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“I do. You can’t rush it. You can’t let yourself be seen as a threat. Become a part of the surroundings. Become familiar.” Her hands moved to my hair, and when I closed my eyes I saw red, the white of the moon, and the cemetery. The headstone she sat upon that first day.
I wanted to ask her what she was talking about, but I was suddenly tired, her strong hands easing away every fear and memory I had. They felt like a cure for everything, when touch often felt like a knife. I sighed deep, and Sorina’s mouth was near my ear. “Are you tired?” she asked, and I nodded, my eyelids fluttering.
When she reached for the vial she had brought in, opening it in front of me, I only half opened my eyes. And when she brought the dropper to my mouth, I obeyed as she told me to lift my tongue. She dropped something there, and it smelled like the joint she’d let me take a drag from. The relief was nearly immediate, and after she set the vial on the cart, she looped her arms underneath mine, keeping me from sinking into the water.
We sat like that for a long time, skin to skin, my breathing becoming deep. I don’t remember going home, but I made it there somehow.
TWELVE
Iwoke the next morning groggy, a thick fog clinging to me like a blanket. There were memories on the fringes of my mind, and I couldn’t make them clear—make them permanent. I was naked and my head fuzzy, but the insistent pounding my ears registered was coming from my front door.
I threw my covers off and left my room after yanking on a pair of boxers, walking down the small hallway leading to the front door of our trailer.
I opened it without hesitation, and when Kyrie saw me in my boxers, sleep in my eyes, a look of annoyance on my face, the anger she must have been feeling to make her pound on the door like that washed off and was quickly replaced with annoyance.
“Why aren’t you dressed?”
“For what?” I asked, walking away from the door.
Kyrie stepped in and surveyed her surroundings. We had little, but the place was clean. Valerie was obsessive about cleanliness, perhaps because of the filth we often lived in on the ranch. I walked to the kitchen and grabbed a glass from the cupboard, filling it with water as Kyrie looked around.
“Where’s your furniture?” she asked, dark eyes watching me as I guzzled my water.
I needed to get rid of the fog surrounding me, the haze of the night before. I smelled like Sorina. “We just don’t have much yet,” I said, unfazed. I had a bed. I had a desk. It was more than I’d ever had, and that was enough for me.
Kyrie smiled as she walked into the kitchen. “There are a lot of yard sales in town on Saturdays. We could go. You need a bookshelf, maybe a lamp.”
“How would I get the furniture home? I don’t have a vehicle of my own,” I said as I walked past her to the hallway. My tone was light, though my words felt somewhat forced. Kyrie had a habit of wanting to fix things—test scores, awkward situations …me.
She followed me to my room. “I’m sure my dad would let me use his truck to get you whatever you needed.”
I grabbed a shirt from a hanger in my closet, then turned to my friend. “Okay, second issue. How would I pay for it? I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job or anything.”
“Maybe your aunt could give you some? I’m sure she wants furniture and hasn’t had time to get any?”
After pulling my shirt over my head, I sat on my bed, rubbing my eyes. Something about her energy was off. “Kyrie, what are you doing here?” I asked before getting up from my bed and walking to my dresser.
“I thought I could drive you to school.”
“I don’t live far. It’s across the street,” I replied.
“I saw you last night. With her. With the foreign exchange student. I forgot she existed.” She laughed. “I guess I hoped you had too.”
I ignored the last part of her reply. “I thought you might have. We walked by your house.”
“What were you doing out so late with her?”
“What were you doing up so late?”
“I had a bad dream.”
I turned to her. “About?”
Kyrie walked to my bed, shaking her head. “I don’t know. Something in the sky, like a bird or something. And some place in the woods, with this glowing circle. And I woke up because I heard something on the roof. Or maybe it was just the dream, I don’t know. So I went to the window, and I heard voices. I saw you guys walking. But later, I heard the sound on the roof again.”
“Maybe it was a squirrel?” I was grasping, and my mind was reeling. The circle intrigued me.
Kyrie sighed, watching me as I grabbed my discarded jeans from the floor. I sniffed them, then put them on.
