“Because I miss my dad. I miss my room. I live in a funeral home. Do you remember that?”
Dare nods.
“I don’t like that part because the kids at school tease me, but I miss home. I miss the ocean. Whitley is too big. It’s scary here because it’s dark and everyone is quiet. It feels like everyone hides things from each other, but I don’t know what.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Dare mutters and I look at him sharply. He looks away.
“Tell me about living in a funeral home,” he says, redirecting my attention.
I smile because he doesn’t sound mean or judgy. He just sounds interested.
“It’s ok. It smells like flowers all of the time. The smell gets into my hair and my clothes.”
“Do dead people look like they’re sleeping?”
I snort. “No. They look dead.”
Dare nods. “I figured.”
We’re quiet now, and we walk, and Castor pants. The tiny pebbles tumble under my shoes and I once again wish I were home, on the cliffs of Oregon. But then again, Dare isn’t there, and he interests me.
The wind blows my hair and I raise my hand to shove it behind my ear, and as I do, something moves in the corner of my eye.
I turn, and what I see is the stuff of nightmares.
I see Castor and Pollux, broken and bloody, dragging themselves along the path, their legs broken, blood pouring from their eyes and their noses. Blood trails behind them, it fills the pads of their paws and leaves crimson prints on the ground. There is so much blood that I can smell it, I can taste it.
I scream and try to run to them, but my feet won’t move. They feel like they’ve been glued to the ground and I’m frozen frozen frozen. My heart pounds and pounds, the blood racing through my veins and I can’t move I can’t move
I can’t move.
“Castor,” I whimper.
Castor tries to pick his head up, he tries to come to me because he’s obedient, he’s been trained, but his bones his bones his bones are splintered. He can’t walk and he falls to the ground with a loud boom, so loud and hard that it shakes the ground under my feet.
I scream
And scream,
My hands over my mouth.
Dare turns to me calmly, his eyes like lifeless pools, and it’s him, but it’s not him.
“You did this,” he says, his voice dead like a corpse. I try to breathe but I can’t
I can’t
I can’t.
I squeeze my eyes closed and fall to my heels, rocking on the path.
“Calla! Calla! Open your eyes! Shh! Everything is fine, it’s fine. What’s wrong?”
A voice is desperate and anxious and I focus on it, trying to come back to my body, trying to hear it.
“Calla!”
I focus on those two syllables, on the voice.