Julie careens through Lawrence’s neighborhood, her heart banging around inside her chest. The sky roils with thick black clouds. It hasn’t started raining yet, but it’s so dark, the storm might as well be a hurricane, even though the radio hasn’t reported anything but thunderstorms.
But Julie doesn’t care what the radio does or doesn’t say. It’s the anniversary of the hurricane and a storm’s blowing in and Claire is with Audrey and something terrible is going to happen.
Something terrible’s going to happen, and Julie has to stop it.
She hurtles around the corner. Lawrence’s house sits in the darkness, the windows barely illuminated. Julie presses her foot on the gas and lurches forward. She hunches over the steering wheel, her arms shaking from gripping it so tightly.
Thunder rumbles in the distance.
She pulls into the driveway and tumbles out of the car. Then she races up to the front door and rips it open. She has to catch him before he leaves for the Stargazer’s Masquerade.
Aunt Rosa appears, her hair piled on top of her head. “Julie?” she asks. “You’re not going to the dance?”
Julie’s thoughts are wild. “Is Lawrence here?”
Aunt Rosa shakes her head. “You just missed him, sweetie. They left about five minutes ago. You might have even passed them on your way here.”
“Them? Was Claire with him?”
“Claire?”
“My friend,” Julie says hopelessly. “Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter.”
“Oh, no.” Aunt Rosa frowns. “I didn’t see anyone else—Audrey picked him up. Sweet girl, don’t you think?”
Julie’s ears buzz. “Aunt Rosa, I really don’t think Audrey is who she says she is—Ow!”
Julie slams herself up against the doorframe, a sharp pain ricocheting through her skull.
“Julie!” Aunt Rosa’s voice is distant, fuzzy. The pain turns into a light behind Julie’s eyes. She hears someone singing “Leader of the Pack.”
“I’m fine.” Julie rubs at her head. The world swims around, a maelstrom of wind and lightning. “They’re going to the dance, right?”
“Of course.”
Julie nods. The pain in her head is slowly disappearing. She has to come at Audrey sideways, she realizes. It’s like Aldraa said. Audrey exists in a blind spot.
And she’s taken Claire and Lawrence there with her.
“Okay. Thanks, Aunt Rosa.” Julie gives her a kiss on the cheek. “If Lawrence calls, you tell him I’m looking for him, okay?”
“Of course.” Aunt Rosa frowns. “Are you sure you’re all right, hon?”
“I’m fine.” Julie turns and bounds off the porch before Aunt Rosa can ask her any more questions. She slides into the driver’s seat of the car and takes a deep breath. Aunt Rosa watches from the porch, and Julie gives her a smile and a wave, even though her heartbeat has picked up again, that wild drum-drum-drumming that echoes inside her own head.
A drop of rain lands on the windshield.
“Shit,” she whispers, and she turns on the engine and jerks the car out of the driveway and then speeds through the pitch-black evening. The VFW hall is on the edge of town, a ten-minute drive from Aunt Rosa’s house. Julie drives too fast, and she makes it there in six.
The parking lot is already crammed full of cars, and music thumps out of the building: Haddaway, Pet Shop Boys, DJ Jazzy Jeff. Thunder rumbles from the direction of the beach, a low and ominous sound that jars against the beat from the dance. Two women in feathery showgirl costumes cling to each other and race across the lot.
Julie steps out of the car. The door to the VFW swings open, revealing a fan of light, a swell of volume-distorted music. Claire runs across the lot. The rain is still sprinkling, but her skin prickles with electricity, and she knows the storm is coming. She knows she doesn’t have much time.
“Stop, miss! Need your ticket.”
It’s a man dressed as a lobster. He waves one of his fabric claws at her. “Five-dollar entry fee.”
“What?” Julie stares at him, not understanding.
The lobster taps a sign taped next to the door. Tickets five dollars. Of course. Julie pulls a wadded-up five out of her pocket and tosses it at him and then pushes through the door.
The inside of the VFW hall is a fever dream. Fog machines belt mist into the multicolored air, and the costumes catch the light and shine and sparkle. Everywhere Julie looks she sees cowboys and Terminators and Marge Simpsons and witches and sexy cats, all dancing together in the middle of the room.
Of course. It’s a masquerade. They’ll be wearing costumes. She should have asked Aunt Rosa how Lawrence is dressed, just to give her something to go on.
But then she remembers Claire asking to borrow the dress they found in her attic. Abigail’s dress. She never explained why, just asked one day out of the blue.
A Victorian lady. Julie needs to look for a Victorian lady.
Julie slinks up against the wall. The music thumps against her head, bringing that sharp pain back to the fore. The costumes and the lights blur together. She can’t see human faces anymore, only the costumes, bedazzled and surreal.
Everyone here looks like a monster.
No one looks like a Victorian woman.
No one looks like Abigail Sudek.
Abigail Sudek. Julie freezes next to the snack table. A boy in a Pinhead mask jostles up against her and shouts, “Hey!” but she ignores him.
Claire borrowed Abigail’s dress. A dress from a hundred years ago.
The timelines are disrupted.
Thunder crashes outside the dance, louder than the music, and a cry of surprise erupts from the partygoers. Everyone looks up at the lights as if they’re expecting them to go out.
A storm. A woman in a dress.
Just like the night a hundred years ago.
Julie paces away from the snack table, dodging a gang of zombies and a trio of girls from school dressed in red Baywatch swimsuits. Think. Think. Think. A hundred years ago, a hurricane rolled in, dragging the monsters with it. They changed the timeline. They need it to stay changed. Indianola needs it to stay changed. And a hundred years ago, as part of that timeline, Julie’s ancestor saved Claire’s ancestor—
From a shack on the beach.
Julie has to go to the beach.
The astronaut is trying to change that night. She’s using Claire to re-create it, to alter it, Julie’s sure of it.
And what she’s doing will wipe out the monsters and the town.
Julie hurries back outside. The lobster says something, but to Julie his voice is a blur. She races to the car. The trees in the parking lot thrash with the wind. The rain sounds like the chatter of insects.
She grabs hold of her car handle. Locked. Dammit. She fumbles for her keys, opens the door, starts the engine. She shakes with fear and anxiety, a sick dread that something has happened to Claire. Is happening to Claire. To Lawrence too. To everyone.
And she won’t be able to stop it.
The rain falls harder and harder, splattering across the windshield. She pulls out of the parking lot, swerving to avoid hitting the stream of cars pouring in for the masquerade. After the pounding music of the dance, her hearing is fuzzy and distorted. The rain on the roof of the car sounds like buzzing. That can’t be right.
Lightning shatters the sky into pieces.
Julie tightens her hands on the steering wheel. The wipers swish and click across the glass. Even in her panic she knows going to the beach in this weather is a terrible idea. But if Claire and Lawrence are out there…
Another flash of lightning. Julie jumps, nervous and frightened, even though she’s never been afraid of lightning. But there’s something ferocious about this lightning, like it’s not electrons charging through the clouds but something else. Something no one on Earth has seen before.
“Hurry!” Julie whispers to herself, pressing her foot down on the gas. The car careens through downtown. Dunes rise up behind the buildings.
And then another flash of lightning arcs through the storm clouds. But this one doesn’t flicker away. It etches lines all across the sky and hangs there. The sky looks like cracked porcelain.
Julie lets out a cry of horror. The engine roars and the car shoots forward, toward the silhouette of dunes at the end of a street. The rain falls harder, and the wipers can barely sluice it off. She feels a moment of clarity.
A hundred years ago, Javier saved Abigail. Now Julie is Javier. Claire is Abigail.
And Javier has to save Abigail again.
Julie’s car bursts onto the beach, weaving through the dunes. Off in the Gulf the waves rise huge and towering. Over the constant, unnatural buzzing in her head, Julie think she hears something—a voice, muffled and far away. She slams on the brakes.
“Claire?” she shouts, whipping her head around. She can’t see anything but falling rain. She climbs out of the car. The lightning lines still etch across the sky, although they’re dimming. But then there’s a riotous crash of thunder, and the lines infuse with light.
“No,” she whispers. Then she spins around in place, ignoring the rain pounding down on her. “Claire!” she shouts. “It’s Julie!”
“Julie?”
The voice again. It’s not Claire’s. Lawrence? It sounds closer now.
“Lawrence?” Julie shouts. “Hello? Where are you!?”
“Julie, is that you?”
It’s hard to hear anything over the rain and the rushing waves. Julie stumbles over dune vines and lands hard in the wet sand.
“I think I can see you!” Definitely Lawrence. “Move a few feet forward.”
Julie crawls, sand squeezing up between her fingers, rain beating down against her back. She lifts her head. Wet hair hangs in her eyes.
Lawrence sits in a chair at the top of the dune.
“What the hell are you doing?” Julie shouts. She scrambles to her feet. “Where’s Claire? Is she with you?”
“Claire?” Lawrence shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was in the car. That was the last—”
“The car?” Julie hangs back, suddenly cautious. Audrey’s nowhere to be seen, but that doesn’t mean anything. Especially with Lawrence acting so weird, sitting on a chair like he’s the king of the beach. “What car? Where is she now?”
“Audrey’s car. We were down near the water.” Lawrence gazes at Julie through the sheeting rain. His eyes seem glassy and dark. “And then we were here on the dunes. I don’t remember—She tied me to this chair?” He says it like a question, looking down at his lap.
“She what?” And suddenly, though the curtain of rain and the pale light fragmenting the sky, Julie can see the ropes cutting into Lawrence’s arms. Some kind of stick or something is jammed into the ropes too. She darts forward and tugs at the knots behind the chair. Her fingers are slippery and the knots are tight, and her breath comes fast. “So you don’t know where Claire is?”
“I told you, the car,” Lawrence says. “I thought we were going to the dance. But then Audrey drove us here.” His voice fades away. “I don’t know where Audrey is.”
“What the hell is with that cane?” Julie asks. “You didn’t bring your gun, did you?”
“My gun?” Lawrence’s head lolls. “No, why would I have my gun if I was going out with Audrey?”
“And Claire!” Julie shouts. “Is Claire still in Audrey’s car? Is Audrey taking her somewhere?” Julie loosens his binds, digging her fingernails deep into the rope.
“No, I didn’t bring my gun,” Lawrence says, his voice far away. “This is my dad’s cane. Part of my costume. We were supposed to be at the dance.”
Thunder roars overhead. Julie gives a shriek of frustration—at the rope, at Lawrence, at everything. “Where is Claire?” she screams, one last time.
“In the car,” he says dreamily. “We left her there.”
Julie freezes, the knots half-undone beneath her fingers. She looks at Lawrence, dread coiling in her stomach. “What?” she whispers.
Lawrence meets her eye, rain streaming down his face. “Audrey locked her in the car on the beach,” he says, a burst of clarity.
Julie attacks the rope with renewed fury, the ties dissolving in her hands, and it falls away. Lawrence’s cane lands in Julie’s lap. The carved wood is soft and soaked through, but the metal knob at the top has a name etched into it. A familiar one.
Emmert.
Julie stands up so quickly her head spins. Lawrence sits motionless, the ropes still wrapped around his torso.
“This,” she says, shoving the cane at him. “Where did you get this?”
“We need to find Audrey,” he says softly. “She’s out there somewhere—”
“Stop talking about her! She’s got you under some kind of spell!” Julie brandishes the cane. “I’m serious, Lawrence. Where did you get this?”
“My dad.” Lawrence rubs his forehead. “Left it behind. It’s always been in the family.”
“Your dad’s last name is Foster,” Julie says, squeezing the cane tight. “Not Emmert.”
“His great-grandfather was an Emmert.” Lawrence stands up, the rope falling away, and a black cape flutters out behind him. In any other situation, Julie would find that funny. Not tonight. “You shouldn’t be out here. This storm is dangerous. I need to find Audrey.”
“Henry Emmert,” Julie whispers. Of course. The third piece of the puzzle. An Alvarez, a Sudek, and an Emmert. The Emmert died, last time. But not tonight.
Tonight, a Sudek will die.
“I have to find Claire,” Julie says. “Now.”
“No,” says Lawrence. “We have to find Audrey.”
“Fuck Audrey!” Julie screams. “She’s responsible for this, don’t you understand? I need you to show me where Claire is!”
A Sudek will die, but not if an Alvarez saves her. The timelines have to be re-created.
“But Audrey—” Lawrence whimpers.
“Is responsible for all of this!” Julie grabs Lawrence’s arm and tries to yank him toward the waves crashing in the storm. The rain thunders around them. Lawrence digs his feet into the sand.
“Please,” Julie says, tears brimming at the edges of her eyes.
The air buzzes and hums, and the lines in the sky brighten. The waves are silver in the distance.
“To the left,” Lawrence whispers.
He leads her out of the dunes, onto the open beach. The wind sweeps down the shore in violent, blustery gusts, and the waves crash off to the side, swelling bigger and bigger. The sky is lined with that weird lightning. It feels like the world is falling apart.
There are miles of beach in Indianola, Julie knows that, but she prays Lawrence knows where to find Claire even in his confused, jumbled-up state.
He halts abruptly. Julie runs into him. “Why’d you stop?”
“You said to find Claire,” he says in a dull voice. The wind howls around them. “And there she is.”
He points, and Julie looks into the darkness at a sphere of light growing out of the beach ahead of them.
Julie darts forward, but Lawrence grabs her by the arm and pulls her back.
“Audrey wouldn’t want us to.”
Julie hisses in disgust and throws off Lawrence’s hand. “Who cares what Audrey wants?” She squints through the rain at the sphere of light. The storm is so loud, she can barely think.
“I can feel her in my head,” Lawrence says. “She’s telling me not—”
But Julie rushes forward, leaving him in the rain. She brings the cane with her. The light pulses in the darkness, slow and steady like a metronome. Julie feels that pulse boring into her brain. Numbing her.
She wipes water from her eyes. She won’t let that light turn her numb. She has to see what’s there. She has to see if Claire is in the car.
“Julie, she wants us to stop!” Lawrence’s voice sounds far away. Julie ignores him.
The waves roar and crash against the sand. With each surge she moves closer to the ball of light, but slowly, she finds it harder and harder to move. The air is like sap, sticking to her limbs, holding her in place. The light hurts her eyes. She stares at it, terrified, not sure what’s happening.
And then something moves inside the car. A shadow in the shape of a girl.
“Claire!” She tries to race forward, but there’s a membrane between her and the light, and as hard as Julie pushes, she can’t break free of it: She feels it sticking to her face, to her skin, tangling up in her hair. But she strains anyway, pushing toward that shadow in the light.
Inside the car, two fists appear in silhouette. Two fists, banging on the window. A noise rises out of the roar of the ocean, a sort of keening. It’s coming from the direction of the light. It sounds like eeeee.
Julieee!
She hears her name in Claire’s voice. It seems to drum up out of the rain.
Julie Julie Help me Julie
“I’m coming!” Julie screams, fighting against the thick membranous air. She shoves Lawrence’s cane into the sand, using it as a lever to pull herself forward, her eyes never leaving the shadow. The rain has soaked through her clothes, and the waves are crashing closer and closer, their foam lapping up around her feet, but she has to get to that light. She has to save Claire.
Another crack of thunder. More lines appear in the sky, shattering it into pieces. The waves glow pink. Seawater swirls around Julie’s ankles.
The molasses air is in her lungs now. It’s getting harder to breathe. But the shadow keeps banging her fists against the car window and Julie thinks she can see features, Claire’s features, all twisted up with fear.
“I’m coming!” she gasps, and then, with one last burst of strength, she hurls herself at the car.
It’s enough: She breaks free of the thickness that was holding her back. The rain pounds down around her, but she can breathe more easily, and she doesn’t feel so heavy. She’s close enough to see Claire clearly inside.
Julie! Claire pounds on the window. Her mouth shapes Julie’s name but Julie still only hears her voice in the rain. Help! Help me!
“I’m trying!” Julie rushes up to the door and grabs the handle. But the light sparks and shocks her and sends her stuttering back across the sand. Her head rings.
Eeee!
“I’m fine,” she chokes out. She clambers up to her feet, coughing.
“I can’t let you do that!”
Lawrence. Julie turns around, her muscles aching, and sees him lurching forward, still trapped in the membrane. His face is warped and strange in the light of the storm. His features almost look like Audrey’s.
“Dammit!” she shouts. If he breaks through that membrane he’s going to try to stop her.
Rainwater spills into her mouth, and the tide tugs on her each time it sucks back out into the Gulf. Claire stares at Julie through the window, her face ghostly in the pale light. Julie takes a deep breath.
There has to be some way of getting Claire out. After all, Javier saved Abigail from that shack. It’s the same thing. They can reenact the timeline, set it back into place—ensure that the past remains unchanged, that Javier can go on to write the treaties, that the monsters can live alongside humans.
That their world is kept in place. And in peace.
Julie glances back at Lawrence. He howls something unintelligible at her, and then slams forward onto his knees in the storm surge, his cape floating out behind him.
“Stop moving!” she yells at him.
She splashes over to the back of the car. Claire follows her, pressing her hands against the windows. Her eyes are wide and bright with fear, and her mouth keeps moving, but Julie can only catch bits and pieces of what she says in the rush of the rain.
Trapped—Audrey drove—locked—inside—help!
“I’m trying!” Julie shouts. Her voice is ragged and she isn’t sure if the water on her cheeks is from the rain or from tears.
She has no idea what to do.
She comes over to the driver’s-side door and tries to open it again. This time, she braces herself for the light to shock her, and when it comes, rippling through her spine, at least she doesn’t go stumbling over the sand.
Claire appears in the window, shaking her head.
“No?” Julie says. “What am I supposed to do? How do I get you out?”
Claire keeps shaking her head, and her mouth moves, and Julie hears I don’t know.
A wave surges across the beach, the water splashing up around Julie’s knees. She screams and falls forward and both her hands hit the car. The light sends shock waves running through her body, and she flies backward, landing on her back in the freezing seawater. She stares up at the sky, cracked and fragmented.
And she knows that the past is changing already. The treaties are dissolving. It’s the end of her town.
The water surges, rushing over her. Something hits her hard on the side of her head. She sits up, gasping—it’s Lawrence’s cane. She grabs it.
“Julie! Stop this right now!” Lawrence’s fingers claw through the air, leaving shreds of opalescent light in their wake. “Audrey says to stop you!”
The membrane. He’s tearing through.
“Stay there!” Julie shouts.
“I’m ordering you to stop!” His face distorts with anger as the membrane rips around him. It’s dissolving like the treaties, and she has to act fast.
Julie plunges forward toward the car, the cane’s polished wood slippery in her grip. Claire stares out the window at her, and Julie remembers the first time she saw her, how scared she’d been of the monster in her grandmother’s yard. The monster who was just trying to warn them.
“Julie! If you don’t stop immediately I’m going to arrest you!” Lawrence’s voice is distorted—doubled, as if Audrey’s words are lurking behind his.
Julie squeezes the cane. The one weapon she has. Her one chance.
“I’m coming, Claire,” she whispers, and then she pulls the cane back.
When the cane hits the glass it echoes like a gunshot. The sound tears through the storm, shining like lightning.
The light surrounding the car flares, bright as the sun, momentarily illuminating the water crashing along the beach. Aftershocks shoot up Julie’s arm, jolts of searing, sizzling pain.
But the glass on the window is cracked.
Julie screams through her pain to swing the cane a second time. The crack deepens.
“Julie! It’s working!”
It’s Claire’s voice, her actual voice. Julie’s arms feel as if they’re being crushed, but she lifts the cane a third time, swinging it with all of her strength.
The glass shatters.
She screams half in joy and half in disbelief, and drops the cane into the churning seawater, rushing forward. Claire’s head appears. Not as a shadow, but as herself.
The back windshield is gone save for a ring of glass in the frame, spiderwebbed with tiny fractures. Claire peers out through this hole, gazing around in horror, her eyes wide with fear.
When she sees Julie, there’s a moment like lightning, when everything falls into place.
“Julie,” she gasps. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I wasn’t going to let that happen,” Julie says. She holds out her hand. “We have to get out of here.”
Shaking, Claire takes her hand, her touch a balm against the pain still reverberating through Julie’s bones. She keeps her eyes fixed on Julie, her makeup streaked. She’s wearing Abigail’s dress, the gray silk turned black with rain, and as she climbs out of the car it catches on a piece of jagged glass and rips.
Then Claire’s free, standing in the warm, frothy water with Julie. She’s bleeding from a few places on her face, nothing major, and Julie tries to wipe the blood away. Claire catches her hand and smiles up at her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Julie smiles back. Her heart is heavy with love—yes, she’s certain of it, love. She reaches to smooth back a piece of hair that sticks to the side of Claire’s forehead. The rain pounds around them both, and the water levels rise, and Claire wraps her arms around Julie’s shoulders and kisses her.
The world falls away. Claire’s kiss is shy, a little awkward, a little hesitant, but it’s there, it’s perfect, and Julie kisses back and her head swims and she thinks that she can drown right now in the ocean and everything will be okay.
“Julie!”
Lawrence’s shout drags Julie back into the real world. She whips herself around, positioning her body in front of Claire’s. She can feel Claire trembling against her.
“Back off,” she says. “I’m serious. Arrest me if you want, I’m not letting you—”
“What are the hell are you doing?” Lawrence sways and stumbles, water splashing up around him. He staggers, his hair hanging in his eyes, that stupid cloak sloshing up around him.
“What the hell are we doing out here?” he screams.
And that’s when Julie sees it. The rage in his face is gone. He looks exhausted and pale and terrified. His gaze sweeps around, taking in the car, the roaring ocean, the flooded beach.
And then his eyes settle on Claire, and a dark dawning realization crawls across his features.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Audrey—” He reaches out to Julie. “She did something to me—”
“You were going to let me drown!” Claire shouts.
“I know.” His face crumples. Is he crying? Julie can’t tell, not with the rain streaming over them. “I know. I’m so sorry. Audrey—”
“Audrey did something to you,” Julie says flatly. She looks back at Claire, who squeezes her arm again. “It’s gone. I can tell. He’s different.”
“Yes.” Lawrence’s voice is ragged. “She did, she—I’m sorry, Claire.” He splashes toward them. “I’m so sorry.”
The water has risen almost to Julie’s thighs. The undertow is more forceful now, trying to pull her out to sea. “We need to get past the seawall,” she says, more to Claire than to Lawrence. “Him too. I really do think he’s okay.”
“I think he is too,” Claire says softly.
“Come on,” Julie says. “Time to peace out!”
She wraps her arm around Claire’s waist and guides her forward. The weird lightning has disappeared out of the sky, and the glow is starting to diminish from the car. Reality doesn’t feel so shaky anymore.
The undertow sucks at Julie’s legs. She and Claire barely seem to be moving forward.
And then Claire tumbles and lands face-first in the water.
“No!” Julie shrieks as Claire is dragged past her, out toward the open ocean, her dress a streak of silver beneath the dark waves. Julie whirls around just in time to see Lawrence catch Claire and pull her up. She gasps and sputters, spitting out arcs of seawater.
“I’m not letting either of you drown now!” he shouts, sounding more like his old self. “Julie’s right! Let’s get to the dunes!”
Julie splashes over to them, digging her feet into the sand to keep her balance. Claire sucks in deep breaths of air and gives Julie a brave smile. Her hair is plastered to the side of her face, and her dress sticks to her legs.
“Yeah!” Claire shouts, over the rushing tide. “I want out of this water!”
“Grab on to me!” Lawrence gestures at Julie. “We’re fighting against the current here!”
Julie loops her arm into Lawrence’s, and the three of them plunge forward through the water.
The waves splash up around them, and Julie’s feet slip once, and she crashes into Lawrence—but he and Claire have her by the arms, and they yank her back up to standing.
Together they form a chain strong enough to beat back the undertow.
When they finally make it to the shallows, Julie peels away from Lawrence and grabs Claire and squeezes her tight.
“Thank you for saving my life,” Claire says breathlessly.
“What else was I going to do?” Julie smiles.
Together, they splash through the water up to the dunes as the tide recedes. The rain has slackened, and it doesn’t have the terrifying ferocity of a hurricane anymore.
It’s just a summertime rainstorm.
“Thank God.” Lawrence looks at Claire and Julie in turn. “You’re both okay?” He shakes his head. “I’m just so sorry, Claire, I don’t…” He stops, looks out at the ocean. “What was she?”
The water laps at the sand a few feet away from them, shimmering like static from the raindrops. Julie knows the danger has passed. Something could have happened, but it didn’t.
She stopped it.
“It’s a long story,” Julie says. “Hell, I’m not sure I even know.”
Lawrence frowns, then begins making his way toward the street. But Claire and Julie stay standing side by side, the water falling around them soft and gentle. The light is gone from the car now: It sits half-submerged in gray water, waves crashing around it.
Claire squeezes Julie’s hand. Julie looks over at her, and Claire is smiling, her eyes shining.
“It seems like it shouldn’t be real,” she says.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Julie asks.
Claire shrugs. She looks down at her feet, her hair falling in her eyes. Julie leans over and kisses her on the cheek.
Of course it’s real.
Everything is safe.