Chapter Twenty #2
In a wash of horror, Lucy pieced together the last events she could remember.
Vanya had fed from her again. He had undone everything Mila had risked her life to give Lucy.
She remembered trying to lock the door, the way she had been taught.
But that door was wide open. He was inside now.
She could feel his fingerprints everywhere.
She remembered his voice, telling her to bring Athena.
And she wanted to.
Of course she wanted to.
Lucy lunged for the dresser, where her purse was tucked neatly against the wall.
She’d been messing up Mila’s neatly ordered bedside those past few days.
Her allergy medications were in one corner, her ChapStick in another.
She gathered them up quickly, nearly knocking Mila’s dorm telephone to the floor.
She didn’t need any of these things, none of them.
But she wasn’t coming back here, so she had to leave Mila’s dorm the way she found it.
She shouldn’t have to deal with Lucy’s things when she came back.
She scooped up her phone, flung it into her purse, and ran.
It was still full dark on the mountain. So many things had happened that it felt as if morning should have come hours ago. But the big, backlit clock in the quad courtyard read three thirty a.m. Almost two hours to sunrise.
She kept her head angled toward the ground as she walked.
She didn’t want to risk meeting anyone’s eyes, didn’t want to risk turning the red voice’s hunger on anyone else.
There was nothing to risk, though. No one else was out this late.
There were no footsteps around her, no foggy breaths in the cold night air.
It felt as if no one else on the Rollins campus was awake.
Though someone was awake. Lucy could feel her, pacing in her broadcast studio.
Bring her to me, said the red voice.
Lucy broke into a run, toward the woods.
All the way there, she didn’t encounter a single soul, wandering late.
It was good, of course. It was a relief.
But it would have been nice, she thought, if she could have seen one last friendly face.
It wouldn’t have been smart. It just would have been nice.
Dead leaves crunched under her feet as she pushed herself up the steep hill a few yards from the tree line.
Her footsteps were slowing. The wave of adrenaline that had carried her out here was waning, and without it, the cold weight of her body had started to pull her down.
Her legs shook as she reached the top of the hill.
As she slowed to a stop, she studied the other side of the hill a few feet ahead.
It would have been a long way down. It was a much steeper drop on this side than the side she’d climbed, lined with rocks and jutting tree roots.
The distance probably wouldn’t be lethal if she fell.
But if she hit one of those rocks or one of those tree roots the wrong way—Well. All of this would be over.
The sound that escaped her then was one she’d never heard from her own mouth before. A jagged sound, like the way her mother had cried at her own mother’s funeral. How was it that after all this, she still didn’t want to die?
She lowered herself to the ground, and she huddled tight to herself. The cold in her was too deep to reach, or to warm. But it felt good to sit. It eased the nausea a little. Maybe now that she’d caught her breath, she could think more clearly.
So she tried again. Pulled her phone out of her purse and opened her text thread with Athena. Her fingers froze halfway. Why was it her responsibility to warn Athena about any of this? All of it, from the moment she started that radio show, had been her choice. This was only the natural conclusion.
Lucy locked her phone while she still could. It was no use. She could barely think Athena’s name without letting the red voice in. And if she went back to campus—
And if she didn’t? Even if she was able to keep Athena safe, that left Mila alone, unarmed. Lucy thought about Natalie, about the way she’d calmly walked into Sadie and Addison’s arms. And Natalie hadn’t been drained of her blood just hours beforehand.
Lucy’s ragged breaths fogged up the lock-screen photo on her phone.
She ran a finger across it, clearing the image of her smiling face next to Jillian’s.
Their cheeks were pressed together for a selfie.
Lucy’s fingers were raised in a peace sign.
Jillian’s fingers were barely visible at the bottom of the image, resting against Lucy’s shoulder.
Lucy had meant to change the lock screen after they fought.
But when the thought of it had been unbearable, she’d left it as it was.
If you want to call her back, you should call her back, Mila had said. She hadn’t said while you still can, but Lucy had known exactly what she meant. Lucy just hadn’t thought that her last chance would come so soon.
It was 3:45. She knew it would scare her mother to hear the phone at this hour. But it couldn’t be helped.
The phone rang two and a half times. Probably just long enough for Jillian to jolt awake, look at the caller ID, and pick up. “What’s wrong?” she said. Her voice was still thick with sleep. “Are you okay?”
Lucy’s heart broke to hear it. It broke in a way that she thought it had stopped breaking for Jillian a long time ago. She was so scared, all the time. Lucy understood that it wasn’t her responsibility that her mother was scared. But now, when she had no more energy for resentment, it just hurt.
“I’m okay, Mom.” She shifted. The damp leaves were soaking into the fabric of her leggings. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I just—I feel bad about where we left off. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
“No.” She could hear movement on the other end of the line. Her mother sitting up, maybe. “No, we can talk now. I wasn’t sure if you…Well. How’s your stomach?”
She smiled into the line. Right. Mila had made up some stomach bug in the name of parental intervention. “Much better,” she lied. “Just a twenty-four-hour thing.”
In the brief silence that followed, Lucy could almost see her mother’s face, trying to figure out what to say.
Lucy knew the feeling. “I’m sorry” was what her mother finally said.
“I’ve been horrible. Of course I know you weren’t waiting for your grandfather to die.
That was a terrible thing for me to say. ”
“Oh,” Lucy said, a little taken aback. Right. That text that had upset her so much, that day of the party. She’d completely forgotten it. “It’s okay. I mean…not okay, but…don’t worry about it anymore. I know you didn’t mean it.”
“But I have been worrying about it,” Jillian said. “My dad—he said something to me, before he died. He said you were going to fly the nest one way or another, and I could choose how far. He knew I was going to drive you away. And he was right.”
“That’s the thing though, Mom,” Lucy said.
Yesterday she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to put any of this into words.
Now it was pouring out of her. “I guess what I’ve been trying to explain to you is that the distance isn’t a punishment.
I wasn’t looking at a map thinking, What’s the farthest away I could possibly be from my mother?
But…I did need to be somewhere away. I just thought the best place for me to be away was here. ”
“I get that. I heard you, I swear. I just don’t understand it.
” Her voice was still a little sleep-blurred.
Maybe that was why she sounded confused instead of hurt.
“I don’t understand what you can get there that you couldn’t get here.
There are other schools that you’d like.
Schools closer to your aunts and uncles, or friends of mine.
Places where someone could look out for you. ”
Lucy closed her eyes. Her head was starting to throb again, making it that much harder to get the words right. But she had to get them right. She wasn’t going to get another try.
“There are things I’ve never done, Mom. Until I got here last week, I’d never seen mountains in person.
And according to a Californian I talked to the other day, the Appalachians are ‘barely mountains anyway,’ so apparently I could go see even bigger mountains, if I wanted to.
I’ve never been in a place without cell phone signal, I’ve—” She laughed wryly as she shivered.
“I’ve been cold before, but I’ve never seen snow.
I know there’s a lot of sadness in our home.
But I didn’t just want to get away. I wanted to be somewhere where I could see past it.
I wanted to know what might make me happy.
Not knowing what I wanted…it felt like being dead. ”
The next throb was the sharpest yet. Enough to draw a little gasp out of her. “Lucy?” Jillian asked.
“Sorry.” Lucy breathed slowly. Whatever respite the woods had given her was quickly evaporating.
“I just wanted to tell you—I want this for you too. You know? I want you to see beyond the sadness in that house. You’re allowed to figure out what you want.
You’re not leaving Grandma or Grandpa or Dad behind if you figure out what you want. ”
Her chest clenched. It felt so strange, so surreal to explain a hope that she was watching shrink away in real time. She wished she’d taken Laurentius’s offer while it was still her choice to make. Although even now, she couldn’t say if she wanted it.
It took her by surprise when her mother spoke again. There was a firmness in her voice that Lucy barely recognized. “Lucy, I’m getting online and buying a plane ticket now. Can you tell me how I can get to campus from the airport?”
“Mom?” Lucy’s heart jolted. “I just told you—”