A walk on the normal side.
“So why is everybody up so early?” I ask, in an effort to change the subject.
“It wasn’t by choice,” Amber says. “After you left, PJ thought it would be funny to act like he was eleven years old again. So he snuck into our room to dunk my hand into a bowl of water.”
“So Miss Priss here goes all Fright Night on me and wakes the whole house up with her cowardly cries. I mean, seriously,” PJ says, smearing a knifeful of tartar sauce on his egg and cheese sandwich, “does she need to pay a little visit to the great and powerful Oz for a smidgen of courage?”
“No,” Amber says, “but maybe you should pay him a visit for a smidgen of maturity.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If the pacifier fits.” She stuffs a fingerful of Nutella into his mouth to shut him up.
“Don’t go tempting me with your kinky ideas of seduction, my little vixen,” he says, happily licking up the chocolate on his lips.
PJ puckers up to Amber, but she responds by messing up his hair, the short, gravity-defying spikes bleached a Ken-doll platinum color—to go with the whole beach vibe, I imagine.
“Did someone say vixen?” Drea enters the living room and takes a seat next to Chad. She drapes her legs over his lap and over the sports section. And suddenly I’m reminded of just why she spends so long doing her hair. I mean, it’s perfect—shampoo-commercial perfect. Shiny, bouncy, golden waves with just the right amount of tousling.
I grab a strand of my own hair, noting that it feels a little drier than normal and that I could probably use a trim.
The doorbell rings and Amber jumps from the table, practically trampling over everything in her pathway to the door—me included. “Maybe it’s one of the frat-boy yummies from next door. I thought I saw one of them scoping me out yesterday.” She pulls at the wedge in her Superwoman swim shorts, finger-counts her pigtails—seven, her lucky number—and then whips the door open so hard that it crashes against the wall.
“Looks like someone’s a little hard up,” Drea says.
Amber ignores the comment, her patty cake smile falling splat to the ground.
There’s a girl standing there, maybe a couple of years younger than us but undeniably cute. The kind of cute you see on one of the shows on the WB—long and straight henna-red hair, heart-shaped face with yellow-tinted sunglasses, super tight T-shirt with long bell sleeves, and one of those sarong things that looks like a skirt. I peek at Jacob to see if he’s noticed, but he’s completely zoned himself out, watching some talk show on TV, the audience barking in the background.
“Yeah?” Amber says.
“Hi. I’m Clara. I was just wondering if Marcy and Greg are staying at this—”
“Wait,” Amber says, interrupting her. “Don’t I know you from someplace?”
Clara cocks her head slightly, as though trying to place Amber as well. “Were you at the Clam Stripper yester—?”
“Forget it,” Amber says. She takes a step forward to look past the girl, hoping, I think, that she’s brought along some WB-looking male friends. “Are you staying next door?” She points to the cottage at the right, where the fraternity guys have hung up their banner, the giant Greek letters marking their frat-boy territory.
“Yeah,” Clara chirps, pointing in the opposite direction. “I’m a few houses down.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So Marcy and Greg aren’t staying here?” Clara peeps at us over Amber’s shoulder.
“Who?” Amber looks thoroughly annoyed now. She makes a big sigh and looks downward to assess the chip-page to her pedicure—pink and yellow checkerboards on one foot, yellow and white swirls on the other.
“Marcy and Greg,” Clara repeats. “They stayed in this cottage last summer.”
“Negative,” Amber says, taking another tug at her wedge.
“Oh, well, sorry to bother you,” Clara says. “I just noticed that people had moved in and thought that maybe you were them.”
“Not so fast, my little Avon lady.” PJ steps in front of Amber, bumping her out of the way. He unfolds a napkin and throws it down over the threshold, red-carpet-like, to invite Clara in. “You couldn’t possibly leave without experiencing my delectables.”
“It’s not that kind of door-to-door,” Amber says.
“Don’t mind her,” PJ says, extending a runny, half-cooked egg sandwich out to Clara. “She’s all thorns and bristles. But do indulge yourself in a bite of my delights. I hope you like tartar sauce.”
“The only delight you have to offer is a trip down to Beach Blanket Bagel to get us some real breakfast,” Amber says.
“Bristle bristle, spike spike.” He hisses at Amber.
“Hi,” I say, in an effort to save the girl from being preyed on by PJ. I introduce everyone, and Clara waves a hello.
“Where are you from?” Drea asks. She fumbles her way off Chad and his newspaper to come and greet her.
“Hartford,” Clara says. “But my parents are both from here originally, so we rent a place up here every summer. I’ve already been here a week.”
“Great,” Chad says, doing that I-should-be-an-Abercrombie-&-Fitch-model thing with his hair. He threads his fingers through his sandy-brown locks, one strand conveniently landing just to the right of his eye—completely rehearsed. “So you’ll be able to fill us in on all the good spots.”
Drea pauses a moment to eye the inch of hula-girl tummy peeping out between Clara’s T-shirt and sarong. She peeks back at Chad, totally catching him in a gawk.
“Definitely,” Clara says, propping her sunglasses up on her head like a makeshift headband. “You guys will love vacationing here. Great clubs, cool stores. There’s this amazing soda place downtown where they make the best ice-cream floats and frappes and stuff.”
“Sounds fattening,” Drea says, now scanning the slice of thigh peeping out from Clara’s sarong.
“I guess it is,” Clara says with a giggle. She pauses to adjust the ties on her sarong—to cover her leg maybe. “But lucky for me, I don’t have to worry about that.” She glances a moment at Drea’s caboose.
“Is there a problem?” Drea asks, obviously noticing the butt check.
“Huh?” Clara cocks her head, feigning innocence.
“Don’t mind her,” Chad interrupts. “It sounds like a great place.”
“Well, we’ll have to go,” Clara says, with more giggles.
Drea clears her throat. She rests her head on Chad’s shoulder and bats her eyes at him. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Okay,” he says, not moving.
“Now,” she says, pouting her strawberry lips at him. “I feel like some beachy air.”
Chad obeys, and they leave.
“I think I need some air, too,” Amber says. “That and a couple of frat boys to keep me busy. I wonder if they’re hungry.” She grabs a plateful of Nutella-smothered toast slices.
“They’d have to be starving,” PJ says, taking a bite of his egg sandwich.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out.” PJ collects a couple more sandwiches from the table and goes off into his room.
“He’s just bitter that I won’t go out with him again.” Amber stuffs a couple tissues into her bikini top, right between her boobs, inside the cleavage. “It gets sweaty down there,” she explains. She flashes us a peace-sign goodbye and heads out.
“Wow,” Clara says, “I guess I really know how to clear a room.”
“Not at all,” I say, noticing how Jacob has left as well. I hear the shower valve squeak on in the bathroom and assume that’s where he is. “My friends are just a little eccentric.”
“Well, I really would like to get together some time,” Clara says. “I mean, it’s hard to meet people up here my own age. It’s usually just college kids and they don’t normally want to hang out with a fifteen-year-old.”
“Well, we kind of are college kids,” I say. “We just graduated from
high school and thought it would be fun to rent a place together for a couple weeks this summer—our reward for surviving the aches and pains of prep school.”
“Totally,” Clara giggles.
“But you don’t look fifteen,” I add, noticing how she smells like butterscotch pudding. “I mean, I would have said at least sixteen or seventeen.”
“Thanks,” Clara beams. “So can I give you my number? Maybe I can give you all a tour later.”
“Sure.” I hand Clara a napkin and a pen, and she scribbles her number across it—circles with smiley faces for the zeroes.
“So maybe I’ll see you around later,” she says.
I nod and extend my hand to hers for a shake. And that’s when I know. When I feel it. It’s like my skin has iced over inside her palm. Like a million tiny ice-needles have just splintered into my veins.
Clara is going to die.
three
Clara tells me she needs to head back to her cottage, and I just stand there, my hand still tingling, still frozen from her touch. There’s a part of me that wants to just blurt it all out—what I’m sensing, what I feel in my heart is going to happen to her. But instead my jaw shakes at the thought of the words—how they would sound in the air, just hanging over the two of us like hail-filled clouds. I mean, I don’t even know this girl. How am I supposed to tell her that I have this gnawing feeling that she’s going to die?
She turns to leave, and I can’t hold myself back. “Are you okay?” I ask her.
Her face scrunches up. “Yeah, why?”
“I was just wondering.” A huge gulp gets stuck in my throat. “You’re here with your parents, you said?”
Clara nods, her face twisted up in confusion.
“That’s good,” I say, feeling somewhat reassured that she’s not alone.
“Oh, yeah, right,” she giggles, “vacationing with Mom and Dad . . . let the party begin.”
“No, it is good.” I nod and focus hard on her, wondering if I should say more. But what if I do and she doesn’t believe me? Or worse, what if she thinks I’m crazy and never wants to speak to me again?
“Well, I should get going,” she says, taking a step back like I’ve totally weirded her out.
This time I let her go, fearful that saying any more at this point would just ruin everything. I know that I’ll have a better chance of sounding convincing if I have more to tell her, if I’m able to reveal something from a nightmare—something that only she would know.
I need to get some sleep.
I change the bloodied sheets on my bed and open up all the windows in the room, hoping the balmy beach air and the salty smell of the ocean will help soothe me to sleep. I crawl between the fresh sheets and pull the amulet from around my neck. It’s a tiny emerald-green bottle made out of sea glass and threaded through a silver chain. My mother gave it to me for my birthday. She said it reminded her of me. That really meant a lot. I do love it. And the fact that she recognizes my taste—not trying to force her tastes on me by buying me some perfume she adores—tells me that she respects who I am and what I believe.
I remove the cork from the bottle and spill a few droplets of the lavender oil onto the tip of my finger. The sweet herbal scent helps to center me a bit, helps prepare me for rest. I dab the oil at the pulse points on my neck, at my forehead, chin, and on both cheeks, and then I pull my dream box from my night table.
It’s a smallish wooden box I bought at a flea market at the beginning of the summer—smooth, golden pinewood with a chrome hinge and a matching clasp. I lie back in bed, concentrating on the distant sound of the tide going out—the waves pulling at the rocks, stroking them out to sea. Then I open up the dream box and set it right beside me so I can catch my dreams—so they won’t escape my consciousness like they did last night.
I roll over so that my cheek rests against the powdery sand, and notice how the warm breeze seems to hover over me like a blanket. And yet I’m freezing. I tuck myself up into the fetal position and concentrate on the sun beaming down right over me. But it doesn’t seem to help. I rub my legs together and feel goosebumps sprouting from my skin.
“Stacey . . .” Someone whispers from behind me. A female voice, I think.
I try to open my eyes, to turn and look, but it’s like my eyelids have been sewn shut, like I can’t move. I listen harder, but I don’t hear anything else—just the tinkling of wind chimes playing somewhere in the distance and the bubbling of the ocean as it tugs at the surf.
I take a deep breath to calm the beating in my chest, and picture the cold air rushing out of my lips in one long and puffy swirl.
“Don’t tell anyone,” her voice continues.
“Clara?” I want to ask, but it’s like I can’t speak either. I can feel my lips moving, but nothing’s coming out.
“If you tell, I’ll know.” She’s closer now. I can feel her icy breath at the back of my neck.
“If you tell, I’ll make you pay.”
I go to swat behind me, but it’s like I’m literally frozen in place. My teeth chatter, my jaw tremors, and my skin stings from the chill. I listen hard for something else and try to breathe my fear away, but it’s almost as if my lungs have filled with ice droplets, making each breath harder, colder, shallower.
After a few seconds, I don’t hear anything but the cold—like a long and piercing shriek that screams in my ears. I wonder if she’s gone, if she’s left me here to freeze to death.
“I’m here, Stacey,” she whispers, as though reading my thoughts.
I feel myself start to warm a bit—my breath is less frigid, the shrillness in my ears is more like the tide pushing out. And just over it, over the sound of the waves and the chiming, I can hear her crying. It’s coming from somewhere in front of me on the sand, like she’s lying down, too. I go to reach out to her, my hand now free to move, and feel something soft, my fingers tugging at her hair, maybe.
“Don’t tell,” she pleads.
I open my eyes, but it takes me a moment to focus. I can see her now; her back faces me. She’s lying on her side as well, I think. But it’s so white, almost too bright to see—like a veil that covers her. I strain my eyes and notice a trickling of red. It slides down her back and down the curve of her leg. Like blood.
My body shakes from the cold; it’s crawling all over me again.
“Stacey,” a voice calls.
I move my lips to answer, but again nothing comes out.
“Stacey—”
It takes me a moment to realize that the voice is different now, deeper.
“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” he says.
I move my lips once more to answer, but my words are blocked. Something’s covering my mouth, cutting off my breath. I gasp and the feeling wakes me up. I open my eyes wide. I’m still in bed, still in my room. And Jacob’s hovering over me.
“Are you okay?” he asks, moving his head away. “Why are you so cold?” He pulls the covers over me.
But I can’t respond right away. The images of my nightmare are still floating around inside my head; I close the dream box up and flip the clasp shut so my dreams don’t have time to escape.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he continues, “but we definitely need to talk.”
I nod and try to control my breath, concentrating a moment on the puffs as they exhale out my mouth—to see if they’re visible from the cold. But they aren’t, even though my body’s still shaking, still frigid. “I had another nightmare.”
“About what?”
I clench my teeth to stop the chattering and, instead of answering, move over to the open window. The ocean is rolling away, stroking at the rocks, leaving a long stretch of beach. I look around, almost half expecting to see Clara out there somewhere. But she isn’t—just a couple joggers, a group doing yoga, and a handful of power-walkers. I focus up toward the clouds, trying my best to picture something soothing in their globlike formation—the moon, the sun, a giant butterfly. Anything to try and shake this feel
ing—this darkness that sits so heavy in my heart. But instead I just see redness, blotches of color that swirl inside my head and funk me up even more.
“Can you tell me about it?” Jacob gets up from the bed and places his hands on my shoulders from behind.
I turn around to face him, just as a trickle of blood rolls off my lip.
four
Jacob pulls off his T-shirt and hands it to me as a tissue. “Thanks,” I say, pressing it against my nose, breathing in his familiar lemongrass scent.
“Can we talk about it?” he asks. “The nosebleeds . . . the nightmares.”
I nod and take a deep breath, my fingers resting over the dream box.
“Are they in there?” he asks, gesturing toward the box.
“What?”
“Your dreams?”
I feel a slight smile curl up on my face as I remember how he’s the one who taught me about dream boxes. I flip the box open. “It was a nightmare,” I say, “not a dream.”
“And what was it about?”
I turn around to face him, his bare chest now a deep caramel color from the sun. His normally tawny complexion is darker as well, like even though we’ve been vacationing together for the past three days, it’s the first time I’m noticing it. Noticing how his lips look a little bit paler against his tan, smooth skin; how strands of his dark walnut-brown hair look almost golden from the sun; and how his slate-blue eyes seem just a little bit brighter, almost silvery. “Clara,” I say, finally. “The girl who came over this morning. That’s who I dreamt about.” I blot my nose with his T-shirt to make sure the bleeding has stopped.
“So what happened in the dream?”
“I saw her body, I think.”
“You think?”
“It was sort of blurred.” I close my eyes to try and picture it. “It was so white—almost too white to see. But then everything turned red.”
“Red?”