Page 20

My mom’s necklace lay atop my heart, hot on my skin, the heat radiating to my core. Instinctively, I tugged it away from my chest and it cooled against my fingertips.

No trace remained of the strange sensation except a red mark on my chest, and that soon faded into my overall flush. I dipped my head back so the fan above my bed cooled my temples and cheeks. Steph, Carissa, Kelly, all the greatest surf legends greeted me from the barrels of the biggest waves on the posters taped onto every spare inch of my ceiling.

Half-open drawers and messy furniture tops around me almost threw me into another fit of terror. I’d meant to clean my room days ago but…priorities, surfing being the main one. Now my clothing was piled on the carpet like a fabric tsunami had hit.

Shielding myself in a cocoon of cool percale bedding, I checked my watch. Six AM. I forced my eyes shut, but the sting of my throat thrust them open, raw from the nightmare or the circulating air. My fingers found my water bottle on the nightstand. Empty, of course.

Tossing the sheets aside, I slid my feet into my cozy fleece slippers and shuffled down the hall. Pots and pans clattered in the kitchen—my dad must be getting a head start, a really big head start, on his annual birthday tradition. I lifted my nose but didn’t catch the waft of his famous paprika potatoes.

As I inched closer, something bit into my foot. I jerked back on instinct. A dirty fork lay in the middle of the hallway. Why was that there…? My thoughts trailed off as another glisten of silver caught my eye.

Scattered utensils littered the floor like shrapnel, leading to the checkerboard tile, which was splattered with food. My toes left the carpet and a spoon skimmed across the granite island. What the…?

Cupboards flew open, and the culprit wasn’t my tall, ungraceful dad surprising me with anything. It was the cobalt sprite from my dream.

Hoping reality would come crashing down harder than the plates now striking the ground, I pinched the inside of my arm. I didn’t wake; I didn’t snap out of anything. My wide eyes darted around—because this was my reality.

The realization unrooted me and I started backing away. Slow, cautious. “OW!”

A piece of glass from a splintered baking dish tore my skin.

The sprite’s head swiveled to face me, but its body stayed forward—some real exorcist shit. Keeping its distance, it hissed and bared its slimy fangs, black eyes swollen and lightless beneath a prominent hairless brow ridge.

Daybreak illuminated the creature’s leathery skin; a sickly blue, stretched so tight over its bald head I could count the veins in its scalp. Its glittery undertones shimmered in the spotlight, reflecting off the surfaces like a disco ball. My breath caught in my throat as it raised the spikes on its spine and hissed. Snapping its neck into place, it shot out an open window, and the dawn beamed it up like an ET.

The silence set in quicker than the disbelief. Quiet, yet also deafening.

I stared at the wreckage, done by something born of nightmares—because that’s what this was. No matter how hard I’d pinched myself to try and wake up, that’s what this had to be.

A dream. A bad, bad dream.

Or…maybe it wasn’t all in my head. Maybe I’d imagined the sprite, but then that meant I had made this mess. Maybe if I just picked an excuse my brain would stop churning, move on, and accept it.

A sting on my foot interrupted my panicked thoughts. My attention drifted to the tile and the small puddle of red that grew slowly beneath the soles of my feet.

Hobbling to the sink, I lifted myself onto the counter and put my toes under the faucet. A flare of pain shot through me as the water cleaned my minor wound. I picked the shards out of a callus, the glass clinking in the aluminum sink and somehow, at the same time, inside my skull. Crisp coastal air blew in through the window, brushing the curtains and raising the hairs on my arms.

With bated breath I waited for the Voices—I was sure this’d be their moment. But the sounds of the water and the wind and the reel of anticipation became nothing more than what they were.

“Not so fast,” I said aloud, hoping it’d induce a response. When it didn’t, I closed my eyes, ground my molars, and tried to lasso the noises with my mind instead, focusing on the dips and pitches, grabbing at the cracks and hums. A whisper had to be just one frequency away—it always was.

Ah ha! I heard a voice, hushed and invoking.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.” False alarm. That was my own.

When I opened my eyes, lightheadedness hit me so fast I almost fell off the counter.

I managed to swing my legs out to keep that from happening and once stable, rested my head against the side of a cabinet. I picked at my cuticles, flustered, tired, mostly desperate for some sort of explanation—it didn’t even have to be a rational one. I just wanted to get their take on what was real or an illusion. But no one wanted to speak to me.

Ignoring the throb in my head and the hole in my foot, I began disposing of the evidence. I grabbed a bottle of bleach and a trash bag, and with yellow-gloved hands I cleared the debris from the floor. Tile by tile, the traces of my encounter with the sprite disappeared.

Now at least things looked normal. Without the chaos I went back to wondering if it was a hallucination or reality, and which one I’d be more okay with.

“River, what are you doing?”

A gasp slipped out of me at my dad’s sudden presence. In the middle of cleaning, I hadn’t heard him come in.

Caught yellow-handed, I fumbled with my words. “Um, giving the kitchen a deep clean?”