“Harper.” Gemma pushed herself up so she was sitting straighter. “You guys didn’t do anything wrong. I couldn’t tell you any of this because it’s insane.”
“No, I know, I’m not looking for reassurance,” Harper said. “I understand why you did what you did, and I don’t blame you. I just wish … I wish you didn’t have to go through all this, and I wish I knew how to help you.”
“You’re, like, two years older than me, and you’re my sister,” Gemma said. “You’re not supposed to have all the answers or be able to save me from anything.”
Harper pursed her lips and stared down at her bedspread without saying anything. Gemma hadn’t meant to make her sad, and now she almost wished she hadn’t told her anything. It felt good getting everything off her chest, and for the first time Gemma felt like she wasn’t completely alone in this. But she didn’t know if it was worth upsetting Harper like this.
“You remember when we were kids, after Mom had her accident?” Harper asked at length.
“Yeah, of course I do,” Gemma said.
“Mom was in a coma for, like, six months, and I was positive she was gonna die,” Harper said. “But you never gave up hope. Every day, we’d visit her, and you’d say, ‘Today will be the day she wakes up.’ And we’d get there, and she’d still be in a coma, and you’d just say, ‘Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow she’ll wake up.’”
“In the beginning, you and Dad tried to tell me that I was wrong,” Gemma said. “Dad would tell me, ‘The hospital will call if Mom wakes up, and they didn’t call. So she’s not awake today.’ And I would just insist that she would be.”
“Yeah, so eventually we just gave up and told you not to be upset if she wasn’t,” Harper said. “Not that you ever did get upset. I mean, sometimes you would, and you’d cry because you missed Mom. But you never threw a fit or anything. You just said, ‘Tomorrow.’”
“I guess I was a pretty optimistic kid.” Gemma smiled sadly at the memory of herself.
“You were,” Harper agreed. “But what you don’t know is that every day when we got to the hospital, even though I was certain Mom hadn’t woken up, a little part of me believed she had. Because you had so much conviction. I thought one day you’d have to be right.”
“And I was,” Gemma said with pride. “One day, Mom woke up. Not exactly the way I had imagined or hoped for, but she woke up.”
“But you knew everything would be okay,” Harper said, looking at Gemma with tears in her eyes. “And I didn’t.”
“It’s okay.” Gemma didn’t understand why Harper was so upset, so she slid closer to her. “Everything turned out the way it was supposed to.”
“I know.” Harper sniffled and looked over at her. “But this time, I feel like you don’t know everything’s going to be okay.”
“Things are a lot more complicated than they were then,” Gemma said. “And I understand what’s happening. I was seven then, I didn’t know what a coma even meant. But now I fully understand the seriousness of what we’re up against.”
“I don’t know how everything is going to work out,” Harper admitted. “I honestly haven’t a clue about how we’re going to stop the sirens and break the curse. But I do know that everything will be okay.”
Gemma lowered her eyes and shook her head. “You don’t have to say stuff just to reassure me. I appreciate you trying, but I know how impossible this all is.”
“No, Gemma, listen to me.” Harper put her hand on top of Gemma’s and met her eyes. “Today, I don’t know how to stop this and save you. So, tomorrow, then. Tomorrow we’ll know how.”
Gemma smiled at her sister with tears in her eyes. “What if we don’t find it tomorrow?”
“There’s always a tomorrow,” Harper said. “And we’ll keep looking every day until tomorrow finally comes. I never stopped believing in you when we were little, and I’ll never stop fighting for you now.”
Gemma wanted to believe her sister’s words, but she knew something that Harper didn’t—that there wouldn’t always be a tomorrow. She only had a handful left if the sirens didn’t come for her.
But she also knew that they would stop at nothing to find her. Penn cared too much for her own life to just let Gemma slip away, dooming them all to die.
Harper put her arm around her and squeezed her shoulders, hugging her closer. “Life would be so much easier if we got to have normal sister conversations again. Remember when we stayed up all night talking because you were upset that some guy didn’t call you after a party?”
“Yeah.” Gemma laughed. “And now Alex calls me all the time. But it could be worse. We could have the siren issues and Alex not calling me after a party.”
“Yeah.” Harper laughed. “That would be worse.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Dinner
The house should’ve been tenser. Gemma was still in trouble, and Brian should’ve stayed angry with her. Not to mention that they hadn’t figured out how to save Gemma from the sirens. Harper had stayed home from work again, refusing to leave Gemma unguarded, even for a few hours.
Both Harper and Gemma knew the sirens were coming after her—it was just a matter of time. They spent a long time discussing possible ways to break the curse and doing what research they could think of, but when they came up with nothing new or substantial, they prepared themselves to fight the sirens.