No One Knows Us Here(83)

Sam took me in his arms again. He was whispering something in my ear, but whatever it was, it seemed like it was coming from very far away.



I don’t remember the drive to my apartment, but there must have been one, because the next thing I knew, there we were.

“She won’t stop shivering,” I heard Sam say.

“What’s going on?” Wendy asked. “What happened to her face?” She waved her hands in front of me. “Rosemary? Hey! Look at me! What’s wrong with her?”

I felt a thick quilt wrapping around me, and then I was being lifted up and deposited on the couch. I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t even close my eyes, but the next few hours passed by in a murky, distorted way, as if I were an extra in someone else’s dream. Sam’s and Wendy’s footsteps thumped over the hardwood floors.

Sam came back to me. He placed a warm hand on my forehead. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

I may have dozed off in the car. I don’t know. They set me up in the back seat, fastened my seat belt, and arranged blankets around me like I was some dying child in a British historical drama. I had stopped shivering by then, but the chill hadn’t left my bones. They felt frozen all the way through.

Sam drove us out of the city, away from the lights, and into the forest. They didn’t turn on the radio. I could hear their voices, murmuring, but couldn’t make out any of the words. I turned my head and watched out the window. We wound through the woods, the trees looming over on either side of the road. I couldn’t see the sky at all.

Then we left the forest, and the road opened up before us, a black strip with a yellow line dotted down the middle. Wendy and Sam had stopped talking, and all I could hear was the sound of tires and the engine humming. We were the only car on the road at this hour, and I remember thinking that this was a good thing. I didn’t know where we were going, where Sam was taking me. This was good, too. It was better not to know.





CHAPTER 27


I woke up in an unfamiliar bed, unsure whether it was day or night. I opened my eyes for just a split second and then closed them again. It seemed like several days had passed. Years, even. If I could drag myself out of bed and look at myself in the mirror, I’d see an old woman, gray hair down to the floor.

I’d had dreams, a confusing jumble of dreams, just flashes of sounds and pictures with no story at all. My throat was dry, completely desiccated. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make a sound. The thirst was unbearable, but I was pinned to the bed by the sheets. I couldn’t move.

I drifted off again, not quite into sleep, but into some twilight world where sleep and waking blurred together. I heard his voice, the voice of my stepfather. I could feel his hands over me, smoothing the sheets over my body, tucking them in under the mattress. I lay still. If I lay like this, I could sink down, through the bed. I could disappear. Snug as a bug in a rug, he whispered.

“No!” I yelled. And then I did what I had never done back then, back when I was a kid. I thrashed in that bed, kicking my legs, punching with my fists. “No!” I yelled, and my voice was dry and cracked, but it was loud all the same. The sheets ripped out from the mattress, loosening their hold on me, and still I kicked. My feet battled with the sheets until they were defeated, a damp and crumpled lump on the floor.

Someone murmuring. A door opening and closing. Rosemary, they were saying. It was just a dream. You were having a bad dream. Someone held a glass of water to my lips, and I drank in sloppy gulps. “Slow down. It’s okay.” It was Wendy.

I opened my eyes and saw Wendy and Sam standing over me. Wendy put a cool hand on my forehead. “She’s burning up,” she said.

“Give her more water.”

Wendy placed the glass to my lips again. I took it from her and tried to sit up. Wendy and Sam looked at each other.

“We should call a doctor,” Wendy said.

“We can’t.” Sam’s words came out clipped. Panicked. “We can’t call anybody.”

My eyes drifted closed again. Their voices sounded too loud. I wanted them to leave me alone, let me sleep. I tried to tell them, but my words came out as a grunt. “Okay, okay.” I felt Sam’s hand smoothing my hair. “Lie back down.”

“I’ll remake her bed,” Wendy said.

“No!” My eyes opened, as wide as they would go. “No sheets.” That was the last thing I remember before fading back out.



I woke up shivering. This time was different, as if I’d been stitched back together in my sleep. The shapes in the room wouldn’t come into focus. I switched on a bedside lamp and squinted until my eyes adjusted to the light. The room was rustic, like a ski lodge. The bed was made out of logs. A hunter-green tapestry hung on the wall, something woven out of rough wool.

Someone had dressed me in a flannel nightgown. I didn’t own a flannel nightgown, certainly nothing like this one, a navy-blue plaid like furniture upholstery from a boy’s bedroom. Long, down to the floor, with a ruffle at the hem. Yoked collar with buttons up to the neck. I was wearing different underwear, too, a plain pair of cotton briefs.

I changed into some long underwear and an oversize sweater folded neatly on a chair next to the bed and crept down a hallway and into a bathroom. A tiny collection of travel toiletries lay arranged on a folded washcloth: new toothbrush, miniature tube of toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner.