Aprilynne Pike: Earthbound

The people who say that have never lost anyone close to them.

My doctors know what happened, my physical therapist, Elizabeth, and of course Reese and Jay, but no one else. Fewer people to leak my location to the media, who would love to swoop in and grab an exclusive story, even months after the fact.

Well, I told Benson too. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Benson worked it out of me. Not exactly unwillingly. The closer I got to Benson, the more I wanted to tell him. To stop lying. When it finally came out, it was a huge relief. It was nice to tell the truth. Especially to someone I chose.

I haven’t mentioned to Reese that I spilled it all to him. I don’t know if she’d be mad or not—it’s my life, after all—but the fact that I’m not sure is reason enough for me not to tell her.

Besides, Benson will keep my secret.

Sometimes I think I need him—need our easy camaraderie—and that scares me.

Everyone I’ve ever needed in my life is dead.

As soon as I hit send, my eyes dart back to the tall boy on the porch with the little girl, but they’ve gone in. I try to shake off the bizarre melancholy that has enveloped me. I stare at the house—wishing, I guess, for the strangers to reappear—and just as I blink, something flashes over the door. I open my eyes wide, but the flash is gone.

No, not completely gone—

Almost like a shadow in my peripheral vision, so faint I have to blink a few times to make sure I see it, a shape glitters just above the door. A triangle.

And for reasons I can’t comprehend or explain, my heart begins to race.

Usually my nightmares are about the crash, about those moments I don’t remember. Sometimes I’m forced to watch as my parents’ bodies rip apart in slow motion, blood splattering across my eyes and painting my vision that unmistakable red. Sometimes it’s me—my hands—being crushed in the debris. They curl into unnatural angles, the bones snapping until they’re nothing but a mangled mass.

Which is what should have happened.

Maybe I’m morbid, but while I was in the hospital I spent a lot of time on the Internet looking at photos of the crash site. And even though the media didn’t get my name, they knew which seat I was in.

“According to analysts, the frame should have crumpled here, and here,” one reporter said as she pointed to two places on the frame of the cabin. “But instead you can see that the interior of the plane looks completely untouched. The passenger in 24F, who the airline will only confirm was a female minor, sustained life-threatening injuries but survived in this unlikely cocoon, which experts are at a loss to explain. It’s as though this section of the plane wasn’t in the crash at all.”

I stay away from the reports where they show the casualties. Rows and rows of bodies, sometimes with broken arms and legs flopping out from beneath the drapes. Those I simply can’t look at.

Part of me fears I’ll recognize my parents among the bodies: my mother’s left hand with her wedding ring, my father’s ankle with an army tattoo twisting up his calf.

Another part is just overwhelmed by guilt that out of 256 passengers, I was the only one who somehow survived.

But tonight there are no bodies, no blood.

There’s no plane at all.

I’m floating.

Floating in water. The ocean? A river? A lake? I can’t be sure.

But it’s cold. The kind of cold that feels more like a blade against your skin, flaying away your flesh and exposing your bones. Even though I somehow know it’s a dream, I shiver.

My hair is long and loose, billowing around me, and when I realize I’m being dragged under, I reach for items that are just suddenly there —a life jacket, a floating log, a small boat. But as soon as my fingers make contact, they pop out of existence, less real even than the dream. Exhausted, I simply flail in the water, but my hair gets wound around my arms, trapping me like ropes.

Something is pulling me down. I can’t tell if it’s a current or my heavy clothes. Why am I wearing heavy clothes?

I can’t stay afloat.

I fling my arms out, looking for something else to hold on to, but the water is rising. Or I’m sinking.

I raise my chin, desperate for one more breath, and see a big, bright moon shining down on me. Tears sting my eyes as I realize it’s the last thing I’m going to see before I die—but I don’t feel fear. I feel something else.

An aching loss.

This water is taking something from me.

I open my mouth to scream, but icy liquid rushes in, filling my throat and making my teeth ache all the way into my jaw. The surface closes over my face, but my eyes remain open, looking at the bright, silvery moon.

Desperate, I manage to rip my consciousness away from the dream and force my real eyes open, where a similar moon greets them. Thankfully, this one is shining through my window, not the wavering surface of icy water. My lungs burn and I suck in air as though I had actually been on the verge of drowning. As my heartbeat slows, I touch my forehead and find beads of sweat. It’s been weeks since I had a nightmare this bad.

Weeks. I remember when nightmares like this happened every few years .

And when they did, I had a mother’s bed to jump into.

I toss back the duvet, and even though a chill ripples up my legs when the night air hits them, the shock assures me that I’m awake—the nightmare is over. My feet are resting on solid wood, not flailing in the impenetrable blackness of a bottomless lake.

Lake—it was a lake.

But I push the thought away. I don’t want to dwell on the dream. Its effect on me is lingering too long anyway.

Everything’s been a little off since therapy. Talking about my parents does that.

No, I have to be honest with myself. It’s more than that. It’s that guy. That house. The triangle.

It’s been nagging at me all evening—like I’ve seen it before. But where? I rise on shaky limbs and cross through the shadowed room to the door.

Warm milk—the age-old remedy for nightmares.

In the kitchen I try to keep quiet, but when I hear a squeak on the stairs, I’m unsurprised to see Jay’s face poke around the doorway. “You okay?” my uncle asks softly.

“Nightmare,” I reply, waving my spoon at the microwave. It’s all I need to say. They’re used to it.

Jay steps fully into the kitchen, leaning one shoulder against the wall. There are light but definite shadows under his eyes.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I add, but he dismisses my apology and runs his fingers through his sleep-tousled hair.

“I was up anyway. Been feeling a little off—insomnia, you know. Maybe Reese is right and I’ve been working too hard,” he says with a self-deprecating grimace. “But the boss has everyone putting in extra hours on this new virus.” He wrinkles his forehead. “It’s … not like anything I’ve seen before.”

Jay’s got to be about thirty-five, but he looks like a twenty-something running around in big person clothes. If I saw him on the street, I’d never believe he was a scientist, but he’s actually some kind of specialized biochemist.

He’s nice, though. Easy to talk to.

I didn’t know him before my parents died. Reese’s mom and my grandpa got married after she and my dad were mostly grown up. I was like eight. Reese had just started college and lived on campus, and I didn’t even meet her for the first several years. So finally getting to know Reese and Jay has been great.

I just wish there’d been another reason.

“Plane crash again?” Jay asks softly, noticing the expression on my face.

I pull the door of the microwave open, stopping it two seconds before it finishes so it doesn’t beep and wake Reese up too. “Actually, no.” I reach for the porcelain canister of sugar and spoon a generous helping into my mug. “Drowning, of all things.” I avoid his eyes, stirring intently.