“Mara,” he repeated, and took a step toward me, so I turned and started running.
I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so I ran until I found the gap in the fence, and I slid through it. The pointed edges scraped my skin, but I didn’t care. I kept running until I got to my Winnebago, and I never looked back.
Once I was inside, I leaned against the counter and struggled to catch my breath and slow the racing of my heart. Gabe and I hadn’t known each other that long, but I liked him, and it hurt knowing I wouldn’t be able to see him again.
What hurt the worst was knowing that he wouldn’t think of me the same way. For a while, he’d seen me as a real person. He’d really seen me, and he’d liked me. But now I was reduced to a disposable, forgettable, dirty freak. An accidental foray onto the other side of the tracks, one that wouldn’t be repeated.
“Mara?” Gideon’s voice came through the screen door, his British accent softening his words. “Is everything all right, love?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” I lied as I bit back tears.
“Are you sure?” Gideon asked, and his voice was closer now, right on the other side of the door.
“Yeah.” I sniffled. “It’s just been a long day, and I need to go lie down.”
“All right.” He sounded reluctant to let it go. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will,” I told him, and to ensure the conversation was over, I walked back to my bedroom and rattled the beaded curtain as loudly as I could.
I threw myself onto my bed, causing the thin mattress to bounce. The shelving above my bed was filled to the brim with books, and when I flopped into bed, it knocked a book loose and it fell onto my head.
“What a perfect way to end a perfect night,” I muttered to myself.
I rolled onto my back and picked up the book. Enough light was streaming in through the beads from the kitchen that I could read the title, embossed in gold on a pale red cover. It was a book of poetry by Mary Howitt.
My stomach soured as I turned the brittle pages, and the book opened almost immediately to “The Spider and the Fly.” I’d gotten the book last summer for a nickel at a yard sale, and one day, a couple months back, Blossom had pulled it out.
We’d been stuck in some dry town, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, playing a game of solitaire, and Blossom lay stretched out on the floor, with a rolled-up sweater under her head like a pillow.
And as I played, she’d read the poems aloud. I could almost hear her voice now, reading in an exaggerated falsetto, “‘O no, no,’ said the little fly, ‘for I’ve often heard it said,/They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed.’”
I slammed the book shut and set it on my nightstand before rolling over onto my side, putting my back to it. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to push away all my thoughts about anything.
Blossom being gone, Seth’s attack, Leonid’s claims, Gabe’s kisses, the coldness in my chest, and the fact that I’d never kiss Gabe again. All these things swirled inside me, and I pushed them all down until finally sleep enveloped me, quieting all the things that hurt and frightened me.
21. shadows
I opened my eyes to the blackness. Darkness engulfed me, wrapping me up in the nothingness. There was no ground below me, no sky above. Only the black, and the cold.
The icy cold was coming from within me, spreading out from my chest and freezing me from the inside out. I wanted to scream, but the words were frozen in my throat.
Then a face began to take shape before me, and I realized it was her—the old woman from my nightmare. Her gray hair swirled around her head like a halo as she floated across the nothingness toward me.
Her mouth hung open with her long talonlike fingers extended toward me, and she began to scream. Again her words came too quickly in a language that I didn’t understand, but they were insistent and angry, echoing inside my brain.
I couldn’t move or speak, so I closed my eyes, trying to will her away. And then I felt her hands on me, gripping my shoulders painfully and digging her nails into my flesh as she began shaking me.
Her breath felt cold on my face, and she smelled musty and tangy, like rotten fruit. I turned my head to the side, squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could, and her hands were like a vise on my shoulders.
She began screaming the same phrase over and over, right in my ear. My arms felt like they were going to snap as she tightened her grip, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
I opened my eyes, expecting to see her rotting face floating in front of me, but instead it was only the ceiling of the Winnebago, tinged slightly brown from an old leak in the roof.