Chapter 14 #3
Mom rears backward. Tearing at the wall, she rips out a railroad spike and falls into a fighting stance.
She stalks forward, poised for battle like a middle-aged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and plants herself between me and her morbid bearskin rug of mirrors and wires and wrongness. Protecting her favorite child.
Some last vital thing in my chest cracks. Eyes stinging in my faraway body, I whisper, “How could you not know your own daughter?”
But how can I be surprised? Why would she?
She doesn’t believe what she can’t see, what she can’t test and record, instead tallying up my ever-lengthening series of disappointments.
To her, I’m a failed experiment in girl-shape.
She doesn’t know me—not the real me—just the version of me in her head that she keeps measuring my disappointing reality against. So, fine.
Let her have the science experiment she likes better.
The one that can’t disappoint her with all its messy hopes and dreams and inconvenient emotions.
Flooding back into my body, I stagger down the stairs, hook my numb fingers through the loop of Mothman Motel, Room 13. Shaking violently, fried with energy, the RV keys rattle in my fists, betraying my position with sleigh bell insistence.
No time to cover—no more time to waste—I fumble the front door open.
A thick, pillowy whiteness swallows the sidewalk, thick across the grass. I run into the yard barefoot, muscles tight, braced for cold. Only, it’s not snow—
It’s flowers.
A field of asphodel blinks starry eyes open to the night sky.
The trees lean close, thready fingers dark and washed of color.
The night bleeds mist, every dewy particle lit with a hidden rainbow, too-saturate in the single thread of moonlight washing over Bas’s shoulders, crouched at the bumper of the RV.
He doesn’t seem surprised to find flowers blooming at his feet. He surges upright, swings his backpack over his shoulders, crosses the distance between us in a single, huge leap.
“Are you all right?” His hands climb my body—forearms, biceps, shoulders—and land cupped around my jaw. “I’ve got you.”
His calluses trace the outline of my lips.
My soul settles beneath my skin at his touch, receding from my seams. I stop shaking so hard my teeth rattle and in the mossy silence, I hear the creak of flowers straining ever higher.
The moon burns so brightly, washing us in silver—but somehow, standing there with flowers climbing our knees, I’d swear his eyes were ringed in gold.
“We don’t have time,” I breathe. Regretfully, I peel his hand from my face, press the keys into his palm. “My mom will be here any second.”
Squeezing my hand, Bas nods. He spins around, gets the passenger door, and scrambles over the seat, sliding down behind the wheel.
I leap up behind him, slam the door shut and the lock down, for all that little lock’s going to protect us against my vampire-slaying mother when she finally storms outside.
“Do you even have your license yet?” I demand, tossing my carpetbag behind us into the living area.
Bas slots the keys into the ignition on his first try. The engine roars awake. Glancing over, he winks.
“Felonies, remember?” he says and floors it.
My back slams hard into the seat. The RV launches forward, clips a lawn chair out of the way, and barrels into my backyard. Bas smashes over the ornamental grass as I grope for my seat belt, veers around the swing set by the time I catch my breath enough to gasp, “What are you doing!”
My shaking hands won’t work right. I can’t get my damn seat belt slotted, the metal tongue chattering in the slot. Steering with one hand—casually, like a maniac—Bas reaches over and clicks it into place.
“We have a perfectly good driveway,” I snap. “You could have just turned around.”
Bas pauses at the lip of our yard, cranes his head to peer down the street. In the rearview mirror, I catch a glimpse of asphodel chasing our back bumper before he spins the wheel, cutting out onto the street.
“Rather not take the main roads right now,” he says, shoulders balled, leaning forward to better squint through the gaslit dark. “There’s a housing development that feeds into a subdivision down this way. Lots of RVs in there. No one’s gonna notice someone getting one ready for a long weekend.”
“At least turn the headlights on,” I protest. “You’re acting like someone’s chasing us.”
Bas flashes me a tight smile more worry than humor. My chest tightens, cold welling in my gut.
“Is someone chasing us?”
He wiggles a hand in the air.
“Maybe? Probably not,” he says and tries to smile again, but his eyes snap to a passing car.
His fist clamps hard on the wheel. He stares at the driver, eyes scanning, collecting every detail before the car flashes its headlights in irritation at us driving dark but otherwise passes without incident.
Carefully, I reach over, loop my fingers in the tense bend of his elbow. “Bas.”
“Okay,” he admits with a reluctant tip of his chin. “Not yet. It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“How many feds are watching our local news. How many of ’em believe a bunch of scared high school students about what they saw.” He glances at me, his mouth pinched down, whole body braced like a fighter before the bell. “And how many of ’em remember the Demeter Project.”