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“Why so bad?” I asked.
“Real old guy, over a hundred. The centenarians are always a pain in the ass. There’s a reason they lived so long. Too stubborn to die.”
Cookie leapt over the back of the chair and dropped into it. “Want me to come?”
“Yeah, why not? Day wasn’t going to suck enough if I went on my own.” He got to his feet. “Gotta leave now, though.”
“I’m driving,” she said, and got to her feet.
“Hell you are.” Dice ran after her.
They both ran through the door like ten-year-old siblings trying to get the best seat. I dropped back on the couch, closing my eyes, appreciating the silence that filled the room.
When the ancient yellow phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin. In all the days I’d been here, and they were starting to add up, that thing had never rung. I rolled over, dragging the pillow over my head, waiting for it to stop.
By the thirtieth ring, I began to lose faith it would ever stop. Who was calling? Demons and weird gods invaded my thoughts.
What if it was for me, and that was why it kept ringing? What if it was an emergency from one of the crew? No one had ever saidnotto answer it. I went and picked it up.
“Hello?” I kept my eyes on the various doors as I answered, feeling a little like a criminal, simply for answering a phone. I’d been here too long. It was getting that normal actions were questionable, while the regular was absurd. My entire life had become topsy-turvy.
“Billie?”
I nearly dropped the phone. My voice was gone. I didn’t have any air left to speak with.It couldn’t be.
“Billie, are you there?”
“Gram?” Saying her name, even imagining it was her on the other end, made it feel like I’d finally lost my last bit of sanity. I gripped the phone like someone was going to rip it from my hand.
“We have to meet and talk,” she said. Every word, hearing her voice, made me want to cry.
I’d never truly believed I’d hear from her again. If itwasher. That this could be some imposter made my heart want to shrivel up and die, but that didn’t mean I could be an idiot about things.
“How do I know it’s you?”
“Billie, it’s me.” She exaggerated my name the way she had thousands of times before.
There was no way this was Gram, was there? If it was Gram, she’d respect me for what I said next, or this was a fraud.
“I need proof that it’s you,” I said.
“When you were ten, I was the one that sat with you the entire time you were down with the flu. I’m also the one that told you countless times to let your drunk of a mother sleep it off. That she wasn’t your responsibility.” She paused a few seconds. “She might’ve been my daughter, but what a waste of a life. She wasn’t special like us, though. I always told you that.”
It was her. There was no way a fraud would’ve been able to copy the inflection in her voice that perfectly, could they? Well, maybe, but I was going to make a leap of faith on this one.
“Gram,” I said, that single word carrying weeks of mourning and missing her, and decades of love.
“I told you we’d talk again,” she said. “But we can’t do it over this line. We have to meet.”
“Where? The house? I can be there in a half an hour.”
“No. Not there. There’s a place in Nowhere called The Deep. Can you go there yet?”
“In Nowhere? Yes.” At least, I thought I could. I’d chance it to see Gram again, give her a hug, and get some answers.
“I need a little time to get back. Meet me there after dusk on Wednesday night. I might not look like myself, so I’ll find you. Don’t tell anyone.”
“I’ll be there.”
