens I’d had since I was nine-years-old.
An hour later, I took another hot shower. When I crawled back into bed, fully swathed in my layers of clothing, I was even colder.
Two hours later, I was on the edge of hysteria.
I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I’d grown deaf to the non-stop rattling of my teeth in my head. My hands, tucked between my frozen knees, creaked with agony. Stinging needles of pain streaked through my nose and my ears. My cheeks felt like they’d been burned.
I knew I should tell my mom. I knew I should go to the hospital. This wasn’t cold anymore—this was lethal. I knew if I did nothing I would die, and I knew that without the barest hint of hesitation.
But why didn’t I go downstairs and tell her? Why didn’t I scream for Dad?
I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to think it.
My phone buzzed on my nightstand. It took more effort than I would have guessed to palm the tiny phone with my mittened hands. I started laughing at the absurdity of it, but the ragged edge in my laughter made me clamp my mouth shut almost immediately.
Get a grip, Luce. You’re losing it.
I turned the phone toward me—a text message from a number I didn’t recognize.
I frowned. I opened the message.
You’re Not Wrong, Luce.
I Hear the Beach is Nice This Time of Year.
And here we are. You have now reached cruising altitude and may unbuckle your seat belts and move around the cabin. Please remember that there is no in-flight movie, and there’s a good chance the pilot took the only parachute with him on his way out the hatch.
I dropped the phone on the bed.
When I breathed out, a white plume of frost twisted out of my mouth and floated away on unseen breezes.
“Fine,” I said, and lay back on the pillow.
The second I shut my eyes to try to sleep, I heard the waves.
No pop. No snap. No dramatic fade-up. Just nothing, and then waves. Like someone had changed channels.
I opened my eyes.
I noticed two things immediately. One, I wasn’t cold anymore. I wasn’t warm, either, but the icy ache began to slide out of my muscles the moment I opened my eyes. The second thing I noticed was that I wasn’t alone anymore.
Chapter Seven
One-Sided Conversations
I tried to scream, but he didn’t let me.
His hand, burning with feverish heat, clamped over my mouth and cut off the tiny squeak I’d managed to conjure. He pushed me down into the sand, shoved his face into mine, and used his other hand to make the universal
shush
gesture with his index finger.
I hadn’t had much time to get a good look at him. When I’d opened my eyes, he’d been a shadow crouched against the grey horizon, a black hulk of lanky limbs. He’d sprung at me with blinding speed, and the strength in those long skinny arms was incredible. I wasn’t weak, but he pinned me with one hand without effort.
Still, as I looked up at him and his shush finger, pressed tightly against his lips, I could see the planes of his face, even in the dim of the grey sky. They weren’t twisted in some trollish look of rage or slicked into the lines of a hungry predator. In fact, he looked determined more than anything, or cautious even. It was hard to tell his age in the dark, but the gray of his shaggy hair told me he wasn’t young. His eyes shot away from my face, looking over me, toward where I knew the hill to be.
I stopped struggling. It could have been a ruse, but he didn’t look like he was attacking me. I think he just wanted me to shut the hell up. So I did. I waited, watching his eyes scan the horizon. Finally, he leaned back, looked me up and down, and pulled his hand away from my mouth.
I opened my mouth, slowly, and pointed one finger toward my face. He nodded, but held his hand out and made a gesture. He pinched an inch of air between his index finger and his thumb. I nodded at that.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He laughed—I guess I caught him off-guard. His body shook with laughter, and his face contorted into a big friendly grin, but he made no noise. When his mirth had stilled, he made the see-saw
doing okay
motion.
“What—?” I said, and looked behind me, where he had been looking. Just a hill. Now, anyway.
When I looked back, he’d moved a few feet away from me, and I got a better look at him. His face reminded me of my Grandpa, long and narrow and creased with wrinkles, but he had round boyish eyes. His hair, shaggy for an old guy, hung around his ears. It didn’t look unhealthy—in fact, except for a slight thinness, he wasn’t balding at all. He looked a well-kept sixty-or-seventy years old, but he moved like a little boy.
An old-style brown tweed suit clung to him, and it looked well-tailored if a little worn. Instead of a tie, a bright red scarf wrapped his neck and hung lazily across one shoulder. He didn’t stand up, but remained in what almost looked like a football-hike crouch. Three of his fingers even touched the sand just in front of him.
“What was there?” I asked.
The old man made a pondering face. He leaned back on his haunches, freed up his hands, and opened and closed them in a slow rhythmic pulsing. It didn’t look that different from a hula dancer’s gestures. I shook my head.
“Can you talk?”
The old man shook with another silent chuckle and waved his hand in the
that’s ridiculous
gesture, like he was swatting invisible flies. I frowned, but then shrugged.
“Am I dead?”
It just popped in my head—the question that broke every unwritten rule I’d built since the attack. Suddenly I didn’t care about stupid rules. I hadn’t talked to anyone about it, and I could feel a torrent of word-vomit climbing up my throat.