Adrian observed, passive.
It felt like hours later when I finally opened my eyes. I didn’t just snap awake out of the nightmare, it was like I had to drag myself up through layers of heavy, damp curtains. When I could, I sat up quickly and ripped the covers off, feeling my neck.
It was whole, just like it should be.
I reached over to my nightstand and snatched my phone, searching through the contacts with shaking hands until I found the number I was looking for, actually dropping the phone once before getting it successfully to my ear. It picked up on the third ring.
“Hello?” Adrian answered, sounding groggy.
“Adrian?” I was shaking too badly to get anything else out.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “Are you all right?”
I tried to collect myself. “I’m sorry,” I said, voice trembling. “I had to make sure.”
“Make sure of what? Caitlin, did something happen? Are you okay?”
“No,” I managed to get out. “I just … I had a nightmare.”
“A nightmare?”
“Yeah,” I said, already feeling stupid for calling. “But I’ve never had one like that before.”
I heard him let out a breath on the other end of the line. “You sure that’s all? You’re not hurt?”
I let out a breath of my own and tried to suck the next one in slowly. “No, I’m not hurt. I thought I was. I had to call you to make sure it wasn’t real.”
“Okay. Tell me what you saw.” His voice had settled back down to its usual low rumble.
I drew the covers up again, suddenly cold, afraid to be exposed to the darkness.
“You were there,” I said, my voice breaking as the first wave of tears hit. “And you were carrying my m-mom in your arms.”
I pressed my eyes into the back of my hand and clenched my teeth. Finally, I put the phone back up to my ear, trying to breathe. “She said she wanted to come back.”
I couldn’t go on. Adrian let a couple seconds pass in silence.
“Where did she want to come back to?”
My whole body trembled. “Here. She wanted to be alive again. And then she bit me.”
“She—what?”
“I had to make sure it was a dream.”
“Damn it,” I heard Adrian say, but he wasn’t talking into the phone. “Okay. Caitlin?”
“Yeah?” I whispered, trembling uncontrollably as I turned my face into my pillow to hide my eyes from the dark room.
“I want you to turn on your light.”
“No,” I whispered, horrified, curling into a tighter ball underneath my covers. There was no way I was moving.
“Caitlin,” he said in his reasonable voice, “nobody is in your room. I’m not in your room. Your mother is not in your room. Your mother loved you, and she would never, ever hurt you. Now, I need you to turn your light on.”
“Please don’t make me do this,” I whispered into the phone, clutching it so hard my hand hurt.
“I need you to turn on your light,” he repeated.
My heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode.
“I can feel your fear all the way from my house, but I can’t take it away over the phone. I can’t come over there. You have to do it. Turn on your light.”
I stopped breathing. Just held the air inside my lungs until it hurt. And then I let it out slowly. “Keep talking.”
“All right. Did you study for your history midterm?”
I took another breath and let some of my muscles relax. “Not really.”
“You going to wear my Christmas present to the exam?”
“What?”
“My Christmas present. The Green Thing?”
“Why would I wear that to an exam?”
“Well,” he replied in a smug tone, “it looked pretty effective.”
I sat up. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
“All I’m saying is if you want to pass, you might want to wear it to the exam. Are you sitting up yet?”
“Yes, but—” Then I got it.
“Turn on the light before you lose your nerve.”
I reached out and switched on the bedside lamp before I could think about it too hard. The room flooded with a soft, gold glow.
“Anybody there?” Adrian asked.
I looked around, even peeking over the sides of my bed before I admitted, “No.”
“Good,” he said brightly. “Oh, and by the way, I don’t actually think you should wear it to school. People might think you were trying to make me jealous.”
I smiled wearily. “Yeah, well, they also might think I’m a hooker.”
“Nah. Stripper, maybe.”
I smiled. “What time is it, anyway?”
“About four thirty.”
“Wow, well, my bad for calling at the buttcrack of dawn.”
“Don’t be. I was about to wake up anyway.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“I usually wake up at five and do a few laps in the pool.”
There was no way. No one in Stony Creek had a pool, not this high up in the mountains. But it was Adrian. Adrian defied most of the laws of physics. He could certainly have a pool in the mountains. He could have a pool in space, for all I knew.
“Right. And where, exactly, do you store this pool?”
“The east wing.”