Clearer in the Night Read Free Page B

slipped me something in the club? No, the tank top that she was stuffing back into her bag was shredded, my skirt was stained dark brown. Something had happened. I wasn’t going crazy. And people were shouting my name. People who were close. And getting closer.
    One shout seemed almost on top of us. “Shoe!” I heard. “I found another shoe!” Sophie glanced up, her brows furrowed. “I need to go,” she said. “They’ll find you now. You’ll be okay.”
    I grabbed her hand and tried to hold her. “Please don’t go. It’s awful without you. She’s…without you…” I tried to think what else to say, but really, that was the full thought.
    She gave me such a sad, small smile. “I’m just a dream, Caitie. Forget I was even here. It’ll be better that way.” She pressed a kiss to my forehead, and then she was gone. Dissolved into fog, vanished into nothing but a cool breeze, leaving behind nothing but rustling leaves and me, my heart hurting so much that I remembered why I usually just tried to pretend that I’d never had a sister.
    The yawning emptiness inside of me finally exploded outwards. After more than a decade, it had built up some force. It tore my sore throat, shredded my healed body, and all the pain, the sorrow, the misery I’d been ignoring, it all flooded back in. The formless howl changed slowly into a word—just one. “Help!” I screamed, as loudly as I could. My head was spinning, my body was clenching over in shock and misery again, but I just kept screaming. As I slipped down into the leaves, the blackness closing in again, a tall lanky man that I didn’t recognize burst into the clearing. As the darkness closed in, I reached a hand out to him. “Help,” I whispered.
    He slipped down into the leaves, gripping my hand in both of his. He started to say something, but the words disappeared behind the bees in my ears, and I lost his face to the spreading dark.

SUNDAY, JULY 28
    The pain came back when he lifted me, and I screamed. Maybe I tried to hit him. Maybe I dreamed it. I faded in and out for a while. There was an ambulance, I was sure of that. Then they gave me a shot of something, and it all got even more confusing. Things got dark. When they brightened up, there were needles going into my arms, and I was freezing cold, but they kept saying how hot I was, and I wanted to laugh at how wrong they were. After that, it got dark again, but it never got quiet. There were always voices, and the things they were saying made no sense. Sometimes they were about me, but more often about hum-drum things, bits and pieces and fragments. “Pie after work” or “can’t believe he” or “I bet she’d like.” Never sentences, never full thoughts, and I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and block out the nonsense sounds, but they were inside my head. I’d need an ice pick to carve them out.
    When I thought the voices would drive me mad, there was finally peace. Only the slow, steady thrumming of my blood filled my ears. I dared, finally, to open my eyes. I was back in the clearing, where I’d bled out and been destroyed and maybe put back together. It was glowing, though, absolutely shimmering with light. I looked up, expecting to find the sun out, it was so bright and brilliant, but I should have known from the softness. I gazed up into the moon, and everything else fell away. My lips bent into a smile, and I closed my eyes, my arms opening up to embrace the glow above me. The light pulsed in time to my heartbeat, and I laughed into the sky.
    I opened my eyes again, and stood, slowly. I was wearing clothes that fit and flowed around my body. Soft, knit pants that fit without cutting into my stomach, and a loose, flowing blouse that fell over my breasts and down my smooth belly. My hair fell back over my shoulders, and the light glowed on my skin. I looked down; the moon was reflected into the pond in the center of the clearing. Drawn, I knelt down beside it. The water was so warm that