“Don’t move,” he warned me.
I was frozen—completely, stupidly incapacitated. My teeth chattered and my body shook with anger against the wall as Jude fumbled with the button on my jeans, popping it out of the buttonhole. I had only one thought, just one, that had crawled like an insect into my brain and beat its wings until I could hear nothing else, think nothing else, and until nothing else mattered.
He deserved to die.
As Jude unzipped my fly, three things happened at once.
Rachel’s voice called out my name.
Dozens of iron doors slammed shut in a deafening clang.
Everything went black.
48
THE SOUND OF MY MOTHER’S VOICE SHOCKED me awake.
“Happy birthday!” She stood next to my bed and smiled down at me. “She’s awake, guys! Come on in.”
I watched numbly as the rest of my family paraded into my room, carrying a stack of pancakes with a candle in the middle. “Happy birthday,” they sang.
“And many moooooreeee,” Joseph added, with jazz hands.
I put my face in my hands and tugged on my skin. I didn’t even remember going to sleep last night, but here I was in bed this morning. Waking up from my dream-memory-nightmare about the asylum.
And about the Everglades?
What happened last night? What happened that night? What happened to me? What happened?
What happened?
My father pushed the plate at me. A tiny droplet of wax rolled down the side of the candle and lingered, trembling like a lone tear, before it hit the first pancake. I didn’t want it to fall. I took the plate and blew the candle out.
“It’s nine thirty,” my mother said. “Enough time for you to eat something and shower before Noah picks you up.” She brushed a strand of hair out of my face. My eyes wandered to Daniel. He winked at me. Then my gaze shifted to my father, who didn’t look as thrilled with this plan. Joseph beamed and waggled his eyebrows. He didn’t look tired. He didn’t look afraid.
And my shoulder didn’t hurt.
Did I dream it?
I wanted to ask Joseph, but I didn’t see how to get him alone. If it had happened, if he had been taken, I couldn’t let my mother know—not until I spoke to Noah. And if it hadn’t happened, I couldn’t let my mother know. Because she would have me committed for sure.
And at this point, I would be completely unable to argue with her.
I hovered on the edge of the dream and the memory, unable to tell which was which, as I accepted my family’s kisses and my present, a digital camera. I thanked them. They left. I pushed one leg out of bed, then the other, and planted my feet on the floor. Then one foot, then the next foot, until I reached my bathroom. Rain lashed the small window and I stared straight at the shower door, hovering between the vanity and the toilet. I couldn’t look in the mirror.
I remembered that night. Only when I was unconscious, apparently, and only in pieces, but they were taking on the shape of something enormous and terrifying. Something ugly. I rooted around for the rest of the memory—there was Jude, that asshole, that coward, and what he tried to do and then, and then—nothing. Blackness. The memory slipped away, retreating into the inscrutable vastness of my frontal lobe. It taunted me, niggled at me, and I was angry with it and the world by the time Noah knocked on the front door to pick me up.
“Ready?” he asked. He held an umbrella, but the wind unsteadied his arm. I examined his face. The bruise was gone, and there were only the smallest traces of the lacerations above his eye.
They couldn’t have healed that much in one night.
Which meant that last night had to have been a nightmare. All of it. The asylum. The Everglades. Had to have been.
I realized then that Noah was still standing there, waiting for me to answer. I nodded, and we made a break for it.
“So,” Noah said once we were both in the car. He pushed back his damp hair. “Where to?” His voice was casual.
That confirmed it. I stared past him, at a plastic bag caught in the neighbor’s hedge across the street, being battered by the rain.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, studying me.
I was acting crazy. I did not want to act crazy. I swallowed the question I wanted to ask about the Everglades last night because it wasn’t real.
“Bad dream,” I said, and the corner of my mouth curved into a slight smile.
Noah looked at me through rain-jeweled lashes. His blue eyes held mine. “About what?”
About what, indeed. About Joseph? About Jude? I didn’t know what was real, what was a nightmare, what was a memory.
So I told Noah the truth. “I don’t remember.”
He stared at the road ahead of us. “Would you want to?”
His question caught me off guard. Would I want to remember?
Did I have a choice?