“Mmm. They’re so much better when you fry them in the bacon grease.”
Cassandra’s stomach rolled.
“Cassie, why aren’t you eating?” Her mother motioned to the food, so she took a piece of bacon off the platter and forced her teeth to bite through it, then fed the rest to Lux when nobody was watching. The spread of food grew by the minute: Henry plunked down a pitcher of orange juice to join the platters of bacon, toast, pancakes, and cubed cantaloupe. Just one piece of bacon wasn’t going to satisfy the breakfast police. Cassandra wondered if pancakes were good for dogs. Lux certainly seemed to think so.
She was still in her pajamas, and her bare feet rested on the cold kitchen floor. The sensation felt flat, less cold than the frosty grass of the field she’d stood in two nights ago. Except she hadn’t really stood in that field. But the kitchen she sat in now felt no more or less real.
She’d seen someone die. Someone she’d known, only she wasn’t sure how. She remembered his eyes, the steady way they’d faced down the attack. He’d been confident, right up to the end. Cassandra wasn’t so brave. If she closed her eyes the creature’s face jumped up behind her lids. She heard the clicking of malformed jaws, louder than Henry and her mother’s voices. And the screams. Of the boy being killed. She swallowed hard. The dream wasn’t receding. Instead it folded over, stretching into the world where she was awake, where things like Cyclops didn’t exist.
Cyclops. Even though they weren’t anything like what she would have described if someone had asked what a Cyclops was, she knew their name. Why didn’t she know his? Was she supposed to do something? Had she been meant to save him? Could she still?
I don’t want to save him. I want him to stay away.
But she didn’t want him to die.
“Cassie. Do you want a ride to school, I said.” Henry sat beside her at the table, halfway done with his plate of food. He looked frustrated. He must’ve asked twice already.
“It’s nice out,” she replied. “I think I’m going to walk.”
* * *
It wasn’t, truly, that nice out. But the chill on the tips of her nose and fingers felt better than the claustrophobia of Henry’s front seat. And she hadn’t been in the mood to deflect his worried questions. He would have known that something was off. Anyway, in that way she had of knowing things, she knew Henry was going to hit a chunk of concrete on Meyer Road and stop to check his car for ten minutes. Annoying.
Cassandra was showered and dressed, with her hair brushed and lip gloss on, but she felt vacant, distracted, like she might walk into traffic at any moment. When she’d gotten ready, first in front of the bathroom mirror and then at her antique white vanity, it had all been on autopilot, a lucky thing that she’d done it so many times and that she never varied her makeup and rarely her hair.
Her feet stepped along the sidewalk, quick and indecisive, the walk of someone running from something without knowing where they were headed. Kincade High School was only another ten minutes away. Maybe she wouldn’t go. If she took a right on Birch she would head farther into town. Left and she’d eventually find herself on the highway, and if she followed that as it wound northwest, she’d hit the state park. There didn’t seem to be enough ground in either direction. Her feet slowed, then stopped.
This was supposed to happen. The visions changing. All the little things led up to this.
What part of her thought that? What part of her felt it? But part of her did. And if she was honest, part of her thought it made sense. Something was starting. Something was happening.
Maybe this is the point. The reason I’ve been a little bit different all this time. Maybe this is the start of whyever I was given this—
“Curse,” she whispered. Curse. She didn’t know why that word passed through her head. She’d never thought of it that way before.
When she finally walked into the school, she was fifteen minutes late. The building was always kept at what felt like several dozen degrees too hot, and it melted the frozen tips of her fingers and ears too fast, so by the time she got to her locker on the second floor her face and hands tingled and stung. Aidan was there waiting and had the locker open before she reached it.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” She skinned out of her jacket and stuffed it inside.
“I was getting worried. Didn’t you get my texts?”
“Huh?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket but didn’t really look at it. “Yeah.” She flexed her fingers. “Cold hands. Figured I’d just see you when I got here.” Textbooks with frayed edges and laminated folders slid through her clumsy grip. The blood inside her hands hurt and felt slushy, like if you tore them open it’d look like a red ICEE.