Chapter 52 When She’s Cold
When She’s Cold
Sascia is ten.
The gossamer veil of half sleep has draped over the world, casting a starlight glow on her surroundings.
Her grandparents’ house is always cozily warm, and so Sascia has rolled the comforter into a body pillow, hugging it with her arms and legs.
Lying on her side, she can look straight out the window.
She likes this view. The house sits at the end of a dirt road, far from town.
There is no source of light to hide the stars overhead or the woods below, where the narrow trunks of the birches grow close together, as though they are friends weaving their arms around each other.
The wind makes them sway as if loping in and out of some bucolic dance.
Between the tree trunks stands a figure.
Sascia knows it well by now. A figure clad in a black cloak of lustrous gems. A hallucination, according to the doctors.
She’s supposed to tell her parents when she sees it, and they’re supposed to take her to the doctor.
Dr. Diaz is a kind enough woman, funny even, but Sascia doesn’t like visiting her.
She always feels like she’s there to choose, between things that are real and things that are not.
It is warm as a furnace in the house, but outside, the temperature has dropped.
Grandpa Panos said there might even be snow tomorrow.
When Sascia is cold, and her parents are feeling indulgent, she gets a piece of chocolate.
She likes to place it on her tongue and work it against the roof of her mouth until it is a warm, melting, delicious goo.
She disentangles from her makeshift body pillow and tiptoes down the hall. When his grandchildren visit, her grandpa keeps a bowl of candy on the dining table with no restrictions whatsoever regarding when they can have a piece. Sascia chooses her favorite among them and hurries back to her room.
Cold air assaults her face as she props the window open—from the bed opposite hers, Ksenya lets out a disgruntled noise. Sascia places the candy on the sill and shoves the window back down.
Back in her nest of sheets and pillows, she watches the view. Waits for a glimpse of the figure in black. Sleep claims her long before she has a chance.
When she wakes, the sun glistens bright and eager across a blue sky. There’ll be no snow today; perhaps tomorrow. Her sister’s bed is empty. From the kitchen, Sascia can hear Ksenya and Danny and Grandpa chatting over cereal. She’s almost to the door when she remembers.
Her feet rush soundlessly over the carpet. The candy is no longer on the sill.
But there, beneath the window, by her grandma’s rosebushes, lies the wrapper, golden and emblazoned with a red-and-white Twix.