3. #2
Claire turned away, so quickly that she twisted her foot in the thick plush of the hallway runner and almost lost her balance.
Her heart beat like she’d run a mile, her breath coming harshly enough that she was surprised the Ashburys below couldn’t hear it.
Claire shoved her palm over her mouth and box breathed.
That panic attack was bound to have its way, apparently.
Staring into the maw of the ocean, comprehending how huge it was, had tipped her over the edge she’d avoided while looking at the submarine.
Her jaw mashed together. Just the ocean, vast and empty. Just Elias’s father and uncles, doing some midnight stretching.
She didn’t want to look again. If she looked again, she might see something, or might think more on how weird it was that the Ashburys were down there, and she didn’t want to do either of those things. Had decided that she would not.
Going down to the ground floor to sleep was no longer an option, but Claire wasn’t about to go back in her room.
Instead, she walked down the corridor in the opposite direction of the elevator and the stairs, hugging close to the wall and making her footfalls as soft as possible, almost on tiptoe.
She trailed her hand over doorknobs, counting them absently, like someone else might count sheep.
The tiny cloister rooms were locked; the knobs held still beneath her fingers.
Until she reached the end of the hallway. Then the knob turned under her hand.
Claire froze. At first, she thought someone on the other side must be opening the door, another Ashbury creeping out to go do whatever the brothers were doing downstairs (midnight yoga, maybe sleepwalking, surely explainable). But when she pulled her hand away, the door stayed closed.
The one unlocked room in the hallway.
She stood there a moment, trying to figure out what about that set alarm bells ringing in her head. But then she heard the footsteps on the stairs.
It was instinct, small and animal, a decision her body made without her brain’s input. Claire opened the unlocked door and ducked inside.
○ ○ 2. ○ ○
The darkness here didn’t feel as cloying as it had in her room, like it had more space to expand.
This room must be bigger. Relief made her sag against the door, pressing her forehead into the wood, her back to the room.
Claire huffed a small, bewildered laugh; God, she was jumpy.
There was no reason for her to hide from the Ashburys; surely they’d understand a little sleeplessness.
That last part was a forced thought, the words scrolling across her mind like on a movie marquee even as she knew they were false.
Something you made yourself think to cover up everything beneath it, drown it out.
Another coping mechanism she’d never mentioned to Dr. Lark, knowing it would be frowned upon.
Claire sighed, then fumbled her hand at the wall by the door. Her fingers hit a light switch, and she turned around.
For a minute, she thought she was looking in a mirror.
Never mind that the Claire Sutherland across from her was nearly fifteen years gone, a gangly kid on the edge of puberty with hair lighter and shorter than Claire’s was now.
For a minute, she was thirteen again, newly orphaned and staring into herself like she wasn’t sure what she was seeing, wasn’t sure what should be swimming behind her eyes.
Then she realized it was a picture. A picture of her. The one that had run in all the tabloids after the accident, a seventh-grade photo taken by a bored photographer in front of a fake background of autumnal woods. Her hair was frizzy, her teeth capped in braces with neon rubber bands.
And it wasn’t just the picture—this was the cover of one of those tabloids, blown up to poster proportions. “ASTONISHING RESCUE,” the garish font screamed across her badly cut bangs. “TEENAGER ONLY SURVIVOR OF HORRIFYING SHIPWRECK! WASHED UP ON THE BEACH IN A TACKLE CHEST!”
Her heart slammed against her ribs like something caged; her breath caught in her throat like an anchor dragging ground.
Breathe, she ordered herself, crouching on the floor, hands fluttering uselessly at her chest. Breathe.
But breathing deeply hadn’t been an option when she was stuck in her dad’s giant tackle chest, made seemingly cavernous once the fishing supplies had been emptied and she’d climbed inside, thinking it would be the perfect hiding spot…
Panic had erased blocks of memory like a bright rectangle of Wite-Out on a term paper, emphasizing that something should be there and was not.
But there were snatches of sensory overload.
The sick pitching of the boat back and forth as waves smacked against the hull.
Her hands slamming against the lid until her skin broke and bled.
Her Oreos smashed to sticky pulp beneath her drumming feet, paperback swelled like rotting flesh, book light doused, Polaroid bleeding color.
Free-floating in the water, the roar and slosh, the boom of thunder and crack of lightning.
The ocean seeping into the corners of the not-quite-watertight chest, bringing the smells of motor oil and blood and brine.
And a voice.
The chest should’ve been her coffin—instead, it’d carried her to a miraculously populated shore, sunbathers gathering around an oddity only for it to finally pop open on her bloodied face.
That part Claire remembered clearly. She remembered the coastline sun slicing into her eyes, she remembered the crowd of shadows pressing in to see, and she remembered opening her mouth and screaming so hard she nearly ruptured her throat.
Haddie and Mom and Dad were gone. There were Aunt Margo, and a small life insurance payout, and a week of news interviews before Claire begged to be released from them, unable to stomach telling the story one more time.
And then there was Claire, alone and untethered, something fundamental broken in her. Broken beyond repair.
ASTONISHING RESCUE. HORRIBLE TRAGEDY. THREE DAYS AT SEA. DEAD MEN TELL NO—
“Claire?”
○ ○ 3. ○ ○