Waterbury,” he answers immediately. My stomach knots up. I know it’s stupid – I know the stakes are higher than the two of us – but I can’t help but feel a flash of anger. Of course he disagrees with me. Of course.
Too much bad blood.
Then, out of nowhere – a barking dog, a huge blur of black fur, leaps for me. I jerk.
The sun is rising, a rusty color, the color of old blood, and I’m so.
That’s the thing about trust.” He crunched an ice cube between his teeth. “You don’t know.
But no. I’m the one screaming. I am screaming as I run. I am screaming when the first bomb falls, and the Wilds turn to fire around.
Frank keeps massaging his gun, and something about the motion – gentle, almost, like he’s willing it to life – makes me feel sick.
And, of course, we kiss. We kiss so much that when we’re not kissing it feels weird, like I get used to breathing through his lips and into his mouth.
Coral slows us down. She has no visible injuries, now that she has bathed and had various cuts and scrapes bandaged, but she is obviously weak. She falls behind as soon as we begin to move, and Alex hangs back with her. In the early part of the day, even though I try to ignore it, I can hear the ribbon of their conversation weaving up and through the other voices. Once, I hear Alex burst out laughing. In.
And then everything explodes: They are streaming through the door, bursting through the walls, yelling, screaming – police and regulators.
The wind whispers Alex’s name and the ocean repeats it; the swaying trees make me think of dancing.
It was like she had dropped away for a second – my best friend, my only real friend – and in her place was a stranger. That.
When left to their own devices, people lie and keep secrets and change and disappear, some behind a different face or personality, some behind a dense early morning fog, beyond a cliff.
We’re striking out mostly blind, using a compass and a series of old sketches that have been passed back.
Their arms are separated by only a few inches, and I start to fixate on the negative space between their shoulders and elbows, like one-half of an hourglass.
The name sounds wrong in her mouth and makes me feel off-kilter, the way I used to feel as a kid at the Strawberry Festival.
I love you bitches to death. You know that, right?
They grow up twisted, crippled, crazy. She would probably be taken and killed. She wouldn’t even be buried. They’d be worried.
You didn’t need to go charging in there like some kind of hero.” I feel a flicker of anger. I hold on to it and coax it into life.
Monsters, they call us. Demons.