Chapter Forty-Nine Doom-Atory
Iwatch them go until the dark of the storm obscures them from view.
They make a ridiculous pair—Danson, so huge and serious and tough alongside Aguilar, so tiny and happy and a complete pushover. But, somehow, I get how they’re friends.
After they disappear, I finally head inside. Eva unrolled the tapestry on our living room floor, but it hasn’t changed since the last time I saw it—it’s still filled with manticores playing poker.
Still, I crouch down next to it and just watch it for a while, looking for…I don’t know what. Some clue as to why it changes, maybe. Or a hint of what it’s going to do next.
Eventually, though, exhaustion weighs me down, and I make my way back to the bedroom Eva and I share. She’s got Heartstopper playing on the TV, but when I head in to tell her everything that just happened, she’s already asleep, a chocolate chip cookie still in her hand.
I slip the cookie from her surprisingly tight grip and grab a blanket from the foot of my bed to cover her. Then I head into the bathroom for a shower so I can clean my newest wounds and try to get myself in some kind of state of mind to sleep.
But the second the hot water hits me, I start crying. It’s not completely unexpected—for as long as I can remember, the shower is the only place I let myself break down. The only place I let myself be vulnerable.
Still, tonight, I was kind of hoping for just a quick scrub and hair wash. I’m exhausted—physically and emotionally.
But that doesn’t seem to matter as everything that’s happened today wells up inside me.
It all hits me at once, and I don’t even try to stop the flood of tears that rolls out of me.
I cry for Serena, who died alone and probably terrified.
For Jude, who is more broken and tortured than even I knew.
For the flickers that seem hell-bent on torturing me—and for the little boy just looking for his father.
For the terror and the pain of being unmeshed…and the beauty of being held by Jude, even for a little while.
I cry for all of those reasons and for a bunch more I can’t even think about right now, like my broken relationship with my mom and how much I miss Carolina.
And when the tears run dry, I stand under the water until it runs cold and let it wash away the agony and the grief.
Only then do I turn the water off and focus on what I have to do to be ready for tomorrow.
I put my hair up in a towel and dry off before slipping into my favorite pair of rainbow polka-dot pajamas. Then I head into the kitchen and make myself a cup of my favorite barley tea. Jude’s always loved the stuff, and he got me hooked on it when we were ten or eleven.
I’ve been drinking it ever since—partly because I like the taste and partly because, in some small way, it makes me feel close to him…though I would have died before admitting that before today.
I spend the next few minutes drinking tea, packing my backpack for the evacuation, texting Luis, who is having trouble sleeping, and studiously avoiding thinking any more about the shit that happened today. Once I have my uniform, a few outfits, and my toiletries packed, I dry my hair, set my alarm, and then—finally—turn out the lights and crawl into bed.
Surprisingly, or maybe not after the day I’ve had, sleep claims me easily.
But sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up with my heart beating fast and a scream trapped in my dry throat. Mouth open, eyes wide, I scream and scream and scream, but nothing comes out.
Snakes.
So many snakes.
So many, many snakes.
Slithering all over me.
In my bed. In my hair. In my mouth.
I can feel one wrapped around my neck, and I reach up to claw it off, another scream rattling in my throat.
But there’s nothing there, just the collar of my pajamas and my own sleep-warm skin.
This time, I swallow back the scream and take a deep breath as I reach for the reading light next to my bed.
It was just a nightmare, I tell myself. Just a bad dream. They’re just figments of your imagination. They can’t actually hurt you.
I switch on the light so I can prove to myself that everything’s okay. Then I freak out because sitting in the middle of my bright-orange bedspread is a large, coiled, black snake. And it’s staring straight at me.
For a second, I just blink at it, convinced that I’m still trapped in the nightmare. But then it moves, its head swaying back and forth as its forked, black tongue darts out to smell the air. To smell me.
I leap out of bed and across the room so fast that my feet barely have the chance to touch the floor.
What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?
When I was twelve, I was bitten by a rattlesnake on the far side of the island. While Jude and Carolina got me to Aunt Claudia within half an hour, it was still a very unpleasant experience, and snakes have pretty much been one of my worst nightmares since then.
For a second, I think about waking Eva up to deal with it—she doesn’t like snakes, but she isn’t terrified of them the way I am—but that seems like really, really bad roommate karma.
I can do this.
I can do this.
The snake starts to creep across my comforter, and the scream that I swallowed back earlier escapes.
I slap a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound, and it must work because Eva only grumbles a little, swipes at her face, then rolls over and starts snoring all over again.
The snake is still sliding across my comforter, but it’s getting closer to the edge. Which means if I don’t do something soon, I’m going to spend the rest of the night searching for the damn thing in all the nooks and crannies of this room. And if I don’t find it, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting any more sleep tonight. Or, you know, ever.
I take a deep breath, count to three, and then go. I dive for my bed, grab the edges of my comforter, and wrap the snake up in it. Then I run through the cottage, open the front door, and throw the snake—and the comforter—out into the pouring rain.
Which is totally fine because there’s no way I’d be able to sleep with that bedspread ever again.
I slam the door and lock it—because that’s going to keep a wandering snake at bay—then lean back against it as I try to catch my breath. Except for yesterday when I was trying to outrun the snake monster, I don’t think I’ve ever run that fast in my life.
When I can finally breathe again, I grab a glass of water from the kitchen and sneak back into the bedroom. I try to decide if there’s any way I can get back in my bed tonight without changing the sheets.
Logic says it was just one snake, just one big, ugly snake, and that there’s no way another one is lurking under my bed or between my sheets. But logic and phobias don’t normally go hand in hand, and after sipping the water and catching my breath, I decide if I have any chance of catching a couple more hours sleep, the sheets have to go.
It takes about ten minutes to remake my bed and thoroughly—I mean, thoroughly—check my blankets and under the bed. But I’m finally satisfied that there will be no more surprises and crawl back in between the sheets and reach to turn off the light.
But just as I’m about to flip the switch, Eva makes a strange gasping noise.
I turn to check on her and watch in horror as she goes up in flames.