B.C. Johnson - Deadgirl

I slid into my mom’s car and jammed on the heater before I even looked around. Morgan was already in the car—Jacket-Guy had kept me later than I had guessed. I explained the situation to Morgan and Mom, who laughed and scolded me, respectively. I kicked the heater up to max, unsatisfied with its agonizing slowness.

“Hang on, Lulu,” Mom said, spouting a child nickname I didn’t particularly enjoy. “Relax! It’s not that cold.”

“Pssh,” I said. My teeth were rattling.

“I told you to wear something else.”

“Mom!”

We drove in relative, comfortable silence while Mom sang along to Elton John songs. We dropped off Morgan in front of her apartment/parental dungeon with a sad, reluctant wave. Mom parked, and as we climbed out of the car and scooted towards the front door of my house, trying to put as little distance between two heater-equipped areas as I could, the raw naked fear from the super-market hit me again.

I choked off a pained breath, grabbed Mom by the shoulders, and threw her down behind the hood of our car. She was fumbling with her keys when I grabbed her, and she fell to her knees with a pained yelp and flung them into the rose bushes.

Through the tiny space beneath my mom’s Green Goblin mobile, I saw the black tires of a white Lincoln turn onto our street. It rolled past my house without seeming to slow and swung left onto the street perpendicular to mine. When it was gone I jumped to my feet and ripped Mom back up to her feet.

“What the…Lucy!”

My eyes were locked in wide-eyed hysteria on the corner the Lincoln turned away on. I was frozen, and yet I couldn’t stop picturing the white Lincoln rolling backwards through the intersection. The street was empty, but my heart still raced like the devil.

“LUCY!”

I turned toward the screaming voice. The simple gesture broke the spell, and my lungs began to suck air again. Mom was the color of a freshly boiled lobster, and she cradled her badly scraped hand close to her stomach.

“Mom?”

“What the hell was that, Lucy? You almost broke my hand.”

She shoved her hand in front of my eyes. It didn’t look anywhere near broken, not even bruised, but it did have a nasty scrape creeping from knuckle to wrist.

“I’m…I’m sorry Mom. I just—”

I stopped. What had just happened? I didn’t exactly have a ready explanation.

“Sorry? Lucy, you just…you attacked me.”

“No, I was trying to hide you,” I said, and my voice sounded calmer than it should. I sounded crazy, even I knew that.

She puffed her cheeks and slammed her hands to her hips. “Hide me from what?”

“I thought—I thought I saw the car those guys had. The guys at the Set.”

Lying. Liar. I had no idea if the guys who attacked me even had a car. But it just popped into my head—it was the only thing I had that might not make me look like a total raving psycho. But what if it was them ? What if my…condition allowed me to sense my killers? Were they after me? Did they know?

“What? They had a car?”

“Uh—when they started to chase me. One ran to a car…but I think he changed his mind.”

“Lucy, are you okay?”

“Can we go inside?”

Mom frowned, clearly trying to fight between concern, anger, and worry that her daughter was a complete nutter-butter. Something won out, because she grabbed me by the elbow and rushed me into the house. It might have been none of those things, to be fair—it might have been the fear of a scene. Either way, when she shut the front door she spun the deadbolt closed without hesitation.

“Sit down, honey,” she said. “I’m gonna get you some water.”

I snatched the blanket from the couch and wrapped it around me tighter than a burial shroud.

“Mom,” I shouted. “Can you turn up the heater?”

“Sure, baby,” she said, though her voice sounded funny. Preoccupied.

In a couple minutes she brought me a glass of water, a cup of hot chocolate, and one diagonal of a turkey sandwich. She sat next to me on the couch with the other half of the sandwich on her plate and set it on the coffee table. I didn’t feel thirsty, but I quaffed the water to appease Mom. I clung to the burning mug of hot chocolate like the last train out of Hell. Though Hell was warm…

Hmm. Something to ponder.

Mom didn’t say anything for most of the night. She treated the scrape on her hand, ate her sandwich, and stared at me out of the corner of her eye. I wanted to be mad at her, but my brain was shutting down. I could feel it. The cold was pouring into every molecule of my body, and I couldn’t think beyond cold…cold… cold .

I skipped dinner, told my Mom I felt sick, and ran up to my room sometime before 7:30. A hot shower helped, but the chill of the water afterward shook my entire body with wracking muscle spasms. I put on two sets of long underwear, one of which I’d gotten last year from my uncle for a ski-trip to Big Bear. They were supposed to be rated for high-altitude mountain climbers. I threw my hugest pair of jeans over the long-johns, tugged on the big stupid furry boots that had been in fashion a year ago—but that I now despised—and pulled on a t-shirt, a flannel, a sweatshirt, and my giant purple parka. I even tightened the hood around my face when I jumped into bed. Sheet. Blanket. Comforter. Grandma’s quilt.

It took me half-an-hour to realize that I wasn’t warming up. I kept trying to deny it, trying to push away the ridiculous information. I knew that when you start cold and wrap yourself up it takes some time to get warm again, and so I tried to be patient and let it happen. It wasn’t happening. I waited another hour, curling my toes, rubbing my arms. I wasn’t too proud to get up, dig through my hope chest, and tug on a giant pair of mittens I’d had since I was nine-years-old.

An hour later, I took another hot shower. When I crawled back into bed, fully swathed in my layers of clothing, I was even colder.

Two hours later, I was on the edge of hysteria.

I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I’d grown deaf to the non-stop rattling of my teeth in my head. My hands, tucked between my frozen knees, creaked with agony. Stinging needles of pain streaked through my nose and my ears. My cheeks felt like they’d been burned.

I knew I should tell my mom. I knew I should go to the hospital. This wasn’t cold anymore—this was lethal. I knew if I did nothing I would die, and I knew that without the barest hint of hesitation.

But why didn’t I go downstairs and tell her? Why didn’t I scream for Dad?

I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to think it.

My phone buzzed on my nightstand. It took more effort than I would have guessed to palm the tiny phone with my mittened hands. I started laughing at the absurdity of it, but the ragged edge in my laughter made me clamp my mouth shut almost immediately. Get a grip, Luce. You’re losing it.

I turned the phone toward me—a text message from a number I didn’t recognize.

I frowned. I opened the message.

You’re Not Wrong, Luce.

I Hear the Beach is Nice This Time of Year.

And here we are. You have now reached cruising altitude and may unbuckle your seat belts and move around the cabin. Please remember that there is no in-flight movie, and there’s a good chance the pilot took the only parachute with him on his way out the hatch.

I dropped the phone on the bed.

When I breathed out, a white plume of frost twisted out of my mouth and floated away on unseen breezes.

“Fine,” I said, and lay back on the pillow.

The second I shut my eyes to try to sleep, I heard the waves.

No pop. No snap. No dramatic fade-up. Just nothing, and then waves. Like someone had changed channels.