I sped up, my legs pumping as quickly as they could beneath me. I rounded the trailer with my heart pounding in my chest, knowing I’d finally have caught sight of whoever—or whatever—it was that had probably attacked Seth.
But then there was nothing. The field was completely empty, and there wasn’t any sign of the shadow running anywhere. It was just gone.
22. apologies
The motorhome smelled like coffee, and that’s what pulled me from my sleep. After the shadowy thing had disappeared, Luka, Hutch, and I had sat on the picnic table in the center of the campsite, waiting for it to return. But it never had.
Eventually, when the sun began to rise, I decided to call it a night and head back to my camper. Hutch had actually fallen asleep on the picnic table, lying on his stomach on the bench, and Luka woke him up and dragged him back to their place.
I curled up on the dinette bench, propping my head on the cushions, and attempted to read my book, but I must’ve dozed off, because I woke up to my mom brewing coffee and humming an old Fleetwood Mac song. A quilt had been draped over me, the same one that Blossom used whenever she crashed on our couch.
“Morning,” Mom said without looking back at me, as if she could somehow sense me waking up behind her.
“Morning,” I mumbled, and pushed myself up so I was sitting. “What time is it?”
“Eight thirty.” She kept her back to me as she put a pan on the stovetop. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really. I could use a cup of coffee, though.”
“I already poured you one.” She pointed behind her to a mug sitting on the table beside me, and grabbed two eggs from the fridge. “Why are you sleeping out here? Did something happen last night?”
I gulped down my coffee—bitter, warm, and black, just the way I liked it—before answering. “Nothing happened, exactly, but I did have this really strange dream.”
There was no point in telling her about the thing that Luka and I had chased, because it wasn’t even really a thing. We hadn’t actually seen anything, and in the bright light of morning, it made me realize that it had probably been nothing more than our own paranoia.
Or maybe it was the peculiar power of the Nukoabok Swamp that seemed to be affecting everyone around here. It would make sense that it played tricks with our imagination, and that even explained the bizarre nightmares I’d had since I got here. Zeke claimed he’d been having nightmares too.
“What was it about?” Mom asked.
The old woman flashed in my mind, screaming her string of angry syllables at me—id-hab-bee-in-who-nah. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts of her. “It’s … nothing. Just a bad dream.”
“Dreams can be an important way of our spirit telling us things that we need to know…” Mom trailed off and leaned forward so the skull key fell out of her blouse. She liked to wear it under her clothing, close to her heart, but she didn’t even notice it had escaped as she looked out the small window above the stove. “There’s a boy.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“There’s a strange boy in the campsite, and he’s coming over to our motorhome.” Mom looked back at me, like I should understand what was going on.
I set down my coffee and tossed off the quilt. I’d only just gotten up, and by then he was close enough to our screen door that I could see him.
Gabe.
I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe. I could only stand, petrified, hoping that he would move on before he saw me or my home.
When he knocked, his fist rapping loudly on the metal door, I nearly screamed. Mom moved to get it, but I rushed past her and answered it before she could. I held the door open, but I didn’t go outside or move so he could come in. The height difference of the trailer meant that I was actually taller than him, looking down at him.
“Hi.” Gabe smiled sheepishly up at me. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I was awake,” I said through lips that felt numb and clumsy.
I was acutely aware of the haggard appearance of everything. The once avocado-green carpet of the motorhome had become a sickly shade of brown, and it was balding in patches. The cupboards behind me were duct-taped to keep them from falling open, and cushions on the dinette were patched with old pieces of my mom’s dresses.
Not to mention how unkempt I looked personally—no makeup and dark circles under my eyes, my black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and my rumpled pajamas with no bra.
And Gabe stood before me without a hair out of place, designer jeans, and black-and-safari-patterned Nike sneakers that easily cost more than my family made in a month.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, because I couldn’t possibly imagine what he wanted with me, or how he had even known which motorhome was mine.
“I was wondering if we could talk.” His eyes were imploring me, absent of any glint I’d seen in them last night.