After what felt like an eternity, the white-thing turned and disappeared over the sand ridge.
I counted to one-hundred, and then I stood up.
Empty again. Just a dead highway snaking through a grey wasteland.
I crossed the center divider and ran across the blacktop. I had to know if it was gone. I jumped over the guard rail and ran full tilt up the gravel and sand slope, ignoring the glass-grinding scream in my ankle.
A boom. The ground jerked beneath me and threw me onto my butt.
“What the hell?” I said.
Again, the not-an-echo. Just muffled silence.
I half-ran half-slid down the rest of the sandy hill until I found my bare feet slapping the wet charcoal-colored sand. I stopped at the edge, the first tickle of frigid water kissing my toes. I bent over and stretched my fingers toward the tide.
The ocean pulled away from me, as if taking a breath. A wave gathered along the breakers and swung toward the shore. It peaked long before reaching me, spilling out across the beach and pushing a foot of water towards my legs. It touched my hand first, then sluiced over my battered ankle and up to my knees.
It could have been acid.
The wave of searing agony, so powerful and unexpected, imparted by the water’s touch, locked my entire body. Paralyzed me, freezing me helpless and screaming as the angry tide slid up to my waist, then to my neck. My muscles wouldn’t respond, and I realized with deep horror that my legs couldn’t withstand the assault. My knees buckled, plunging my face into the scalding liquid. It flooded up my nostrils, rushed into my shrieking mouth…
oh God…oh God…
The world went black.
Chapter Five
Welcome Back
The sound cut out. The hollow hiss of an open microphone with no one behind it.
Lights flickered. My eyes didn’t have to open—they already were. But they sort of turned on again. The blackness disappeared like I’d flipped a switch.
An acoustic ceiling above me.The flash of TV-light.
Then touch—A hard floor beneath me. Moisture.
Sound—A bad sitcom, an aghast 20-something rambling.The gentle click of my mother’s grandfather clock. The rattle-clank noise of pots and pans.
Smell—Garlic. Baked chicken, a single open beer, roasted tomatoes. More than I should smell, I realized. The reality ship had thrown me overboard, and dragged me back onto the deck with equal violence. I gasped for breath, my tongue still wet with salt water.
I looked down. My clothes were soaked through, and the barely-decent date attire was now entirely not-decent. Scandalous, even. Though my wet-rat look was less noticeable than the fact that I was drenched in sea water. A small pool of it collected on the floor beneath me. The idea of it all being a dream died in a briny grave.
“Shit,” I whispered. I didn’t have a better word. I was becoming quite the little sailor.
“Luce?”
Mom
. I rolled to my knees to look over the couch. I wasn’t unaware of how similar my all-fours, soggy, terror-filled position was from just moments ago on the cold empty highway, hiding from the White-Thing. I didn’t enjoy the reminder.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m gonna go change. And shower.”
“Good idea,” Mom said, her voice drifting in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s in thirty.”
“Gotcha,” I said, hoping to disguise my panic. “Won’t take long.”
I glanced around, then back down at the spreading pool of saltwater on the living room floor. I felt a strange sense of vertigo—the room stretched out like taffy. The Persian-looking gold and red throw rug swirled in strange patterns. I closed my eyes and waited for the dizziness to pass. I half-expected the water to be gone when my eyes popped open again.
No such luck. The pool, spreading across the hard-wood floor, began to kiss the tassels of the rug. I turned around, searching for something, anything. My grandma’s hand-sewn gold afghan stretched across the back of the couch.
Sorry, Grandma.
I tugged it off the couch and tried to soak up the pool as best I could. It wasn’t terribly absorbent, but after enough tries it did the job.
The floor still shined, but the majority of the water clung to the blanket. I spun the afghan into a ball, clutched it tight to me to minimize dripping, and shuffled down the hall. My weakened ankle almost gave out as I ran up the stairs, but I threw myself up the final steps to the top landing. I half-crawled, half-scrambled to my room, ripped open the door, and slammed it behind me.
I took a huge breath. My lungs stretched and creaked and it felt like my ribs would pop.
In my bathroom, I tossed the afghan in the sink and pushed it down until it was mostly wrung-out. The grey, briny water smelled just like the ocean in the Not-A-Dream.
I stripped out of the soaking, torn clothes I had been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours. I’d been chased, shot, lost, and drowned in them, but I still couldn’t bring myself to toss them in the trash.
I wrung everything out, soaked it in lilac moisturizing body wash, and scrubbed the bejeezus out of it. The beach stink was strong, but a few soaks and scrubs later and it was barely noticeable. I hung the outfit and the blanket from the hooks on my door and took a shower.
I’d never taken a better shower. When I came out of it, my cherry-red skin felt amazing, and my muscles were warm putty. I dried off, blow-dried my hair, and wrapped myself in my fluffy orange bathrobe. I walked into my fluffy orange sandals and dived across my bed.
Twenty-minutes later, drifting at the edge of consciousness, wrapped in the warm cocoon of my bathrobe and my covers, I heard my door rattle in its frame. I perked up, and my eyes began to focus.
“Luce?”
“Come in.”
Mom slid the door open, wearing a small, understanding smile.
“Feel better?”
“Loads,” I said. “Dinner?”
“Yup.”
She didn’t move though, and her hand still gripped my door handle with white-knuckled strength. I cocked my head and sat up slowly. I wanted to ask her if everything was okay, but her face answered the question for me.
Her eyes turned down, but I could see the crystal sheen of tears there. She took a breath that sounded like canvas ripping. The door slammed into the wall as she released it without thinking, and she flashed across the room. Her arms wrapped around me, and she tugged me to my feet.
“Oh God, Lucy,” she sobbed, her voice broken. “Oh God, I thought… We all thought… Oh God.”
My arms hung at my sides, even as she pythoned me and drew me in. She smelled like a mixture of strawberries and smoke—not the smoke of the beach fires, the smoke of cigarettes. Mom hadn’t smoked in ten years, and Dad had never smoked. Her head trembled against my chest, and her body convulsed with sobs.
That’s when I knew something was wrong. Right then, I knew something inside of me had broken. I’d never seen my mom this emotional—it should have torn me apart, I realized. I could picture me, just as I was, a bright orange-terry cloth dolly weeping in her arms, overcome just like she was. Scooped up in the wave of relief beside her. And part of me felt relief, and part of me felt tearful. But nothing came. Not even numbness—the sense of pain behind a wall. There was no wall, and the pain wasn’t real. Wasn’t pain.
She looked up at me.
“I can’t believe you’re safe.”
I offered only a weak smile. I didn’t disagree.
Her tears spilled over onto her cheeks, little streaks illuminated by the crystal blue of her eyes. My mom was prettier than me—not cuter, but prettier. More delicate. I didn’t realize how delicate until now.
I'd always seen her as being so strong, as knowing everything and having every answer. Learning she was human after all didn’t give me any sense of comfort or enlightenment. It made me feel…empty.
Lonely.
I opened my mouth and sucked in a harsh breath. A thin, almost invisible stream of white smoke whirled out from between my mother’s pursed lips and sucked up my mouth and nostrils. A surge of electricity hit me and threw my head back. My heartbeat doubled, and I felt my muscles tense and release. Not a spasm, but sudden energy.
Like biting down on aluminum foil soaked in caffeine.
A jumble of images hit me, things I’d never experienced—the dial pad on a phone, shaking and blurry, through a curtain of tears. A hunger, like I’d forgotten to eat in the shuffle of Lucy’s disappearance. No, not “I.”
She
. Mom. I tried to pull myself out of the vision, to distinguish my memories from hers, but the tide was too strong. A green plastic basket full of red, the only thing I didn’t have to cook.
I snapped my mouth closed, but the taste of strawberries still burned on my tongue. Fresh strawberries, too, like I’d just eaten a whole basket. But I,
me
, Lucy, hadn’t eaten anything. The sensation of having just popped a strawberry into my mouth was overwhelming.
I opened my eyes and looked back down. My mom’s eyes were closed, like she was sleeping, but she still sat stock-straight, and her face was white. Her lip twitched, and tiny muscle spasms shook her shoulders in little jerks.
I grabbed her hands and tugged at her arms.
“Mom! Mom!”
I squeezed as hard as I could and jerked like I’d pull her shoulders out. She didn’t move—she didn’t open her eyes.
“Mom!”
I reeled back and slapped her.
Her eyes popped open. My hand glowed with pain.
“Luce?”
She reached up, rubbing the red mark spreading across her cheek.
“Mom, you…you drifted out,” I said. “I thought something had happened.”
“No…” she said. “I didn’t, did I?”
I nodded too fast. I was just glad to see her awake and aware.
“Yeah.” I tried to laugh. “Maybe Mommy needs a nap, too.”
Mom looked down at herself, confusion fighting shock. She shook her head and quirked a tiny smile.
“I didn’t sleep very much.”
I believed her. The dark circles under her eyes would have looked at home on a runaway heroin addict. I squeezed her shoulder, feeling a buildup of that manic energy I’d stolen from her.
Stolen? Eaten?
I closed my eyes and pinched those thoughts off.
I hadn’t stolen anything. I was tired. She was tired. I’d spent a long dream—You. Weren’t.
Dreaming
—in a far off, very boring land severely lacking in color palette. And now I was hallucinating.
Considering the day I’d had, I’d be surprised if I
wasn’t
hallucinating.
“Dinner?” I asked.
“Dinner,” Mom echoed, and untangled herself from me. She composed herself quickly. “Get dressed like a human, Lucy.”
I smiled wide and tugged at the flat, sloping lapels of my orange fuzzy robe.
“Humans wear bathrobes.”
She flashed me a sour look and left my room. I was bopping, and I felt light, almost bouncy as I danced around my room. I could have leaped on my bed and sang into my hairbrush with that energy, but then I’d have to kick my own ass.
Hey, third curse word.
I raced down the hallway, and the only thing stopping me was my violent collision with Dad’s chest.
“Hey, Dad.”
My dad wasn’t a little guy, and the sharp set of his lantern jaw would’ve normally made me curl up if I wasn’t jiving off the odd bubble of energy.
“Lucy,” Dad said. “What’s going on?”
I frowned, “What?”
“Don’t ‘what’ me,” he said, and I stood up straighter. “You’ve slept the whole day away. You’re acting strangely. Your friends spent all night out looking for you, and so have I. Have you called anyone? Have you thanked anyone? Do you even care?”
“What?”
“Are you hearing okay, Lucy? And let’s not forget that I know you helped Morgan sneak out, and that I know you conned Daphne into sneaking into your room and hiding out. What were you thinking, Lucy?”
“What was I
thinking
?” I repeated.
No hug, no kiss, no ‘everything is okay, baby?’
I drew myself up.
“I’m sorry,
Dad
,” I said. “Did my near-death experience inconvenience you?”
He drew up even taller, and his shoulders squared off.
Here we go, dummy. Enjoy.
“Lucy,” he said. “This isn’t about what…happened. This is about—”
“What did happen, Dad?” I said.
Shut up, stupid. Shut up
. “Please tell me. Tell me what happened, and how I should feel.”
“Lucy!”
“No, I’d love to hear it,” I said. My traitor’s tongue was having a fine night. “What are you worried about, Dad? Don’t believe me? Think Daddy’s Little Girl was out for kicks? Yeah, maybe I asked a group of guys to whip out a gun and—”
“LUCY!” He shouted. His voice actually made me stumble.
“Shut your mouth and go to your room. Now.”
Something like electricity crackled along my fingers, and bright spots of white wheeled behind my eyes. Anger pressed down on my chest, but my genuine fear of my enraged father buttoned my lips up. Finally.
“Can I have dinner?”
The words snapped like dry branches. His nostrils flared, and he sucked in air in such big gulps I could only imagine he was storing oxygen for the winter.
“I’ll have your mother bring it up,” he said. “You can stay there for the rest of the night, please.”
“Can I call—?”
“You can be quiet. Go to your room.”
I made a growling-squeak sound in my throat, turned, and went in my room. The slamming of the door in his face completed the painfully cliché moment. My hand tightened into a fist, and I hammer-punched the top of my desk. My monitor and the little metal tin of pencils bounced and jangled. Not good enough.
I grabbed my desk chair and flipped it across the room. It smashed the wall with a healthy thunk. Better.
I slumped down on the ground next to my bed and tucked my knees up against my chest. My arms slid under my knees, and I sat there for a long time. I thought about Zack and Morgan, Daphne and Wanda, Benny and everyone all out scouring the Set for me. I thought of my dad, terrified, filled with unusable protective fury. Of my Mom, doing her best to hold him together.