Chapter Sixteen
I stay up far too late writing out all the dreams I can ever remember having. About clock towers, slurping, demons, darkness.
I try to dive into the details. I want something in my psyche to be the magical key that unlocks a two-century-old nightmare.
Admittedly, I want all these new people in my life to be impressed. I want everything I’ve seen to be for a reason.
But the act of writing it all out, diving into details, reminds me I had a therapist in my freshman year of high school who
wanted me to write down everything. The memory is kind of fuzzy, because the act of putting all my deepest terrors into words actually made me worse. I don’t
remember much of those months, except waking up to Logan tossing the notebook I’d written everything down in straight into
the fireplace—the flames eating up all those terrified words, even though it had been a particularly warm fall and it had
made our apartment sweltering hot.
You’re done with that, he’d told me. Firm and sure. A glimpse into the lawyer he’d be. The man he’d be. Even though he’d been a scrawny thing at
the time, not yet hitting that pubescent growth spurt.
He’d known it was killing me from the inside out, and he’d stopped it. For me.
Afterward, I remember feeling like I could breathe for the first time in all those months. I found knitting through an art
class not that much later and that was my introduction into textiles. Into expressing myself that way. The new therapist Dad
found me had been a better fit. The dreams had persisted, the way they always did, but it had been different. They were more
bearable when I wasn’t dealing with them twice—once while they were happening and then again on the page, sinking into the
horrors in my mind in too much detail.
Like I’m doing right now.
It’s a strange memory to come up, because tonight I don’t feel anything like I did back then. The words flow out of me, quickly
and easily. I should have grabbed Logan’s laptop to type it all out, but I’m on a roll, even as my hand starts to cramp.
I shake it out and write more.
Something about Midas makes putting my nightmares to paper feel cathartic now. Pages and pages of clock tower crumblings and
black smudges in the night. Waking up in unknown places. Eyes reflected in windows.
I shudder a little at some of the memories, but it doesn’t stop me. Because I have a job, and it feels sacred.
Jack asked me to do this thing, and that feels . . . weightier than it should.
When I think I’ve got it all down—at least for now, though I’m sure I’m forgetting things, too—I go to sleep, and I don’t
dream. I wake feeling almost . . . refreshed. For a moment I just lie in the strange bed, staring at the ceiling, taking stock of a body that doesn’t feel battered by another rough night of sleep.
I turn over and look at the notebook I spent hours writing in. Everything that ever labeled me as off in my life before coming to Midas. Right there in black-and-white. In my own handwriting.
Am I really going to hand that over to a man I barely know? Who I didn’t know existed a week ago?
I think of how Jack told me to do this, with all of that green intensity. I remember how sure I was that our hearts were beating
the same rhythm. And writing it all out felt completely different than it had the last time I tried it.
It wasn’t like I was reliving it this time. It was more like I was . . . drawing a map.
For Jack.
And also for Nora and Cleo and that grandmother of hers, my grandmother’s twin. For Harrison and the knitting shop and this
place where I don’t actually belong—though it feels like I do. Like it or not, I’m connected to these people and to this town.
Yet, that connection fills me with a purpose I don’t think I’ve ever had before, so I get up even though it’s early. Even
though I could no doubt lounge about all morning, dozing on and off, reveling in not dreaming and daylight sleeping.
But I get dressed and do my hair and makeup instead, listening to my favorite playlist full of songs of women learning to
trust themselves and fighting the world around them.
When I walk out into the living room, my notebook full of written-out dreams lodged under my arm, Logan is pacing, the old-fashioned
wall phone to his ear.
“Doug, you’re not hearing me,” Logan says into the receiver, sounding deceptively patient. He rolls his eyes at me, then waves me on.
I take it he’ll meet me at the diner when he’s off the phone with poor Doug. No doubt some first-year associate who hasn’t learned that when Logan Darling says jump, you damn well better ask how high.
I try to check the weather on my phone, but we still haven’t figured out the Wi-Fi situation, and nothing loads. I decide
layers are the way to go for Midwest fall and grab the cardigan Nora lent me yesterday. Maybe I’ll remember to return it.
I step out into another beautiful fall day. Crisp without being frigid, bright blue sky. I hear the sound of dry leaves skittering
across pavement in the light breeze, but with the sun it feels relaxing rather than creepy. I take a deep breath and smell
something faintly like fire—but again, in a pleasant way.
I decide to take all this as some kind of positive omen that people believing me is some kind of turning point. For everything.
I walk through the alley and across the street. The knitting shop isn’t open yet. Nothing really is on this section of the
street, except the diner. Cars are clustered out front.
A hard gust of wind blows, and I almost drop the notebook. I grip it more firmly as I cross the street. My gaze drifts up.
There’s a second story above the antique shop that I haven’t ventured up to yet, but something winks in the window. Reflected
light.
I try to figure out what it is, but someone grunts and I realize I’ve come to a stop right in front of the diner’s front door.
An older man, stooped over a cane with a dirty trucker hat slammed down over his ears, is glaring at me.
“Sorry,” I murmur, moving out of the way so he can exit.
He mutters something I don’t catch and harrumphs on his way past me. I don’t mean to watch his retreat, but something screeches. When I look behind me, he’s dragging his cane along the cement and something about the sound reminds me of nails on a chalkboard.
Of claws against stone.
I shudder at that unbidden thought and throw myself into the diner. It’s doing its usual brisk business. I think the same people must come
every day, order the same things, and have the same conversations. And I want to think that’s small-minded and boring, but
I feel a little jolt of jealousy that these people know their place in the world—and each other’s. That they belong here.
Of course, then I remember the whole Feed thing that comes along with all this belonging.
Jealousy is not the predominant feeling.
The diner is buzzing with the sound of all these familiar conversations. I look around, clutching my notebook to my chest,
suddenly feeling as out of place as that cane screeching across the pavement outside. Like I’ve made a serious mistake. I should have waited for Logan. I should have—
“Lexi.” I look toward the sound of that low voice and find Jack standing behind the counter. He doesn’t give me that trademark
scowl in greeting—an upgrade, I think—but it’s still a frown. He jerks his chin, a nonverbal come here that I would normally feel honor bound to resist on behalf of every woman ever, but I am holding a veritable manifesto of
all the things I’ve spent my life trying to hide, so obedience feels safer.
I move to sit on one of the stools at the counter, but that’s not what he means. He wants me to come behind the counter. Where he is. I can’t begin to parse why that feels . . . intimate. Or maybe I know that I shouldn’t parse it.
Either way, I try to keep my expression appropriately neutral as I move into the employees-only area.
“Sit,” he says, pointing to a stool in the corner, out of the way of the bustle of the kitchen.
Said bustle is comprised of Jack, the ever-present Marleen, who made him laugh yesterday, and a teenager with a mop of dark
hair who looks somehow both frazzled and helpless at the same time.
“You know Marleen,” Jack says, nodding to the redheaded woman who has her back to me. “That’s Braxton,” he adds, indicating
the teen, who smiles at me, then ducks his head.
Jack growls at him. This seems to be some kind of order, because Braxton hurries to grab a mug and then carefully walks it
over to me. He hands it out like some kind of offering he’s expecting I’ll refuse.
But it’s another latte like yesterday and that was amazing, so I take it with my murmured thanks. Braxton stands there awkwardly until Jack growls again, and then he hops to attention
and scurries out from the kitchen area toward the waiting customers.
Marleen hefts a tray full of loaded plates and then follows him out. If she glances at me, I don’t see it, but she seems to
leave an air of friendliness behind her anyway.
“So?” Jack asks me. “Is that it?” His gaze moves to the notebook I’m still clutching in one hand.
I nod. Part of me feels very pleased with myself and all the things I’ve recorded. Another part of me refuses to let go of
the notebook. “I’m not sure I remembered everything, and I feel like I should warn you what I remember might not all be pertinent.”
I should have edited this, I think. Or only included the dreams involving the clock tower. Why did I think I should vomit
every questionable memory into ink and paper to give to Jack, of all people?
“Lexi.” His voice has that weird edge to it—soft or kind or something that I need to start recognizing as pity, because what else can it be? But he’s looking at me very seriously, and there’s nothing like pity in his gaze. “Any little bit helps.”
Helps. That word feels so big and important. It makes me want to cry, if I’m honest. I’m a lot of things, but not one of them has
ever been a source of help. But according to all the things they told me last night, I can be now. I can choose the side I want.