I could keep it that way.
Slip out of here, turn off the torch, and wade through the flood into the dark. But I need the light. To read the map. And the compass. And to see where I’m going.
Besides, maybe it would be useful to have someone with me. Maybe it won’t feel so terrifying if there’s someone watching my back.
I sell myself on it. Quickly. Too quickly.
And I turn the torch on myself.
I stretch my arm out as far as I can, and the moment the light hits my face, I regret it. The light blinds me, sends stars speckling through my vision.
I drop the light to the puddle between us.
Beams ricochet off the surface.
I watch as her legs straighten from a crouch, and slowly, she creeps out from behind the fallen branch and its tangled leaves.
She looks like she’s been washed and rinsed out a dozen times. Every strand of dark hair is a straight curtain down the sides of her face, just glistening with water, droplets falling over her polyester parka.
Her breath mists. Choppy, with the cold burrowing into her.
‘It’s me,’ I could say. But it feels weird. Like, we don’t even know each other’s names. ‘It’s me,’ just feels too familiar.
Connie is struggling with finding words, too.
In the reflecting beams of light, in the soaked and battered forest, both of us drenched through, we stare at each other.
She gestures to the torch with a weighted hand, exhaustion pulling her muscles down.
Her voice is rougher than if it was dragged over a cheese grater, “You got another?”
Then her face twists—and she lifts her hand to her mouth right before a horrible gurgling cough jolts her, but each strike sounds sharper than a blade.
I shake my head. Strands of hair are stuck to my cheek.
My cold lips tremble around the words, “Just this one.”
She looks around, like she’ll find another water-resistant torch dangling from a branch or floating in the water.
The palest shade of blue is sheeted beneath her warm, tawny complexion.
The cold is eating away at her.
Eating away at us both.
And it’s only going to get worse.
We need move—and get into dry clothes.
The thought yanks me back to the alley with Bee and Emily…
I shut my eyes, tight, as though I can shove out the memory. And I can.
My tone is hollow, “You can follow me.”
Connie aims a tired, pinched look at me. “Back to them?”
“No.” The word is exhaled from me, like a breath of pure fatigue, and every muscle in me is just aching to collapse. “I know where to go.”
