It took me half-an-hour to realize that I wasn’t warming up. I kept trying to deny it, trying to push away the ridiculous information. I knew that when you start cold and wrap yourself up it takes some time to get warm again, and so I tried to be patient and let it happen. It wasn’t happening. I waited another hour, curling my toes, rubbing my arms. I wasn’t too proud to get up, dig through my hope chest, and tug on a giant pair of mittens I’d had since I was nine-years-old.
An hour later, I took another hot shower. When I crawled back into bed, fully swathed in my layers of clothing, I was even colder.
Two hours later, I was on the edge of hysteria.
I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I’d grown deaf to the non-stop rattling of my teeth in my head. My hands, tucked between my frozen knees, creaked with agony. Stinging needles of pain streaked through my nose and my ears. My cheeks felt like they’d been burned.
I knew I should tell my mom. I knew I should go to the hospital. This wasn’t cold anymore—this was lethal. I knew if I did nothing I would die, and I knew that without the barest hint of hesitation.
But why didn’t I go downstairs and tell her? Why didn’t I scream for Dad?
I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t even want to think it.
My phone buzzed on my nightstand. It took more effort than I would have guessed to palm the tiny phone with my mittened hands. I started laughing at the absurdity of it, but the ragged edge in my laughter made me clamp my mouth shut almost immediately. Get a grip, Luce. You’re losing it.
I turned the phone toward me—a text message from a number I didn’t recognize.
I frowned. I opened the message.
You’re Not Wrong, Luce.
I Hear the Beach is Nice This Time of Year.
And here we are. You have now reached cruising altitude and may unbuckle your seat belts and move around the cabin. Please remember that there is no in-flight movie, and there’s a good chance the pilot took the only parachute with him on his way out the hatch.
I dropped the phone on the bed.
When I breathed out, a white plume of frost twisted out of my mouth and floated away on unseen breezes.
“Fine,” I said, and lay back on the pillow.
The second I shut my eyes to try to sleep, I heard the waves.
No pop. No snap. No dramatic fade-up. Just nothing, and then waves. Like someone had changed channels.
I opened my eyes.
I noticed two things immediately. One, I wasn’t cold anymore. I wasn’t warm, either, but the icy ache began to slide out of my muscles the moment I opened my eyes. The second thing I noticed was that I wasn’t alone anymore.
Chapter Seven
One-Sided Conversations
I tried to scream, but he didn’t let me.
His hand, burning with feverish heat, clamped over my mouth and cut off the tiny squeak I’d managed to conjure. He pushed me down into the sand, shoved his face into mine, and used his other hand to make the universal shush gesture with his index finger.
I hadn’t had much time to get a good look at him. When I’d opened my eyes, he’d been a shadow crouched against the grey horizon, a black hulk of lanky limbs. He’d sprung at me with blinding speed, and the strength in those long skinny arms was incredible. I wasn’t weak, but he pinned me with one hand without effort.
Still, as I looked up at him and his shush finger, pressed tightly against his lips, I could see the planes of his face, even in the dim of the grey sky. They weren’t twisted in some trollish look of rage or slicked into the lines of a hungry predator. In fact, he looked determined more than anything, or cautious even. It was hard to tell his age in the dark, but the gray of his shaggy hair told me he wasn’t young. His eyes shot away from my face, looking over me, toward where I knew the hill to be.
I stopped struggling. It could have been a ruse, but he didn’t look like he was attacking me. I think he just wanted me to shut the hell up. So I did. I waited, watching his eyes scan the horizon. Finally, he leaned back, looked me up and down, and pulled his hand away from my mouth.
I opened my mouth, slowly, and pointed one finger toward my face. He nodded, but held his hand out and made a gesture. He pinched an inch of air between his index finger and his thumb. I nodded at that.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He laughed—I guess I caught him off-guard. His body shook with laughter, and his face contorted into a big friendly grin, but he made no noise. When his mirth had stilled, he made the see-saw doing okay motion.
“What—?” I said, and looked behind me, where he had been looking. Just a hill. Now, anyway.
When I looked back, he’d moved a few feet away from me, and I got a better look at him. His face reminded me of my Grandpa, long and narrow and creased with wrinkles, but he had round boyish eyes. His hair, shaggy for an old guy, hung around his ears. It didn’t look unhealthy—in fact, except for a slight thinness, he wasn’t balding at all. He looked a well-kept sixty-or-seventy years old, but he moved like a little boy.
An old-style brown tweed suit clung to him, and it looked well-tailored if a little worn. Instead of a tie, a bright red scarf wrapped his neck and hung lazily across one shoulder. He didn’t stand up, but remained in what almost looked like a football-hike crouch. Three of his fingers even touched the sand just in front of him.
“What was there?” I asked.
The old man made a pondering face. He leaned back on his haunches, freed up his hands, and opened and closed them in a slow rhythmic pulsing. It didn’t look that different from a hula dancer’s gestures. I shook my head.
“Can you talk?”
The old man shook with another silent chuckle and waved his hand in the that’s ridiculous gesture, like he was swatting invisible flies. I frowned, but then shrugged.
“Am I dead?”
It just popped in my head—the question that broke every unwritten rule I’d built since the attack. Suddenly I didn’t care about stupid rules. I hadn’t talked to anyone about it, and I could feel a torrent of word-vomit climbing up my throat.
I watched the old man’s features. He was extremely expressive, and went from thoughtful to concerned to inspired to defeated in less than ten seconds. In the end, he just raised his hand and made that see-saw gesture again.
“What? No, not kinda. That’s not an answer.”
He made the see-saw gesture again and shrugged. I sighed, reached up, and unloosened the hood that was still clinging tightly to my face like I was some kind of Thanksgiving pilgrim woman. I shook my hair out, rubbed my cheeks, and tried again.
“Are we in danger here?”
See-saw. I growled in frustration, but he just shrugged again.
“Is there somewhere safer?”
He nodded his head yes. Then shook it no. He sighed and shook his head with his hands out in front of him. It looked like an apology. I felt bad harassing him about it. I ran through my brain, trying to find some common ground or question I thought he might be able to answer.
Got one.
“Did you send the text message?”