“It’s nothing. We’re safe.”
Tim proved so by stepping in, relieved to be at headquarters again. He needed to think.
Nate carried the bags from the trunk and headed upstairs.
“I’m gonna try and sleep for a while,” he said, not offering much of a chance for objections. “You girls will be okay?”
Andy nodded for both. Kerri had not let go of her arm yet.
She kept holding her as they went upstairs. The house, floorboards excepting, remained silent. The common sympathy of some tender music could have been expected.
Kerri jolted a little when Andy pushed open the door to her room.
“Okay, see? We made it.” Andy pulled her inside. “There’s nothing to worry about here.”
Kerri still refused to let go. Andy monitored her as her eyes swept the tiny flowery room: the bed, the miniature desk, the wardrobe.
“Kerri. Look. There’s nothing here.”
“No, no…”
“I’m just showing you.” She opened the wardrobe, a pinkblast of small T-shirts and pullovers and shorts yelling hello inside. She pulled the chair from under the desk, silent on the thick terry cloth carpet. She made a point to kneel down and check under the bed. “See? Nothing here, except for the guest bed. Come on. Sit down.”
Kerri carefully sat on a corner of the Darjeeling-colored paisley quilt. From there she closed the door and locked it. Then her attention turned to the opposite wall.
“Can you block the window?”
Andy was on her knees, pulling out the guest bed.
“Kerri, nothing’s gonna come through the window.”
“I know. But can you please do it?”
“Kerri…”
“Please!”
It did sound more like a command than a plea, but the effort nonetheless pushed a tear down her cheek.
Andy went to the window and pushed the wardrobe in front of it. The colors inside the room went oh and became very sad.
“Right,” Andy panted. “Let’s get some sleep now, okay?”
“No, please—”
“I meant you, Kerri. Okay? I’ll keep watch. Nothing’s going to happen. But you need to get in bed.”
“No!”
“Kerri, come on, please!” She was holding Kerri’s arm with one hand while she opened the bed with the other. “Just lie down.”
“Don’t leave me alone!”
“I’m not leaving you alone, I’m staying here with you. Just lie down.” She tried to let her go, but it was Kerri holding on to her body now. “Kerri, you’re having an anxiety attack. I need you to relax and get into bed.”
“Don’t leave me!”
She had almost laid her down now, but Kerri was clinging to her so firmly she was practically cliffhanging from her shoulders. Andy had to hold her arms to restrain the spasms.
“Kay! Please look at me. Look into my eyes!”
Kerri’s terrified irises suddenly discovered Andy’s, three inches away. Andy tried to sound as soothing as chemically possible.
“We are going to be fine. I promise. Okay? This is your room. Nothing bad can ever happen in your room.”
Kerri swallowed a bezoar rising in her throat. The tremor was receding. “Promise you won’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. But you’re hurting my back a little.”
With their eyes locked, Andy noticed the grip around her loosening up some, like Kerri’s fingers were admitting circulation again, trying a gentler clasp around Andy’s neck. Andy let her alight on the bed, as though she were holding a wounded sparrow on her palm.
“Can you pull the sheets over?” Kerri asked in her flimsiest voice.
Andy’s eyes wandered for a second to evaluate. She was leaning inches above Kerri, one knee sunk in the mattress, one foot still touching the floor as a mere concession to appearances.
“I have my own bed.”
“No, don’t leave me!”
“Okay, okay,” she conceded, alarmed by the returning exclamation points. “I’m not leaving. Just let me—”
“Don’t move!”
“Kerri, I can’t stay like this, you’ll suffocate under my weight.”
“Don’t—I don’t mind! Pull the sheets over us!”
“Right, here!” She did as commanded, slithering under the bedclothes and pulling them over her back. She stretched her legs, toeing the south end of the mattress, cozying up to their tight rabbit hole under the paisleyfield.
“See? I got you covered. Nothing’s going to happen. Now I need you to take deep breaths and chill, okay?”
Kerri eased the pressure around Andy’s neck a notch and forced her lungs to fill. Andy did what she could to shift her weight without triggering a panic response; she managed to stand on her elbows and feet, in plank position, her torso merely brushing Kerri.
“You know, the last time I held this position for so long I was doing push-ups in military training, and I wondered what possible use it would have in real life,” she joked.
Kerri didn’t seem to appreciate it, busy trying to control her respiration.
“Just breathe from your abdomen,” Andy advised. “Take a deep one. Like that. Now out. Good.”
The next breath was just as deep, and slower, and a little quieter. Shortly, under Andy’s strict watch, the rhythm fell from frantic to vivace, and then to piano, and every minute it would become softer, gradually merging into the candleflame silence.
They were lying in a soundless house, in a soundless room, in a soundless burrow of wool and cotton and butterflies. And that was when Andy started to pay attention to the many excited sensations that were calling for her awareness. A thousand orange curls of hair falling asleep. Kerri’s breath on her neck. Her own breasts, through her clothes and Kerri’s clothes, cozily nestling up against the ones below.
Her biceps had started giving way long ago.
“This is…kinda awkward,” she underwhispered.
“I just saw you wrestle a Sleepy Lake creature; whatever you’re talking about, I doubt it beats that.”
“Okay.” She tried to accommodate her left hand around Kerri’s head, burrowing among her curls without awaking them.
“That thing could have killed us,” Kerri said.
“It didn’t.”
“It could have killed Nate, or Tim. There was more than one.”
“Yeah, there was.” Her head was touching Kerri’s now, cheek by rose-petal cheek.
“What if you hadn’t woken up, what if they had surrounded us? They could have killed us all in our sleep.”
Andy rounded on her and kissed her mouth.
The universe skipped a heartbeat.
Then she jolted back to see the aftermath, the taste of sun after bathing and raspberry ink and August in her joydrunk lips.
“They could have killed us and dragged us to the water and that would have been the end,” Kerri said, her eyes hardly afloat over her fantasies.
Then, slowly, her pupils drifted to meet Andy’s hovering over her like a first sight after a coma.
“Did you just kiss me?”
“Uh…yeah.”
Neither moved. Kerri’s tongue discreetly reconned the inside of her lips.
“Why?”
“It…seemed the right moment,” Andy stuttered. “But maybe it wasn’t. I’ve been known to get it wrong before.”
“I see.”
“Do you want me to move off?”
“No,” Kerri said quickly.
“Okay.”
A blank-meaning time-lapse paragraph fireflew by.