Chapter Eleven #2
Cleo shrugs. “The weight of things is different for him.”
I don’t know what weight she’s referring to. I don’t know why a grumpy guy in a diner should find anything weighty, but then, I don’t know anything
about this place. Something that I feel like people should take into account given the whole never set foot in this place before thing, but words from my dream last night come back to me.
The Darlings aren’t like other families. Maybe the Bellamys aren’t, either.
Maybe this town really isn’t like other towns.
That doesn’t make it demons, mind you. I know what people think when I start mentioning things like that, even as a joke.
Cleo pulls the door open and holds it for me. Nora gives me an encouraging nudge inside.
I’m getting serious you were mentioned in the group chat energy now, never my favorite. There’s a kind of pity in the way they both look at me. A carefulness to how they’re talking to me that’s different from yesterday.
I want to panic, because my God, I know what that means. The careful looks and underlying pity. I don’t want it. Not here. Not anywhere.
Don’t overreact, I caution myself. You know what happens when you overreact.
Logan is sitting at the same booth as yesterday. There’s an empty plate in front of him, but a full mug of coffee. He is,
shockingly, not on his phone or his computer. Instead, he is staring across the booth.
To where Jack stands, arms crossed, of course, leaning against the end of the booth seat.
I want to believe they’ve become fast friends this very morning because Logan is forever finding easy friendships with whoever
he comes into contact. It’s one of his most irritating qualities.
But they are frowning at each other. Not very friendly. Not very Logan Darling, Esq., Golden Boy of him.
Nora moves around me and slides into the open seat across from Logan. Cleo slides in next to her, leaving me to sit next to
my brother in a communal diner booth wondering what the hell we’re all doing.
Logan glances at me as I settle in next to him. He nudges the full mug of coffee toward me. I want to pull a typical Lexi
and complain bitterly about any number of tragedies that have befallen me since I opened my eyes, the worst of which being
the continuing situation, but I need the shot of caffeine too badly. I take the mug and a sip and am devastated to discover
that it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had. Even without the sort of doctoring I would normally do if faced with drip coffee.
I don’t intend to share that with anyone.
There is a hushed kind of silence around us, but in this odd moment, I can feel us all shift our gazes toward Jack. Like he’s called this little gathering, and more than that, is its leader. A general
surveying his soldiers.
Hilarious. I’m almost cracking myself up.
The waitress, Marleen, appears with a tray full of plates and glasses and mugs and she says something in low tones to Jack.
They share a little laughter, which is fascinating. Jack . . . showing humor.
I think she might sit down with us, since she’s apparently friendly with Jack.
But she hands off the tray to Jack and then she’s off again in quick strides.
And I don’t have time to consider Jack’s friendliness with everyone else alive—okay, except maybe Logan—as Jack delivers the plates to Cleo and Nora.
They must have a usual order, I realize, and he must have known they were coming.
Why does everything feel so weird this morning? Jack continues to stand there while Nora and Cleo dig into their meals.
“We need to discuss protections,” Jack says, sounding as grim and serious as ever. “For everyone.”
His gaze, when it deigns to land on me, is too close to accusatory for my taste.
And still entirely too green.
But the word protections is echoing through me so I can’t really lean in to how unfair it feels that he’s looking at me that way.
“What do we need to be protected from?” I ask, trying to laugh. It sounds deranged even to my own ears, because . . . It was a dream.
But they all look at me like I’ve gone completely insane. A familiar reaction, all in all, but it doesn’t make sense. Usually,
this happens when I talk about my dreams like they’re real and discover—again—that they are just mine.
“Where were you last night?” Jack asks, a bit acerbically for my taste. “Because I was out following your bloody footprints all the way to
the flood wall and taking you to see my grandfather. Ring a bell, princess?”
I’m not sure I can take this in. Bloody footprints. Like he was there. And it was . . . real.
I look at my brother. My touchstone for all things real. His expression is grim.
“But it was a dream,” I whisper at him. Desperately.
The grimness in his expression softens, but only for a moment on me before he turns his gaze back to the women across the booth.
“Much as I’d like it to be a collective hysterical nightmare, apparently all this stuff is a real concern,” Logan says, and
I don’t love his tone. It’s the one he usually uses when he’s managing me—but that’s another indication that my dream last night was fucking real. He gestures toward Jack, then Nora and Cleo. “And these people are all in on it.”
“We aren’t in on anything,” Nora mutters under her breath. She smooths out her frustrated expression when we all look at her, but I get
caught on the fact that she can actually get frustrated. That she’s not always so nice. “The Feed happens to all of us. Whether we like it or not.”
The Feed.
Nora said the Feed. Just like Harrison did in my dream. I stare at her and suddenly I can hear the hideous slurping sounds that have haunted
my dreams my whole life. Not because they’re happening—thank God—but because those are the sounds the words the Feed bring to mind.
But I shove those revolting sounds aside because something way bigger is happening.
They’re all acting as if the events of my dream last night are something that actually occurred. And more, like it happened to all of us. Like Logan and Jack were really there. Like everything Harrison told us is real and true in the light of day.
You have to appease the demons, the old man said.
I look around the table. Everyone is serious. Everyone is . . . No one thinks that I dreamed last night. Jack, who hasn’t
exactly taken me under his gruff wing, remembers it like he was there. Because he was.
Because it was real.
All the things I convinced myself couldn’t be real, weren’t truly a threat anywhere but in my head, and were laughed at by anyone I confided in—except Logan—are suddenly . . . just what happened.
Like I’m not a lunatic after all.
Not in Midas, Iowa, anyway.
I lean forward across the table and meet Nora’s blue gaze. I want to reach out and grab her hands and hold on for dear life,
but I know better. I know how my impulsive actions tend to be received, particularly when I feel this wild beating of my heart.
Like too much panic and not enough sense. And I don’t want to scare Nora off.
“You . . . had the same dream I did last night?” I ask her, almost whispering it. I’ve been down this road too many times.
Showing my crazy parts and having them shoved back at me with a vengeance. I should know better.
Nora tilts her head. “Yours wasn’t a dream, Lexi. I dreamed what was happening to you,” Nora says, her gaze shifting briefly to Logan before it returns to me. “Kind of like I was there, but I wasn’t.”
It takes me a minute.
Maybe more than a minute, because I can’t accept this so easily. Too many years of not being taken seriously and, in fact,
being pathologized for the things in my head. Too many years of therapists and medications and interventions and low, concerned
conversations about psychiatric holds.
I would think that Logan must have told them to play along with my dreams. He’s likely already in their group chat. But . . . that doesn’t make sense. Nora seems like the type to coddle someone in the
midst of a psychotic breakdown, sure, and Cleo can apparently be friendly when she chooses.
But Jack Bellamy? No way. If he won’t even entertain my asking for an off-menu item, he’s certainly not going to pretend demons
exist for my peace of mind.
Demons. Slurping. Evil clock towers and flood walls with blood. All these things here in Midas that I recognize from my dreams are real. My heart is beating so hard it hurts. It’s not that I don’t believe them.
It’s that I want to believe them. Too much.
It’s that if I let myself believe . . . I have to close my eyes a moment and breathe. Find some kind of center.
“So, you’re expecting us to believe you dreamed what was actually happening to Lexi?” Logan asks her. I imagine that is what he sounds like when he cross-examines a witness
he wants to discredit.
I open my eyes and Nora has gone very . . . blank. While Cleo scowls at Logan. And as much as I love my brother and the way
he’s always stood up for me, I don’t love him aiming doubt at Nora.
I know too well what it’s like to be the one being treated that way.
I open my mouth to defend Nora, but Cleo beats me to it.
“I vote we feed him to the demons first.”
Logan scowls. Cleo smirks, and Nora leans forward very earnestly. “I do expect you to believe that,” she tells him. Very seriously,
looking right at him.
I am fascinated to watch my brother be the one to break eye contact first, to look away, almost like he’s ashamed.
Then Nora turns that earnest gaze to me. “It didn’t occur to us you didn’t know. We kind of thought you stayed away, well,
because you did know. Most people who leave can’t remember the truth about Midas. But your grandmother always told Harrison your father remembered
enough to keep you away. To keep you safe. And that the photos he sent her proved it. I suppose he could have been protecting
you, too.”
“Protecting us from . . . demons?” I reply, still not sure I can fully buy in to last night being real. In to deals made with founding families. Feeding every generation.
And a harbinger whose arrival warns it’s coming all over again.
And my father . . . knowing this?