“That won’t help,” I said, and took a deep breath. “I think I need to leave for a while. I need to go see my own family. Rosie’s family.”
“Thea, this is your family now. Rosie’s family isn’t going to recognize you. You’ll only confuse them.”
“I still have to see them,” I said. “I miss my mom. My sister, too.” I tried to explain it. “I don’t know why, but reading Althea’s journal makes me realize how unfair this all is. I can’t possibly take over her life and remake it into my own. She’s not just some hand-me-down jeans.”
“I know it can’t be easy,” he said. “But this is still where you belong. Thea would want you here. The old Thea, I mean. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a crazy thing to say.”
“She was a very generous person. She cared about people,” he said, and stopped abruptly, like he didn’t trust himself to go on.
This couldn’t be easy for him, either.
I felt my pulse thudding oddly. “Maybe you should come with me,” I said. “Do you want to take a road trip?”
I expected him to argue.
“How soon?” he asked.
I smiled with gratitude. “Tomorrow,” I said.
“Then yes.”
22
ROSIE
FLESH-EATING MAGGOTS
I’M BACK IN THE VAULT, and this time Berg himself is coming for me. He lurks as an evil presence in the darkness, just beyond my sight, but I know he’s there, tinkering with something that causes a metallic, sharpening noise. When he steps into the light, I can’t move or speak. Hello Rosie, he says. You thought you could escape, but this is the only way to leave me. He lifts a short, sharp knife and starts between my toes, slitting me up my skin, opening my leg so black worms and maggots spill out.
I scream and bolt up in bed. I clutch at my blanket and knock my hand wildly for the lamp. It crashes to the floor, and I leap out of bed toward the door. I yank it open, panting with fear. Only when I see light coming from a bathroom do I remember where I am. This is Burnham’s place, not the vault.
I swallow hard, but my heart is racing and I can still feel the horror of Berg slicing up my leg. He could be here in this apartment. He could be waiting for me.
Burnham leans into the hallway. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I check my bare foot for a black seam of pain, but my leg is whole and unharmed. I search the shadows around us for movement. Violence feels ready to erupt around us.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Burnham asks. He’s supporting himself with a grip on the doorframe. “Say something. You’re scaring me.”
“Am I still asleep?”
“No,” Burnham says. “You’re awake, Rosie. This is real.” He snaps his fingers. “This is real.”
I slide down the wall to the carpet and wrap my arms around my legs. Every bit of me is shaking. “It was horrible,” I say. “Berg was slicing up my leg and letting out the black maggots.” A shiver of them flashes over my sight again.
Burnham flips on another light. His chest is bare, and the waist of his pajama pants droops low. “Let me get my leg brace. I’ll be right there,” he says.
“Don’t go!” I say.
“Two seconds,” he says, and disappears into his room.
I’m afraid to look back over my shoulder. I’m afraid to be alone. I crawl rapidly down the carpet to Burnham’s door, and I look in to see him on his bed, hunched over, attaching a brace above and below his knee, over his pajamas. He uses his one good hand and his teeth to pull the straps snug, and then looks across at me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Making sure you’re not getting eaten by maggots.”
He swings his leg over. “I don’t taste good enough.”
And when he smiles, I finally trust that I’m awake. I’m safe. Berg can’t be here.
Burnham looks way stronger than I expected. Shirtless, he has serious muscles in his torso and shoulders, even for his bad arm, and as he reaches for his glasses, I realize I’m staring. I shift back from the door and out into the hallway, which suddenly seems much safer than it did before.
He appears above me, one eyebrow raised. “That looks good on you,” he says.
I glance down at myself and remember that, aside from my panties, I’m only wearing one of his tee shirts. I clutch at my neckline. “This is embarrassing.”
He smiles and offers his good hand. “Come on. Get up. I’ll make you a snack.”
I take his hand and rise slowly to my feet. “I can’t, like this.”
His eyes travel over me again. “You’re covered more than in a swimsuit.”
Somehow, I don’t find that at all reassuring, but I don’t want to leave him to go back to my room. Chicken. As I release his hand, my fingertips are tingling. We’ve been hanging out for two days, watching The Forge Show and baking brownies when we’re not trying to work out details about Berg, but Burnham has always had his shirt on up to this point. Tonight he seems different, and it’s not just because I’m edgy from my nightmare.
I follow him into the kitchen where he turns on a row of lights. Outside, floodlights illuminate the back porch in one direction and the parking circle in the other. No one, certainly not Berg with a knife, can approach without being seen.
I slump onto a stool, and before long Burnham slides a mug of cocoa across to me.
“For starters,” he says.
I take the mug gladly in my cold hands.
“Do you have nightmares often?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He opens the freezer and contemplates its contents, bracing his hand on the door. I barely notice his bent wrist anymore, but I notice the rest of him. He takes out a pizza box. He weighs it in his hand a couple times and then chucks it back in the freezer. If he were fully dressed and this were daylight, the whole routine would be blandly normal, but it isn’t and he isn’t, and I have to lower my face over my mug to stop looking at him. Even then, I can still picture him leaning back against the opposite counter with his arms crossed over his bare chest.
“Interesting,” he says.
“What.”
“I don’t have to say a thing and you’re blushing.”
“I’m not.”
He steps forward and leans on the counter that separates us. “I think it’s an entirely new color. A kind of tomatoesque pink. Does it hurt?”
“Don’t be a dork,” I say.
“Let me see. Is it hot?” he asks, reaching for my hand.
I let him turn my fingers over in his before I realize my mistake. His touch is cool, but it only makes my skin burn hotter.
I pull away and grip my mug again. “It’s just the heat from the cocoa.”
“I see,” he says slowly. He draws a finger through a drop of cocoa that spilled on the white counter.
I can tell he’s looking at me, but I avoid his gaze. The icemaker makes a rattling noise in the fridge.
“It’s no accident that you came here,” he says.
“I know,” I say quickly. “You’ve been great. This has been perfect. I feel a ton better than I did when I arrived.”
He straightens stiffly. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Put your box around me. I’m not ‘great.’ It isn’t ‘perfect’ here. Be real with me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “I am real with you.”