Open your eyes, Delaney Meyers-Petrov, said a voice.We are going on a journey.
***
She woke to sound, loud and immediate and very close. She was standing in her parents’ living room. She was bundled in her coat and hat. Her implant was on and the television was playing, bright and apoplectic, the volume cranked to a deafening decibel.
“Lane.” Her father scrambled down the stairs, staggering into a pair of flannel pants as he went. “Laney. Hey. You all right?”
She slammed back into herself, the noises taking on an alarming shape—the snap of bone, the cry of something dying. On the screen, a pack of wolves ripped into a deer, muzzles blackened by steaming offal. Blood darkened the paw-crimped snow.
Her father clicked off the television and the living room was doused in instant dark. Delaney shuddered, stipples of white dragging across her retinas. Shadows nibbled at her skin, like little red garra fish. She couldn’t remember coming home.
Across the room, her father edged through the dark, feeling for the light. The stairs creaked, and her mother’s voice trickled down the steps.
“Jace?”
“We’re all good, Mia,” her father said, though he didn’t sound terribly convinced. “It’s just Laney.” The lamp clicked on over the recliner. Jace, the chair, and Delaney were each washed in a circle of yellow. Her father peered over at her, his eyes crinkling in a frown. “You okay?”
“I—” She faltered, unsure how to answer. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Mia came into view, bathrobe drawn tight. She took a seat midway down the steps, her fingers fumbling through still-sleepy signs. “What are you doing home? Did something happen at school?”
“No.” Delaney’s stomach felt uneasy, skin prickling as if a spider had crawled across her belly. She didn’t want to tell them she had no memory of coming home. No mental registry of putting on a coat and hat and heading out into the cold. No record of boarding the commuter rail, sitting on the train, walking the several blocks home alone in the frostbitten dark. Her blood knocked through her veins.
Settling on a lie, she said, “I just wanted to sleep in my own bed tonight. Sorry I put the TV on so loud.”
“No sweat.” Jace tucked an arm around her shoulder. “You can always come home, kiddo. Let’s get you out of this coat. I’ll make you a hot toddy.”
***
In the kitchen, she sat in one of her mother’s refurbished estate sale chairs and nursed her steaming mug of hot honeyed whiskey, careful to keep her scarf wound around the black-and-blue grip on her throat.
The counter was dusted with flour like snow, and a sticky residue was splattered across the backsplash. A stack of bills sat in a papered lean-to against the toaster, and the topmost envelope—bold typeface screamingFINAL NOTICE!—looked like it had been inadvertently buttered. The room smelled like frying oil and marjoram, and little by little some of the cold melted out of her bones.
“It’s the middle of the night, Mama,” Delaney said as Mia slid a plate of fried potato pancakes in front of her. “You really didn’t need to make me food.”
“Eat.” Mia slid into a chair, signing as she went. “You look hungry.”
“She looks tired,” Jace countered.
“I’m fine,” Delaney said, though neither of them had asked.
“Is it your classes?” Mia’s fingers flew. “Are you falling behind? You signed up for too many courses this semester.”
“I enrolled in the minimum required courses.”
Mia snatched a pancake out of Jace’s hand and set it back on the plate. “I don’t like that you came all the way home at this hour—it’s not safe. Anything could have happened to you. Remember Mrs. Davies’s Buick?”
“I remember the Buick,” Delaney said. “I told you, I just missed my bed.”
“Are you sad? You look a little sad.”
Reaching for another pancake, Jace asked, “Did you know the boy they found out in Chicago?”
Mia slammed her hand onto the table. “Jace.”
“What?” He threw his arms wide. “It was on the news.”
“That doesn’t mean this is the time to bring it up.”
