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He doesn’t touch me anymore.
He looks at me differently, almost as if I’m a stranger.
He bans me from his bedroom if I dare step foot inside.
Our tender, thoughtful conversations have transformed into superficial chitchat about nothing at all, and the moment I try to delve deeper, he pulls away. He claims to be tired, or too busy, or he simply says, “Not now, June.”
June.
That right there has been the biggest red flag.
He hasn’t called me Junebug.
He hasn’t called me Junebug in twenty-six days.
I feel all alone without his smiles and jokes. Mom and Dad are home often, both only working part-time now. My friends are abundant, and Yoshi is a sweet old companion, but everything seems to pale in comparison to time spent with Brant.
I’ve replayed that night over and over in my mind.
A nightmare had spooked me. I’d dreamed of floating down a river of red, approaching a cave of horrors. It was a black night with cackling winds and crowing trees, a sense of foreboding hanging heavy in the air. Brant had been on the raft with me, and we’d been traveling along a rainbow stream, happily content. I’m not sure what happened, but I think it was lightning. A sinister strike had brightened the sky, and Brant had looked at me in that moment, right as everything flashed, something strange glittering in his earthy eyes. He’d reached for me. He’d reached for my hand across the buoyant raft as if he needed to, as if our very lives depended on it, and the moment we touched, everything changed.
He was gone. I was alone.
Only a dark cave loomed ahead, and as vultures swooped above me, laughing at my loneliness, I’d awoken in a cold sweat, desperately searching for Brant.
I found him in his bed, uneager to see me. My dream swirled through me like a toxin, blackening my relief, soiling my comfort that all was well, that it was just a terrible nightmare.
He hated me.
But then he reached for me with that same look in his eyes. The dream look, filled with hopeless desperation. He reached across the mattress and clasped my wrist, tracing gentle designs onto my skin and apologizing for being cold. And then he confessed a grisly secret.
A grisly, beautiful secret.
“I took you that night.”
I listened through my tears, trying to be his anchor through whatever storm he was fighting. Trying to be the rainbow on the other side.
Our foreheads melded together with affection as I held his neck between my palms, clinging tight to every word. Clinging tight to him.
My best friend.
And then I fell asleep in his arms, my dreams molding into images far less frightening.
Only, when I woke up, a new nightmare began.
I was all alone in his bed when the sun came up, his car vacant from its usual spot in the driveway when I’d glanced out the window. Confusion blanketed me. Worry sank its teeth into me. A tickle of trepidation swept through me.
Brant was gone.
And the worst part?
He never really came back.
“Yo.” I nearly jolt to the ceiling when two fingers snap in front of my face. “Earth to Peach.”
My hand shoots to my heart, my head popping up to discover Theo standing over me in his police uniform. I inhale a jittery breath, then let it out slowly. “Sorry. You scared me.”
“I have that effect on people when I’m dressed like this.” He shrugs with a smirk. “Thought it would have the opposite effect, but turns out everyone’s got something to hide these days.” Theo frowns when I just kind of stare at him, my eyes glazed over. “You should be immune, though. Did I interrupt some intense daydreaming or something?”
