“Go have a nap,” I advised her. “I promise to come get you if Violet comes home with important news.”
“I suppose I could sleep.” She rubbed a hand over her face, then pushed back her chair and stood. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
She’d told me that already, but I nodded as if this was news. “Then nap,” I repeated.
She walked to the kitchen door, then paused. She seemed to consider her words before she spoke them. “You’re not leaving?” she asked.
It was the same tone I’d heard from her on our walk this morning. Dodie was scared. I held her gaze with mine, picked up my chocolate milk, and swigged from it as if nothing bothered me. “Nope,” I said.
She nodded. I heard her steps ascend the stairs.
I put my glass down, then scrubbed both my hands through my hair as I exhaled hard, feeling the scrape on my scalp. I couldn’t look at the crayons on the table.
One day. We’d been here one day, and already Dodie was about to crack like a raw egg, her yolk spilling all over the floor. Either I’d lost my ability to keep her tethered, or this situation was particularly bad. Probably both. I needed to talk to Violet about it.
Where the hell was Violet?
It felt like the house was breathing, waiting for me to do something.
I needed to be busy, or I’d crack like an egg, too. And one of us needed an unbroken shell.
I left the crayons behind and walked to the living room to fix the TV.
14
Violet
“Oh, man,” Bradley said, putting his hands on his knees and hanging his head between them. “I think I’m gonna barf again.”
I stared down between my feet at the gravel of the parking lot as my head spun, the blood throbbing in my neck. “Please don’t,” I said.
“Oh, man,” Bradley said again.
We were sitting on the curb at the edge of the lot, our legs sprawled out in front of us. Two police cars and an ambulance were parked in front of the storage units. There were no sirens or flashing lights, because except for the fact that I’d passed out, this wasn’t an emergency. The body inside the storage unit had been dead for a long time.
I lifted the damp cloth in my hand and pressed it to my forehead again, trying to still my rotating brain. The ambulance was here for me, not for the dusty corpse Bradley had stumbled on. Apparently, after throwing up, Bradley had found me passed out cold, and then he’d used a brick to smash the window to get into the small office and call 911.
I’d woken up in a stranger’s lap. The paramedic had pressed thecloth to my forehead and taken my pulse, my blood pressure. He’d asked me to count fingers and name the president. Behind him, a cop car had pulled up to the other storage unit, and then a second one had joined it, like two silent beetles. The cops spoke in low tones, punctuated with crackles from their radios.
Now Bradley and I sat like two forgotten children while the grown-ups took over. The officers had taken a statement from both of us, then told us to wait for instructions. One of them was trying, with no success, to track down the owner of the storage units to discuss the window Bradley had broken.
The cool breeze brushed the back of my neck and I pressed my hand there, remembering the icy grip I’d felt right before the darkness.
“What the fuck?” The words burst out of Bradley like he couldn’t contain them. He sprang to his feet, paced back and forth. “I mean, what thefuckwas that, right?” He stopped, looked at me. “Right?”
Most people—normal people—weren’t used to the dead. They didn’t see ghosts. Bradley was one of those normal people, and to cut him some slack for once, he’d just seen an actual corpse. Anyone would be a little worked up.
I pressed my hand harder to the back of my neck and closed my eyes. I saw the dead with some regularity, but I had never had an experience like this. I’d never felt one of the people I saw. Heard them. I’d never passed out. Even I, the freak of nature, felt fear low in my belly. Something was very, very wrong.
Sister sent me.
I shuddered, forced my eyes to blink open, to take in the sunlight. I took a breath.
“What happened to you?” Bradley asked. He dropped to the curb next to me again. “You passed out, but you didn’t see—that thing. Why did you faint?”
The spinning in my skull was slowing, replaced by a wince of painthat quickly drained away. Now I felt tired, not just from the aftermath of fear but because of this entire situation.
“Hey, Violet,” Bradley prompted me. He knew my name now, because he’d heard me give it to the paramedic and the police, complete with spelling.
