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Sydney buttons her jeans and moves to the bedroom door without so much as asee you later. Any silence is cut short by a flash of lightning and then a rumble of thunder. Rain joins in too, beating down on the roof and side of the house.
She stops short. “It’s supposed to storm tonight?”
“What difference does it make?” I throw myself backward onto my unmade bed and collapse on the pillows.
Sydney stands stiff in my doorway for a second, almost like she’s paralyzed. Another angry snarl of thunder rolls through and she clutches the doorframe.
“What the fuck’s up with you?” I ask.
“Noth…thing.” She stammers and then wobbles out of the room like her legs are unsteady.
I sit up and almost press the issue. More lightning strikes and thunder rumbles. The sound fades in enough time to hear Sydney’s door slamming shut on the other end of the hall. Harder than usual.
What the fuck’s going on?
14
SYDNEY
The second I’m alone,I dive for my blanket. I wrap it around me, and I plop down on the sofa-turned-bed as if I’m five-years-old all over again.
The thunder pounds in my ears. It makes my pulse race and traps air in my lungs. I curl up and clench my eyes shut and urge myself to wait it out.
It’s just rain. Some lightning. Only thunder.
A thunderstorm, to be exact.
My nerves split into a frenzy. I feel shaky and unsteady, yet tense at the same time. My body balls up even more on the sofa cushion. The blanket’s my shield, a comforting presence at a time when the thunder sounds unbearably loud.
So fucking close, like it’s right outside my window.
My mind plays tricks on me.
Suddenly, I’m five again. I’m in the backseat of my birth parents’ car. My mom tells my dad to slow down. I can never remember their faces.
It’s as if my psyche has blocked that part out. When they passed away, it decided I no longer needed to know what they looked like or hold onto any distinct memories of them.
Except this one.
The night they died.
“Kurtis!” Mommy cries out. “Please… don’t do it. They’re getting a rise out of you!”
Daddy sits behind the wheel. I’m in the back, strapped into a carseat. I can barely make out his expression… but by the slashed angle of his face, he’s clenching his jaw in disagreement.
He thinks Mommy’s wrong.
“Then what should I do?” he grinds out. “Let them intimidate us?”
“Syd’s in the car.”
“That’s why I gotta do what I gotta do. Sit tight. I’ll handle it.”
I kick my legs out as if wanting to do the opposite of what Daddy says. I want to jump out of the carseat and crawl up front to beg him to take us home.
The car windows streak with raindrops and it’s so dark out… too dark out…
Thunder roars and I hug my doll baby to my chest, on the verge of tears.
