Where Silence Gathers (Some Quiet Place #2)(40)
Briana shifts gears and drives.
It isn’t until we’re back at the lake that someone actually speaks again. Her voice floats from the darkness of the backseat, sounding just as broken as I feel. “You guys don’t have to call me Georgiana anymore.”
Then she vomits.
FIFTEEN
The flag over the shop doorway snaps in the wind. The storm may have subsided for a few minutes, but it’s far from over.
I park my whining car, slam the door, and run up the stairs. The boards beneath my feet quake with every step. Angus stares at me from his window, something suspiciously like fear in his eyes. A dog barks in the distance. As I reach for the doorknob, the memory of that silhouette in the mouth of the mine presses in, along with the knowledge of Revenge’s betrayal. So much is happening that I don’t understand, so much is going on that I can’t control. I want to take my gun and shoot Nate Foster until he can’t haunt me anymore, but Forgiveness is there, hounding me every time I think about doing it. A scream is building up inside of me, higher and hotter and horrible in its intensity, but I can’t let it out.
In the entryway, I sit on the bench and yank my boots off. They leave trails of water on the floor. Then I’m standing, barely aware that all the lights are on and the sound of my aunt’s worried voice drowns out the television. Before I can escape to my room, Missy rushes out of the kitchen, the phone in her hand. That’s when I realize that my cell is ringing in my pocket. I hadn’t even heard it. Not once.
“Alex,” she breathes, stopping. Saul comes up behind her and wraps his arm around her shoulders. Relief and Anger and Worry crowd around them, watching me with luminous eyes like rats in the dark. I want to launch myself at them, claw those eyes out.
“ … can’t just vanish and expect us to be okay with it!” Missy is saying. She pushes a wet strand of hair away from her forehead, and that’s when I notice her clothes are just as wet as mine. They must have gone looking for me. My stomach sinks as I realize that I forgot to send the text. “We were worried. We’re responsible for you, and—”
“You’re not my mom.”
It feels like I’m floating above us, looking down, watching the words leave my mouth. Regret and Guilt instantly appear, surrounding me with their strange scents and assaulting me with their big hands, but it’s too late.
Saul’s face is thunderous. His entire body tenses, and I flinch. He doesn’t hit me, though. He wants to, I can tell, and I deserve it. But Saul is a good man. “Alexandra, you do not talk to your aunt that way,” he growls. A vein stands out on his temple.
A fraught silence falls between us. We can hear the town clock, always ticking and marking time even when it feels like time should stop. Dong. Dong. Dong. The rain begins again, tapping against the window over the sink. I imagine the voice in my head speaking in the language of those taps, whispering let me in, let me in. Saul and Missy wait and stare, expecting some kind of reaction. They look like two mannequins, plastic and fake and unmoving. We all do. For a moment I just stare at them blankly, wondering how this has happened.
I’m the first to become human again. This time, though, instead of trying to glue the pieces of us back together, I choose to say nothing. I squeak and drip down the hallway and into my room. Missy calls after me. I shut the door on her concern and turn the lock. The carpet is drenched, and a moment later I feel the bite of wind over my skin. Frowning, I turn. The window is open again. I didn’t leave it that way. But if someone was looking through my things again, I can’t tell—my room was messy to begin with. So much has happened today that I can only feel an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and resentment.
The Emotion stands in front of me, touching my chin. I tilt my head back so it rests against the door and ask him, “Which is worse, do you think? Feeling everything, or feeling nothing?”
“Feeling nothing,” Resentment answers without hesitation, his hairless scalp gleaming. “The most painful emotions are better than none at all. Ironically, we make you human.”
Absorbing this, I brush past him to close the window. When I turn around he’s gone, so I sit on the bed. The mattress springs squeak. Dampness penetrates my blankets and sheets from my clothes, but it doesn’t matter. The glint of Saul and Missy’s birthday gift taunts me for the hundredth time, and I finally shove it into the nightstand drawer.
Through the wall, I can hear Angus’s parents—Doug and Tina—fighting. That must be why Angus was watching for me. Another prick of guilt sends pain through my bones, and I sit with my back to the wall, looking at a jar on the floor and ignoring the current Emotion leaning over me. The jar had been in the art room at school, so vacant and forlorn; I couldn’t leave it there, not when I knew someone who would want it, give it a purpose. Whatever purpose Angus has for his empty jars. Somehow, though, I know there is one. I’ll give it to him soon … as something to remember me by.
“I don’t care if you’ve been working all day! You think I’m not tired? Just pick up your shit. I’m not a f*cking maid.” Angus’s mom must be in his room, since her voice is closer than usual. Her husband answers, the words muffled, but it has the effect of poison: lethal and instant. She shrieks back.
Their anger is too much for me to handle tonight, so I lean over and fumble for my laptop, intending to do more research on the flash drive. But then something across the room moves, and I look up. My reflection in the blank television screen stares back. It waits in the corner, expectant.