The morning sun was already glowing pink and yellow across the ranch; dawn painting the world with wide brushstrokes. The birds fluttered around the yard, squawking their happy spring mating calls to one another. Maze walked solemnly beside Meg, strong body moving fluidly on his native soil.
When she slipped into the house, it was already alive with the sounds of morning breakfast. It felt so surreal to her. She walked like a ghost through the back door, hoping she was as invisible as she felt.
“Meg?” Margo called from the kitchen.
Shoot.
“Yeah, mom. I’m just heading to the shower. Be out in a while.” Meg called over her shoulder and hurried across the living room. She turned right, down the hallway and ran into Farrow.
“Good morning, Meg,” she said smiling.
Meg couldn’t understand anyone who smiled anymore.
She barely resisted the urge to punch her.
“Hey, Farrow,” she muttered before slipping into her room and closing the door behind her before she could say anything else cheerful.
Meg’s bed still looked like she’d lost a wrestling match on it—sheets crumpled and twisted. Ignoring it, she kicked her dusty shoes off into her closet and padded into her bathroom. One of the great things about this house was that each of the six bedrooms has its own attached bath. Everyone had plenty of personal space. Important when it came to five teenaged metahumans and one set of lovely human adults who all lived under the same sprawling roof.
All this house needed to make it completely homey for the family was a laboratory, so Alik, Evan, Cole and Theo went right to work designing and building one. Even Margo and Farrow helped. That kept everyone busy for a while, which was good. It gave Meg time to be by herself, though they kept trying to get her to join in. She couldn’t stand pretending she was okay for very long. It was very exhausting.
Meg leaned against the sink to pull off her wet socks one at a time. Gross.
She turned the shower on before sliding out of her clothes. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror was startling. Alik wasn’t exaggerating. She did look strung out.
Her womanly curves looked to have disappeared in her neglect. She did have a tight six-pack on her stomach and the wiry muscles throughout the rest of her body looked like that of a marathon runner’s. Her dark, once beautiful hair looked so destroyed she was pretty sure a vulture wouldn’t want to use it for its nest.
Meg resisted the urge to punch the mirror.
Stepping into the hot spray she let the water pound the top layer of grime off her skin before grabbing the bar of soap and a washcloth. Methodically, she scrubbed the soap on the cloth, gathering a lot of the cleansing substance and began scrubbing her face and neck before moving to her arms and chest. She rinsed the dirt off the cloth before repeating the process to finish cleaning her lower half, focusing a little extra time on her legs as they sported an extra layer of caked on dirt from the run on a gravel road and the floor of the barn.
Feeling moderately satisfied her body was clean, Meg grabbed the huge bottle of shampoo and squeezed a ping-pong sized dollop into her palm. She smoothed some across the back of her head first, then gathered the long ends and pulled them up to the top of her head, before rubbing the rest of the shampoo into the wad she held there. She scrubbed, adding shampoo when she felt there wasn’t enough to manage the muck that was her hair. Conditioner was a must with her thick curls, so she repeated the process with a handful of cream.
Letting the conditioner sit, Meg grabbed her razor and shaving cream. Her legs were long and lean with lots of sharp angles around and behind her knees. Sure enough, though she was trying to be careful as she worked around the protruding bones and tendons, in her lost thoughts, she swiped just wrong, and felt the telltale sting. Blood slipped down her leg from the one-inch slice of skin she’d just slashed.
She gasped.
She watched.
The bright-red life fluid mingled with the rushing water and slipped down to the shower floor—the tapered floor with a single drain in the middle.
That’s when her mind crashed.
Meg felt swept away—swept down into the darkness of the small drain holes.
Blackness crawled around her peripheral vision, closing in until she could see nothing. The ringing in her ears was deafening. She felt as if she was going to vomit, violently as her empty stomach clenched around itself. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Like bloody water slipping down the black-holed drain, Meg collapsed.
When she awoke, the water was still pouring on her, though it was tepid now. Tentatively, she sat up. The world spun. Her body wouldn’t stop shaking. She reached up to touch her forehead where it ached sharply and looked at her bloody fingers as though they belonged to someone else. She must have hit her head on the shower’s handle on the way down.