MY LEAST FAVORITE VERSION OF the dream was the one with the puzzle pieces. My mother was two-dimensional, a flat card-stock version of herself. Still dead, of course; still sprawled in blood and staring at nothing, but punched out in jigsaw segments, scattered and unassembled and smooth. Until they began to rise.
One by one, they swelled and formed, bursting into shape like popcorn. They trembled, fit themselves together, clicked into place until she was whole again. Until her eyes flew open, and her head snapped sideways to catch me, as I tried to run. I never could run, though, because I had no feet. I never could run, because I stumbled on the stumps of my ankles, fell to the floor beside her. Landed shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, shark-toothed grin to terrified scream, and I could see them: the slither just beneath her skin. The worms, eating her from the inside out.
I woke up when I rolled into the wall.
As bad as every version was, that one stuck to me in shards, lingered long after the others faded. It was never about going back to sleep at that point; it was only about escaping. Slowing my heartbeat long enough to scuttle down the hallway, as far from my bed as I could get.
I pushed the nightmare aside, focused on replacing it with the now-week-old memory of my name, the way it had shuddered its way off his tongue, cracking fault lines into fissures beneath our feet. Since that night, Grey and I had called a truce—if a truce can, in fact, be defined as two people referencing an event in neither word nor look nor deed. He chatted easily through meals and car rides, smiled across the distance between us, as if he could erase the laundry room incident with every flash of teeth. Not that I’d blank out on that mess anytime soon. I certainly couldn’t forget the things I’d heard, that night and nearly every night since, or how my mind and body responded every time. How I put my ear to that darkened wall and wished, waiting for him to give in. I scavenged for those crumbs—pressed them to my lips, licked them from my fingers. Fed on his sounds and hoped they’d sate me, even as they only woke my need.
I didn’t want to ignore them, even though I knew I should. I didn’t want to forget.
I moved around the dark kitchen, grabbed a mug and a tea bag, filled the kettle and put it to boil, then leaned against the sink, staring out the window at the backyard. The moon dipped into the trees, turned the world to slate. I focused on the sky, shaking off the worst of the shivers.
“You too, huh?”
His voice curled out of the darkness, tugging me around to face his bedhead and moonlit eyes. My breath hitched on the corner of his sleepy smile.
“Greyson. What are you doing awake?”
“Chronic insomnia. Had it since my dad left.”
“You don’t sleep? Like, ever?”
“No, I sleep. It’s more a matter of settling my brain. Once I’m out, I usually stay out—it’s the getting there that’s tough.” He shrugged and smiled again, and my God, but he was pretty. “You?”
“I have nightmares some nights. Most nights. Sleep-wake, sleep-wake, every few hours.”
“That’s actually not too far removed from the body’s natural sleep cycle,” he said. “Small periods of unconsciousness, punctuated by wakefulness. It was a fairly normal pattern, prior to the invention of the electric light. Creativity is thought to be at peak levels during the time between first and second sleeps.”
“That sounds better in theory than it actually is.” The kettle skittered on the burner. I turned and caught it, right before the whistle. “Want some tea?”
“Sure.” He padded across the kitchen, recoiled at the sight of my mug. “Thanks, but I drink actual tea. Not that mass-produced bag-on-a-string shit.”
“Well, aren’t you fancy.” I giggled as he grabbed the tea bag and lobbed it at the trash can, plucked a loose tea canister and a set of infusers from the cabinet. “Oh my God. Please tell me that’s not a Death Star infuser.”
“Of course it’s a Death Star infuser. Go. Sit.”
I sat at the table as he brewed our tea, watched the shadows dart over his hands and up his forearms. He’d been a skinny kid, with braces and knobby knees. Pants cinched tight at the waist, shirts billowing into space off a coat-hanger frame. Now his T-shirt strained around broad, solid shoulders. Now he was standing in my kitchen that was also his kitchen, making us cups of tea at three in the morning. He turned and caught me staring, smiled at me through the curls of steam. Moonlight caught in his messy hair, winked off the pewter pentacle around his neck. Both of us were bed-rumpled, both in pajamas, and it was far, far too easy to wear down the edge of a wish until it blurred into a delusion.
“Have you studied Jung?”
“What?” I blinked my way out of those thoughts, hoping none of them showed in my eyes. “I don’t think I’ve heard of … that.”
“Him, not ‘that.’ Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst.” He set my tea in front of me and slid into the next chair, dragging the infuser chain in circles over the rim of his mug. “The objective and subjective methods of dream interpretation—objects and people in dreams representing themselves specifically, versus those same things representing aspects of your subconscious. I have some books on his theories, if you’re interested.”
“Oh. I’ll pass, actually. Literally the last thing I need is to pick apart my dreams.”
“Are you sure? It might help you figure out some of the deeper meanings, or where they’re rooted in your mind.”
“Thanks, but they’re all about my mom being dead, so I think it’s pretty cut-and-dried.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” He was so earnest and sweet, sitting there in his pajamas, lisping around his retainer and trying to think of ways to help me. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted those fingers dug into my hips, wanted the texture of his unshaven face against my cheek and jaw and neck. “Well, I hope the tea does the trick. You keep drinking that bagged shit. No wonder you can’t sleep.”
“Right. That’s the reason I can’t close my eyes for more than an hour at a time—commercial tea bags.”
“Whatever. I think—whoa, careful. Heh—looks like the good stuff is wasted on you.”
I’d absently pulled the Death Star all the way out of the still-steaming tea. It dripped and pooled, and ran off the edge of the table.
“See? You should have left me alone with my shitty tea bag. Saved us both some trouble.” I wrinkled my nose as a drop splashed on my knee. “Ow. Cleanup time.”
“I’ve got it, Elaine.”
“No, it’s my mess. Sit down.”
“No, you sit down.”
He was teasing me, blocking my way to the sink. I pushed past him, and he grabbed me by the waist, swung me back toward the table. I spun him by the shoulders and slipped beneath his arm, breathless with a childish, giddy hope. His laughter was hushed, his hands strong around my wrists as we stumbled toward the counter. He grabbed the dishtowel, then stopped cold, stumbling over his own feet. I looked up and caught his eye, in time to watch his world slip and shatter.
I saw it happen. I saw it in the clench of his fingers around the towel, the tremble of his lips around a sharp breath. His eyes moved over me, changing as they went, shifting low to my hips and back up again, lingering. I stood straight and lowered my chin, hardly daring to look.
The moonlight poured in the window, washed me in a silver-blue gleam. It stained my arms and hands and body, shot straight through my thin pajama top, and lit me like a star. I might as well have been topless.
A soft, pitiful noise worked its way up from my lungs. Chills broke across my skin like snowmelt, freezing, then slicing, dripping from scalp to neck to spine to soles. My eyes leaped up in time to catch his slipping over my shoulder, off the curve of my collarbone. They reached into me and burned and burned, and undid something in my chest.
“Grey—”
“Sorry.”
The word flew from his mouth in pieces. He was already headed for the door, still clutching the towel. Still stammering apologies over his shoulder as he disappeared.