Breathless (4 page)

Absently, I touched my bandaged shoulder and winced at the biting shards of pain that exploded under my fingertips. Yes, Mom, it hurt—and I relished each agonizing second. The pain reminded me I could stil feel—something I thought I had lost a long time ago.

***

Late that night, I lay in bed and watched the shadows cast by the moon dance across my ceiling. One of the benefits of having the master bedroom was the sliding glass door that opened to the outdoors. I liked to keep the vertical blinds pushed to the side so I could invite the moon in, the light unobstructed.

Tonight, however, I didn’t find the dancing shapes, usual y a beautiful kaleidoscope, to be comforting. Tonight, the shadows of branches from the tree outside my window reached for me like claws from my ceiling. I tried to shrink deeper into my bed and pul ed my covers up to my chin as the reaching fingers appeared to peel from the wal s and inch their way closer.

Afraid of shadows?
Sir’s voice thundered inside my head.
You’re pathetic.

I shivered, despite the warmth of the March night, and clenched my eyes shut. Maybe I was pathetic. After al , there were no such things as monsters. I closed my eyes and wil ed myself to fal asleep.

The wind shifted, and I heard movement in the yard. “Only the trees,” I whispered to no one.

A twig snapped outside the window behind my headboard, the sudden sound forcing a whimper from my throat. I rol ed onto my good shoulder, away from the door, and slowly opened my eyes.

A human-sized shadow stood motionless against my wal .

I quickly snapped my eyes shut and swal owed the scream that lay just inside my lips. Al I needed was to give Sir one more reason to ship me off to military school—seeing shadows come to life would certainly do just that. It had to be a hal ucination—a side-effect of my pain medication.

I opened my eyes to be sure. The shadow remained.

“This is not happening,” I whispered. Then louder, “You’re not real.”

As if sensing my disbelief, the shadowy figure raised its arm; the soft thump of its hand against the glass seemed to jar my bones loose from my skin. I struggled to swal ow against the lump of fear stuck in my throat. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be real—it wasn’t possible. My imagination had to be playing tricks on me.

The shadow cocked its head, waiting.

“Go away.” My lips trembled, distorting my words. I tried again, louder. “Go away.” And when it didn’t move, I added, “Please.”

The hand dropped. The squeal of skin sliding against glass clenched the muscles in my chest and made me shiver. How could a figment of my imagination make so much noise? Slowly, as if waiting for me to change my mind, whomever—or whatever—it was took several steps back, then hesitated.

“Go,” I whispered, hoping my voice could be heard above the hammering of my heart that seemed to echo against the wal s of my room.

The figure appeared to nod, then shrank from view until its form was absorbed by the darkness of my room. Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to look outside for fear that I would see the black eyes whose gaze I’d felt pressed against me.

“I’m losing my mind,” I said out loud, which made me giggle. Talking to myself was just another symptom of insanity. Or a brain way overdosed on pain meds.

Something rustled through the grass outside the door and I nearly choked on what was left of my laughter. The brief lul had al owed me to gather the little courage I possessed, and, with more difficulty than I’d expected, I pushed up on my elbows and looked outside. Empty darkness greeted me.

I settled back against my pil ow and sighed. The night was eerily silent; even the bul frogs had stopped their serenades. I shivered and hugged my covers tighter. My only hope was that sleep would come and take me out from under the watching eyes of the stranger stil lurking in the night.

God, pain meds were wild.

Chapter 6

The morning sun barged into my room like an unwanted guest. I rubbed my gritty eyes with the back of my hand and yawned. I had a brief but deliriously happy moment, right before I became ful y awake, where I convinced myself that the previous day was nothing more but a horrible nightmare. Then I tried to sit up. My aching shoulder brought the painful reality crashing down on me.

Quietly sobbing, I fel into my pil ow as a flood of images of yesterday’s accident pushed through my mind. I could stil hear their screams. I rol ed my head back and forth against my pil ow in the hopes that I could loosen the terrified cries that gripped my mind with razor-edged talons.

Sir said kids had died. The image of Gabriel e’s bikini-clad body strung from the buoy surfaced, forcing tears through my tightly clenched lashes.

Had she survived? She wasn’t my pick for Humanitarian of the Year, but being a bitch didn’t mean you deserved to have your life cut off at sixteen. If it did, half of the girls I knew would be dead.

I started to push myself up out of my bed when a knock sounded outside my door. “Yes?” I quickly dabbed at the tears in my eyes with the corner of my blanket.

The door opened, and my mother tentatively stuck her head in. “You’re up!” Her smile brightened. “I’ve been checking on you al morning. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” She ducked out of the doorway and reappeared, holding a tray with a bowl of something steaming. It smel ed like chicken soup.

My stomach roared to life. “Soup for breakfast?” I asked, then yawned.

“It’s not breakfast, sil y.” Mom set the tray over my lap and adjusted my pil ows so I could sit up. “It’s now past noon,” she said as I picked up the spoon.

I dropped the spoon against the bowl. The tinkle of metal against porcelain sent stabs of anxious energy through my nerve endings. “Sir?” If he was around, there would be hel to pay for sleeping the morning away.

She waved away the question. “He knew you needed your rest, so he thought it best not to wake you when he left for work.”

I picked the spoon back up and dug out a carrot from the pool of broth. Why did Mom always talk about Sir as if he was someone else? It was almost as if by saying those things she could trick herself into believing Sir cared, when it was far more likely he was more concerned about the shine of his boots than the wel being of his stepdaughter.

Mom smoothed a lock of my bed-mangled hair behind my ear. “How did you sleep, honey?”

The image of the shadowed figure beckoning me from outside appeared in my mind. I froze with the spoon halfway through my lips, a piece of celery pressed against the roof of my mouth. A lump knotted in my throat and I struggled not to choke on it when I final y managed to swal ow.

Mom frowned. “Do I need to cal the doctor?”

I shook my head. “I had some pretty bad nightmares, that’s al .”

She chewed on her lip for a moment before she clasped her hands and smiled. “We haven’t done Dog of the Day yet!”

Happy about the change of subject, I swal owed another bite of soup and watched her grab the daily calendar of dog breeds from my desk. She carried it to my bed and sat next to me, careful not to disturb the soup.

Dog of the Day was something Mom and I had started at the beginning of the year after she’d found the calendar on a sales rack at the book store. I’d wanted a dog for as long as I could remember, but Sir didn’t al ow pets. So Mom had bought me the calendar, which detailed a different dog breed for every day of the year. She’d explained I could use the calendar as research to find the perfect dog, so when I had my own place I’d know exactly what kind of dog to get. So far I’d yet to discover the perfect breed.

“Let’s see.” Mom tore off yesterday’s dog—the Shetland Sheepdog—and set the paper aside. “Today’s dog is the Chow Chow.” She showed me a picture of something that looked more like the lion from
The Wizard of Oz
than a dog
.

“He’s so cute!” I grinned.

Mom nodded. “He sure is. It says here that the Chow Chow originated from Mongolia. They were bred for hunting but may also have been used for fighting. Here, listen: ‘The Chow Chow is loyal and affectionate only to those it bonds with and may not take wel to newcomers. If not from a good breeding line, the Chow Chow may be dominant and aggressive.’”

Disappointed, I spooned more broth into my mouth. The Chow Chow was definitely not
The One.
“It sounds like a dog version of Sir.”

Mom stood. “Because it’s loyal?”

“Mmm-hmm.” I rol ed my eyes when she turned to place the calendar back on my desk.

She walked back to the side of my bed. “So how about it, Edi-girl? Is the Chow Chow the dog for you?”

“Nope.” I pushed the bowl away and Mom removed the tray. “Maybe tomorrow’s dog.”

She nodded. “Maybe tomorrow.” She was almost to my bedroom door when she stopped abruptly, her focus narrowing in on the glass sliding door. “Edith.” She tsked. “You know how hard I work to keep this place clean for your father.”

Of course I did. Every Sunday the two of us spent the day scrubbing and dusting to keep the house clean enough to pass a white glove-inspection, which incidental y, Sir only performed once a year. I fol owed her gaze to the floor in front of the door, thinking that I might have tracked some grass or sand in from outside, but the carpet remained bare.

She set the tray on my dresser, walked to the door, and inspected the glass. That’s when I saw it—a handprint in the exact location where the shadowy figure had pressed its palm to the glass last night. It hadn’t been a dream after al .

My blood turned to mercury—heavy, thick—and threatening to rupture my veins. I wrapped my arms around my body and shuddered.

Mom tsked again and made her way back to my bedroom door. “I’l get the glass cleaner. Just make sure you use the door handle, honey. Keep your hands off the glass.”

I nodded, trying to suppress the shivers that raised goose bumps along my arms.

“Good girl.” She opened my door and grabbed the tray from my dresser. “Be careful, okay?”

I hitched my blanket under my chin and nodded again. Now that I knew the late night visitor had been real, I had to figure out what he was doing in the back yard. Was he a burglar? Or worse, some type of perv? Neither one of those options was good. I only hoped that because I’d spotted him, he’d be too spooked to come back. Either way, Mom was right. I needed to be prepared.

***

I spent the rest of the thumbing through a stack of old women’s magazines that Mom had pul ed from her col ection, and trying to devise a plan should my night visitor return. So far, my only idea involved a trapping him with very large cardboard box propped open with a stick and a cupcake for bait. My reasoning was that everyone liked cupcakes—so perverts and monsters must, too.

It was safe to say the brainstorming wasn’t going very wel .

I heard Sir drive into the garage at five o’clock and stomp into the house. The muscles in my chest tightened around my ribs like barbed wire as I waited for him to appear, but he never did.

A half hour before I was supposed to go to sleep, I was balancing a spoon on my nose when my bedroom door squeaked open, causing me to gasp. The spoon fel from my nose and I juggled it for a few seconds before it slipped through my fingers and landed on the carpet.

Mom stepped into my room, then eyed me curiously as she retrieved the spoon from the floor and placed it on my dinner tray next to a plate of untouched sauerkraut and sausage. She narrowed her eyes as she scanned my plate. “Why didn’t you eat anything?”

“Not hungry,” I lied. The truth was I hated sauerkraut and sausage, but it was Sir’s favorite, so it had become our Sunday night meal. Every night of the week had its own meal and I disliked al of them, except for Friday, which was pizza night. But Mom didn’t have a clue because when I sat down at a table with Sir, I wordlessly ate what was in front of me in the time al otted, regardless of whether or not it was edible.

She set the tray on the floor and lowered herself next to me. After shifting several times, she began picking at a nonexistent piece of lint on my blue and gold comforter—the official colors of the United States Air Force and last year’s Christmas present from Sir. “Tomorrow is Monday.” She let the sentence hang in the air like a gavel held by a judge before a verdict was given.

“And?” I asked, awaiting my fate.

Mom smoothed out a crease in the blanket, careful to keep her hazel eyes locked on her fingers. She’d make a terrible poker player.

I sighed and leaned back against my pil ow. “I’m going to school,” I muttered.

A frown darkened her face as she patted my hand. “Your father and I discussed it, and we believe that the best thing for you to do is move past this boat accident.”

“A good soldier knows that to look back is to move back,” I quoted Sir.

“That’s the spirit, honey.” Mom gave me a quick squeeze before standing up. “One more thing.” She reached into the pocket of her waist apron and withdrew her fist, slowly uncoiling her fingers to reveal two pearls, slightly yel owed with age.

When I realized my mom held the surviving stones of Aunt Margie’s necklace, my heart swel ed. Mom’s sister, Aunt Margie, had given the family heirloom to me two summers ago when she’d visited us from her cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Unfortunately, Aunt Margie and Sir had gotten into a horrible argument about Sir’s
attitude
(that’s one way to put it), and Sir had not al owed her to visit since. We stil emailed each other, but that didn’t stop me from missing her. Wearing the pearls made me feel like Aunt Margie wasn’t a thousand miles away. “Where did you find those?”

She took a deep breath, then set the pearls on my nightstand. “The doctor at the hospital gave them to me before we left. She found them inside your wound.”

I fingered the bandage on my shoulder, my momentary burst of happiness shattered as I remembered how the needle-like claws of the blue-haired girl had dug into my col arbone. “Oh,” I murmured.

“Yes, wel . . .” Mom reached back into her apron. “I also cal ed the doctor. She prescribed medication for you.” This time when she uncurled her fingers, al that remained was a single blue pil .