Clearer in the Night Read Free Page A

was dreaming this, or I was crazy, or there was a gigantic tumor in my brain showing me this nightmare, but it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
    I opened my eyes, and stared straight into blue eyes that didn’t care if I lived or died. Teeth closed on my throat, and someone far away started to scream. Not me. I stared up into the moonlight and thought to myself, this is a good place to die.

THURSDAY, JULY 25
    Pain. Burning pain. Everything hurt. Thinking hurt. Shouldn’t do that. Just float. The rest would pass. Soon.
    My name on the wind, hard to ignore. Sound in the chaos, the susurrus of voices that were crushing my mind. I shook my head, and lights exploded behind my eyes. I had eyes. Why have eyes, if they were only going to hurt?
    “Cait,” I heard sometimes, and sometimes “Caitlyn.” Those weren’t my names, even though I answered to them. Explaining that would require moving, and moving made everything go white hot and then shockingly gray. No. I’d lay still and float, until I disappeared or died.
    And that was an interesting thought. Why wasn’t I dead, as a matter of fact? The monster had killed me. It had mangled my belly, torn open my throat, raked its claws over the tender flesh of my chest. I’d watched it happen, shock dulling the agony, but still somehow conscious as I screamed and it chewed. I’d watched myself gush blood until the leaves turned black, and my skin turned as white as fine china. I wasn’t alive. It was all a hallucination—there was a lot of that going around lately. I let it float away in a purple soap bubble of quiet.
    The voices came and went, near and far. I listened to them, letting my name fall into nonsense syllables, and I drifted on the wind. Some of them I heard with my ears, and some with my brain, but they were all far away and difficult to pick out from the wind and the rot and the everything other than me. And then, right in my ear, a deafening whisper. “Caitie.”
    My eyes flashed open. The sunlight bored into me, and I flinched away, my arms flying up to try and protect my face. My shoulders and back screamed in pain as blood flooded back into my limbs, my body dissolving into pins and needles. I felt my throat open and a scream tried to come forward, but my mouth was so dry that all that came out was a dull squeak. I was on my side, panting, as the pain twisted me up and hung me out to dry. There was one tiny part of my brain not consumed by sensation; that minuscule corner informed me that no one had called me Caitie since my sister died. Mom had always hated the nickname anyway; she said she’d named my sister and I Sophia and Caitlyn because she didn’t want a matched set. But we’d liked it. We’d like matching.
    My sister. She was kneeling over me, her blue eyes narrow and concerned, and her lower lip between her teeth. “Caitie,” she said again. “You have to wake up now, okay?”
    I tried to say something, and got nothing but dead air. I swallowed twice, then tried again. “Hi, Sophie,” I said. My voice was gravelly and weak. “What are you doing here? Am I dead? Are you here to take me to the next big thing?”
    The ghost of my sister slapped me as best as she could while I was lying down. I yelped, and my hand flew up to my cheek before I thought. I winced in anticipation of agony, but none came. I moved my arm a couple of times, experimentally. It wasn’t comfortable, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the searing agony of just a few moments ago was gone.
    “What’s going on?” I said, my voice trembling. I struggled toward sitting up, and she helped me.
    “Here,” she said. She pulled a t-shirt and a pair of jeans out of a bag, and she helped me out of my shredded club clothes and into the clean things. They fit, but they felt stiff, new. “This is going to help you explain things, okay? Just trust me.” She felt solid. Real. And so did my unbroken skin. Had it all been one long hallucination? Shit, had someone