Mine.
I can’t stop the darkness though, and it arrives, covering up my resentment and my desire to play. It covers up everything, dulling it, deadening it. Sleep comes and I’m lost…in dreams, in nightmares, in reality.
Who can tell the difference?
Finn is there, and Dare is there and my brother reaches out his hand. Because I belong with Finn, not Dare. I should be playing, shrieking, laughing.
We run away, away from Dare, toward the cliffs, toward the sea.
When I look over my shoulder, Dare is watching us go,
with the saddest look on his face that I’ve ever seen.
He doesn’t move to chase us, and I know that he’s resigned.
He knows what I know.
He doesn’t belong with Finn, I do.
Finn is mine.
* * *
When I wake, I hear voices reverberating through the halls of our home. I smell the carnations and the stargazers, the flowers of funerals, of death.
I pad across my bedroom and down the stairs.
The smell of hotcakes surrounds me and I inhale the maple syrup.
“Why is today special?” I ask my mom, because we only get hotcakes on special days. She looks up at me as she bustles through to the kitchen.
“Your cousin has to go back home early. His Latin tutor arrived ahead of schedule.”
“Latin?”
My mother nods. “Your grandmother wants all of you to learn Latin. You and Finn will learn it too, probably starting next year.”
“You can start right now, if you want,” Dare interjects from the sofa. He’s reclined there, with a blanket covering his lap. He looks paler than I remember from yesterday. “Iniquum. It means unfair.”
I form the strange sound on my tongue, twisting it into submission. “Iniquum.”
My mother hands Dare a plate filled with steaming breakfast food. He starts to get up, but she motions him to stay down.
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Stay there and rest.”
Rest.
With a start, I realize that no one has chastised me for getting out of bed.
“Your father would kill me if I let you wear yourself out,” my mother adds, as if she doesn’t recall that merely yesterday Dare was chasing Finn around the lawns.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I ask him curiously. He looks at me and rolls his eyes.
“No.”
I’m confused, so so confused and I look at my brother, but Finn acts like this is normal, as though Dare is supposed to be in bed. Not me.
Not me.
“What is happening?” I whisper, so utterly lost. The room swirls and everyone moves like they’re in fast-forward and I’m the only one standing still.
My mother glances at me. “I told you, honey. Dare has to return to England. Don’t worry. We’ll be joining him shortly, like we do every summer.”
We do?
I look at Finn, and he looks excited, as though he’s looking forward to going to England, as though we’ve done it every summer for all of our lives. The problem is… I don’t have any memories of this at all.
“I really am crazy,” I tell myself softly. “I’m as crazy as they say. I’m crazy.”
Finn grabs a plate and hands it to me, stacked with steaming maple pecan pancakes, drizzled in syrup.
It’s heaven on porcelain.
I know that.
I take bite after bite, but by the third one, I can’t move my tongue.
For a second, I think it’s my mind playing tricks on me again, making me think that I’m paused while everyone else is fast-forwarding, but then I watch my hand fall limply to the table, and my mom lunges to grab me and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.
“Calla!” she says sharply, and she bangs on my back with her hand because she thinks I’m choking. I’m not choking. I just can’t breathe.
I claw at my throat, claw at my face, claw at my tongue.
The air
The air
It won’t travel down into my lungs.
The light
The light.
It surrounds me and I think I’m dying.
This is what it feels like, I realize.
To die.
It’s warm and soft and inviting.