“Tell me why your mum thinks you’re lucky.”
“Fell off the roof once. I was eight.” The words come in bursts. “Landed in…neighbor’s pool.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Frisbee on roof. Pool was…just filled.” Even saying this exhausts me.
“Felix, the padding on your face—is it soaked through?”
“Everything’s wet.” Is it blood or just the dampness of the cave? I can’t tell anymore.
“Okay. I’m going to need to apply more pressure.”
My vision is tunneling. The darkness at the edges isn’t just the cave anymore—it’s inside me, creeping inward like spilled ink. My chest feels strange, like I’m breathing through wet cloth. Each breath takes more effort than the last.
I’m getting worse. The thought arrives with cold clarity.
Sleep pulls at me like an undertow. But what if I close my eyes and that’s it? What if the darkness is the permanent kind? My heart hammers against my ribs, or maybe it’s supposed to beat that fast. I can’t tell anymore.
“Felix?” Jared’s voice sounds distant. “Stay with me.”
“Scared.” The word slips out before I can stop it. “If I sleep…?”
“You’re not going to die, Felix.” His hand tightens on mine. “I won’t let you.”
But people say things like that all the time, don’t they? Pretty lies in the dark.
“Anyone ever…said last words to you?”
Silence, then, “Yes.”
“What’d they say?”
“That’s not going to happen to you, Felix.”
Something in his voice makes me believe him. Or maybe I just want to.
“Maybe I should come up with some just in case?”
“Felix—”
“What about ‘I hid the treasure in the—’ then I die…without finishing.” I try to laugh, but it comes out wrong.
Jared joins in the laughter, only his is normal-sounding. “That sounds cruel to your family.”
“Give them a hobby,” I say.
“Speaking about hobbies, do you have any?”
“You’re…keeping me talking.”
“You’ve seen through my master plan.”
“Talented like that,” I mumble.
But despite the fact that I know this is simply a distraction technique, I try my hardest to keep answering Jared’s questions.
I tell him through stuttering words about how I love dancing at clubs and watching reality TV, and somehow end up telling him about my cat Patches and her habit of stealing underwear off clotheslines around the neighborhood.
