How did I get here?
The last thing I remember is the lake embracing me. The crack of the St. Anne’s hull, a jagged sound of purity. The deliciousness of nine hearts beating, and the first heart arresting in exquisite silence. The dreams of the dead usually infect me for hours afterward, but this time, something changed. This was not the dream of a lake sailor. I’m sure of it. And what’s more, I’m not in the water, where I ought to be after such a feeding.
And then there was the boy. He was there, and saw me, and then I saw nothing.
“You’re awake.”
He hovers in the doorway. He’s here. In my father’s house. He holds a steaming cup of something, which means he’s used my father’s kitchen. His pants hang loosely on his hips, and he’s wearing a hole-ridden T-shirt instead of the bulky jacket he usually has. His arms are lean and roped with muscle. He’s thin and tall, a knife on end. I lift my eyes to study his face.
Those eyes.
They were in my dream.
I immediately look down, feeling like an intruder in his memory. The dead, they give me their dreams as payment for their relief of life. But I have given nothing to this boy. What did I take that I should see such a vision?
My hands splay across the fabric of my nightgown. This wasn’t the one I was wearing when the storm found me. It’s different. Which means he must have changed my clothes. Interesting. I had been curious, watching him shed his clothes to bathe in the lake. Perhaps he felt the need to reciprocate. How very interesting.
It takes a while for me to find words. Mentally, I try out a few, like “who” and “go” before flicking them away. My tongue moves, finally.
“What…what day is it?” I whisper hoarsely.
He twitches, then cocks his head. These are not the words he’d expected to hear. What did he think I would say? Get out?
“It’s, uh…Friday.”
“No. What is the date?”
“Oh.” He shuffles his feet and searches the ceiling for an answer. I do, too. There’s no calendar up above us. I don’t know why he’s looking there. His lips move, counting silently.
“It’s October twenty-fifth, I think,” he finally says.
Six more days. November is coming, and I wasn’t even able to wait. I used to have more control than this. What will Father say? What if he had been here?
The boy should have been taken with the nine. He’s owed to you and to me, she says. He ought not to be here.
“You ought not to be here,” I say, obediently.
His eyes contract with hurt. “I know. I’ll go soon. I just wanted to make sure you woke up okay. I think…I think you had a seizure or something.”
“Seizure,” I repeat. How violent. And I should know. Violence simmers in my blood, but this is a different word. Another type of taking without asking.
“You know? A spell. You were so out of it. I thought you had a fever, too. You actually walked into the lake.”
“Yes.”
“So you remember?”
“No.”
His eyebrows furrow. “I don’t understand.”
No, you wouldn’t, would you? I want to say. The walls of the house sigh. The house likes him, the way it likes my father. It wants him to stay, but the air around me stifles me, making it hard to breathe. It slips like molasses down my throat, coating my airways.
The house always wants to protect me, whereas the storm and the winds…they. It. She. She is far more jealous. I can feel her need clawing at me to keep me close, like she does my sisters.
The nine were not enough, because I wasn’t able to take them all. She knows it, and I feel it, too.
Eleven months is a long time to wait, my dearest.
Beyond the door, I can see the window in the main room. Raindrops from the storm cling to the panes of glass. They rearrange themselves into a face that judges me.
Mother.
The burning will begin again soon. Though a tension in my body has been pacified since the sinking of the St. Anne, I still feel unsettled. I search for the feeling—it’s urgent, in a way that won’t be ignored. It gnaws at my center.
I should make him leave. After a storm like this one, I usually feel energized, grounded. But I don’t. The boy took me away too soon.
I stare at him, inhaling courage. I prepare the words in my head: You must leave.
You should leave.
You ought not to be here.
I open my mouth, and he inhales, too, ready for my words. The unsettled feeling in my center worsens. The boy already seems dejected, as if knowing what is to come. As if he’s heard it a thousand times.
So finally, I speak.
“I am hungry.”
Chapter Fifteen
HECTOR
I’m surprised. I swear she was ready to throw a knife at me. After all, I’m a strange guy in her house. She’s probably freaked out that I changed her clothes.
“I’m . . . hungry,” she says again, plaintively. Her eyes are large and innocent, and the gray of her irises sparkle. They don’t have that dead look like they did when she walked into the water. Whatever made her zone out is gone, leaving a thin, famished girl behind.
I nod. I’ve never fed another person in my whole life. I only know how to make cereal or microwave chicken potpies, for God’s sake. But she’s been sick, after all. Later I can ask her more about why she’s here.
I take a step forward and hold out the steaming mug in my hands. Her eyes grow rounder, as if I’m offering a cup of sweetened cyanide.
“It’s hot honey water. My mom used to make it for me when I was sick.”
I’m careful not to hand it to her. I just set it on the three-legged stool next to the cot as an offering. She watches it warily, like it’s going to bite.
Weird. So weird, this girl.
But I like her. Anyway, we’re not exactly strangers. We’ve been spying on each other for a few weeks now.
“I saw crackers in the kitchen,” I say. “I can get some for you. And then…when you’re feeling well enough, I’ll leave.”
“Well enough,” she echoes. She smiles shyly, and I back out of the room.
I root around in the kitchen cupboards for the crackers. The ancient box of saltines must be an artifact from the early 1980s, but the squeaky packets inside are thankfully unopened. I investigate the tiny box fridge and am greeted by an emerald-green high-heeled shoe. Uh. Okay. Perched in the door is a pot of strawberry jelly, sitting as far away as possible from a lonesome bottle of Gulden’s Mustard. A few pounds of butter occupy the lowest shelf, along with an empty egg carton.
It’s been a long time since I tried to make anything in a kitchen. I remember spending hours on a kitchen floor, making rolls of gimbap with my mom, getting more rice stuck in my hair than on the sheets of crisp, oiled seaweed. She never complained that my messy rolls were any worse than hers. I wonder if she still makes them.
I smear the jelly on the crackers, one by one, and arrange them in a circle on a china plate. It feels like some once-in-a-century ritual that I’ve never been included in before. And yet the whole time, I grin like a kid at a carnival. I can’t remember when I’ve smiled this much in my whole life.
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