Page 62
“I need to go home,” I say again, insistent.
“Honey, it’s . . .” She glances at her phone. “It’s past midnight.”
I shake my head, real tears coming now. Tears of frustration. I don’t only want to go home, but I need to. It started up in Tress’s room, a halo of light around her lamp, a pressure in the back of my head. Her voice got loud and her teeth terribly bright, and I know, without a doubt, that I’m going to seize, and soon. And that means I’ll fall down and roll around, go stiff like a board and maybe even pee myself right in front of Tress.
Girls with monogrammed towels don’t pee themselves.
I gulp a deep breath, bunch my nightgown into my fists, and focus hard on Annabelle. “I want to go home.”
In the basement, my cracked lips barely moving, I say it again. “I want to go home.”
Chapter 49
Tress
My first reaction when the cat smacks me is to feel hurt—not actually pain, just hurt. Rule number one of wild animals: don’t forget they’re wild animals. I forgot. I sat here and I cried and I told a panther all my problems and then, like an idiot, I tried to pet him, because I made the mistake of thinking that he understood me, that he was my friend.
Apparently I am very bad at picking friends.
Either I try to kill them, or they try to kill me.
Deep wounds take a second to start bleeding. I know this, having suffered more than a few. The cat was only warning me, but it was enough. There are three slashes on my arm, dark and black, like three mouths opening into a part of me not meant to see light. Subcutaneous fat rolls from the edges, a yellow layer peeking out above the deeper pink of skin. Past that there’s a glimpse of bone, securely fastened to gray tendon and fleshy muscle, which I see flickering for a moment before the blood flows.
Then everything is just red.
Chapter 50
Cat
There are lives outside me
present and past that I
can see
when I am still and quiet.
Go beyond that, past
still
and
quiet
To
stone
and
silence
and there are lives, inside.
I have always been cat
but not always this
