I am somewhere. A parking lot. A gas station. A man is leaning against his car, sipping coffee and looking at his phone. “Hello,” I try to say, but it comes out as a strangled wheeze. The man looks up, sees me. His mouth opens and his hand drops, spilling his coffee. Is he scared? This bikini-clad creature wandering out of the forest, filthy, swollen, bloody. I bare my teeth, trying to smile, to show I’m friendly. He takes a step toward me.
Lights out.
Chapter Forty-Three
I wake up to the man with the phone, kneeling over me, yelling. Droplets of spit fly out of his mouth, backlit by the neon glow of the gas station lights.
I wake up to the sounds of sirens. The medics’ voices are muffled, like they’re underwater. I feel the weight of my body shift as we careen around a corner. I think of the cars outside, pulling over to let us pass.
I wake up in a bed in a brightly lit room. Through the window, I can see the pink morning sky. Everything hurts. I want to call out, ask for some water, but my tongue is too thick. Everything hurts.
I wake up to the sound of humming, tuneless and breathy. I try to turn to face the source, but my head’s so heavy, and my neck is so stiff. A woman’s face appears over me, crinkly pearl skin, kind blue eyes.
“Look who’s awake! How you doing, sweetie? Nope, don’t try to talk—let me get you some water.”
She disappears from my field of vision, and I’m able to take in some more details. The half-open curtain surrounding the bed. The ancient-looking TV suspended over the bed. The IV stand beside me, its cord leading into the back of my hand.
Also coming into sharp focus is the pain. It’s everywhere—my feet, my face, my back—burning, stinging, throbbing pain screeching through my body, making it impossible to form a coherent thought.
“You’re in the hospital.” The woman—a nurse, presumably—is back. She hands me a glass of water with a straw. I have trouble wrapping my cracked lips around it. “That’s a girl,” says the nurse as I pull a small sip. My throat is so dry it’s hard to swallow, but once I get the first couple of sips down, it gets easier. “Good girl. My name’s Betty, I’m your nurse. What’s your name?”
“Cleo,” I croak.
“Cleo? Nice to meet you. Where’re you from, honey?”
“Vegas.”
“Vegas, as in Las Vegas?”
I nod.
“Well, you’re a long way from home, aren’t you? Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”
I try to think, but a thick fuzz covers my brain. Thoughts start to form, but then they dissipate, like trying to grasp smoke. I remember a parking lot. A patch of orange mushrooms. Kei. And then the dam of my memory breaks, and it all rushes back: Sue-Ellen in the rocks, the swim, Garrett hitting the ground like a sack of stones.
“Cleo, are you okay?”
I’m seized by panic as I remember everything. “My friends,” I say, my voice cracking. “Please, my friends! They’re still on the island. Sue-Ellen is stuck in the rocks, and Kei passed out, and Damian and Giovanni—”
“Slow down, honey, it’s okay.”
“Please, my friends, they need help!”
“Okay, your friends, where are they?”
“The island, the camp. Lake, um…” What was it called? “Pearl Lake! Camp Mini…Mini…”
“Camp Minisaabik?”
“Yes!”
“That place closed twenty years ago.”
There is so much I need to say, with so much urgency, that I don’t know where to start. “Kei needs insulin!” is what comes out first.
Betty puts the glass of water on the bedside table. “You have a friend at Camp Minisaabik who needs insulin?”
“Yes! No! He’s not at camp, he’s on the beach. But they’re all out of food! And Damian and Giovanni are lost in the woods! And Sue-Ellen, she’s stuck in the rocks with no water. And the Silver Fox is dead, oh my god, please, help them!”
