Page 18 of So Thirsty

When was the last time I had a nightmare?

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

It’s coming from behind me now, and my head swivels on my neck so fast, I get dizzy. There’s a branch. I see it. Up to the left.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“Shh,” I tell it. “I’m trying to sleep.”

I yawn, for a moment forgetting about the figure, or for a moment certain that when I turn back it won’t be there. Or that the source will reveal itself to me. An explanation. Logic.

But I turn back and it’s still there. Hovering.

I shut my eyes tight, and when I open them again, the silhouette is gone. No figure haunts my view. I let go of the breath I’ve been holding captive.

The heat wheezes on, blows in from some hidden vent, and the tapping resumes, the wind. My stomach churns.

This should be when I shrug and go back to sleep. Except there’s this sudden sense of doom that I can’t shake. The sense that something is off, that something is wrong. There’s a fluttering of nerves. Panic.

Then I remember why.

Here I am, alone, awake, and scared in this strange bed, while there’s another woman busy in mine. In my bed, my home, my safe place tarnished.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

The doom squeeze intensifies. I pull the covers over my head, grip them like a parachute on the way down.

Here I am, alone in the dark, with my sour breath and my chattering teeth and my life on the precipice of catastrophe. The night keeps the snow under its tongue, but the cold wind persists in its tapping at my window, loud and gloomy as a prophet.

Just the wind. Only the wind.

7

“ W ake up! Wake up! Wake uuuuuuup!” Naomi climbs into my bed. She pushes me over to make room. “It’s birthday eve!”

I groan. “What time is it? Why are you doing this to me?”

“It’s almost eleven, sleepyhead.”

“No, it isn’t,” I say, opening a single heavy eyelid to check the nightstand clock. It’s ten forty-seven. “Shoot.”

“Golly gee, you slept in!”

We look at each other and take a quick, silent vote on whether we should acknowledge last night’s conversation, continue the discussion, or sweep it under the rug for as long as possible, linger in sweet denial. The latter wins.

There’s no point in telling her what I saw on the doorbell camera. I shouldn’t have even looked.

Why did I look?

“You’re still in dreamland,” she says, taming a flyaway, gently pressing it to my skull.

“Mm,” I say, rubbing my eyes and wracking my brain for a more pleasant thought. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you think I could get away with calling people hoss?”

“Hoss?”

“Yeah,” I say, and yawn into the pillow to spare her my breath.

“Let me think about it.”