BethAnne tried to shake the bars, but they didn’t move. She yelled, but her throat made no sound. She was locked up—cut off from the world. This was the fear she’d shown me. Total isolation. Being gone and forgotten, like she’d never existed in the first place.
She was afraid now—the real BethAnne trembled beneath me on her mattress, so small and scared—but I needed more. There is a well of true terror in everyone’s heart, and she was hiding hers from me instinctively.
The Sleepwalking-me leaned forward and stared down at BethAnne in her bed. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her fists clenching the sheet at her sides.
I closed my eyes again and swiped an eraser over my mental whiteboard. In her dream, the concrete beach disappeared, along with the dry ocean bed. But the bars remained, and BethAnne could see nothing beyond them but a yawning black abyss. I’d left her no sign that the rest of the world still existed.
She opened her mouth for a scream, and I gave back her voice. But the blackness devoured it the moment the sound flowed past the bars. No one would hear her. No one would see her. She could scream and cry and bang on the window all day, but...
And that’s when I saw through the cracks and into that well she’d tried to keep from me. I fell into its depths and landed in the middle of her
BethAnne whimpered.
Beneath me, her heart beat faster. Too fast. She was sweating now, and her pulse was irregular.
Maybe I was better off without a mom.
I opened my eyes and withdrew from her dream, and without my will to support it, BethAnne’s nightmare collapsed like a house of cards. I was done with her. Just like some restaurants are too dirty to eat at, some fears are too filthy to consume, for fear of planting rot in my own soul.
Her breathing slowed, and I slid off her chest. BethAnne rolled onto her side. She pulled her knees up to her chest and tucked one hand beneath her cheek. Silent tears streaked her face, but she breathed deeply now, without my weight to constrict her lungs. She looked so vulnerable—a larger version of the girl huddling in the basement— and suddenly I wished I’d chosen someone else to feed from on my first night at Holser. Someone a little less damaged.
I was warm and full, nearly glutted, but the meal sat heavy on my soul, like bad fish in my gut. There was nothing left to do but lie awake in my bed and wait for morning. And try to forget BethAnne’s basement, and the fact that I—a walking Nightmare—had been outplayed by the memory of an ordinary, human nightmare of a mother.
Morning couldn’t come fast enough. It never did. You’d think I’d be used to that, after fifteen years of lying awake in bed—I only seem to need three to four hours of sleep—but it never gets easier to fill the empty hours before dawn.
And I’d learned quickly not to ever,
But by quarter to six in the morning, I’d had all the nighttime I could take. By six fifteen, I was showered, dried, dressed, brushed, and scowling at the locked cafeteria door.
“I don’t serve breakfast until seven thirty,” a voice said from behind me, and I turned to find a blue-eyed woman in khakis and a green button-down shirt. An official laminate ID hung around her neck, reading kate greer. “Most of the girls aren’t even awake this early in the summer.”
“I’m not most of the girls.” But I was starving for actual food, now that my more exotic hunger had been temporarily satisfied.
“Then you must be Sabine,” Greer said, and I nodded. “Well, Sabine, how ’bout this: I’ll let you eat now, if you help me serve breakfast afterward.”
“Yeah, I guess.” First served, plus I wouldn’t have to pretend not to notice the others avoiding me as they ate.
“Great. It’ll fulfill your chore requirement for today too. Follow me.” Greer pulled a pink coiled key chain from her pocket and unlocked the door, then led the way through the dining room into the kitchen, where the combined scents of bacon, butter, and syrup were enough to make my head swim.
“Why is the food ready, if you don’t serve it for another hour?” I asked, staring at the serving line, where steam rose from slits in aluminum foil covered buffet trays.
“Because I feed the day staff before their shift starts.”
“That’s really cool of you.” And probably not a requirement of her position.
“I don’t mind. Help yourself.” She pointed to a stack of plastic trays at one end of the serving line. So I did.
I scarfed pancakes, bacon, and juice while the day-shift techs and staff members wandered in alone or in pairs.
None of them sat near me. A couple smiled—I’d seen them the day before—but when my gaze met theirs, they looked away and hurried past my table. My creepy factor was strongest after a good meal, and I’d fed well the night before.
Kate Greer was the only staff member, so far, who didn’t seem in a hurry to get rid of me. After I ate, she gave me an apron and a pair of tongs. “You do bacon, and I’ll handle the pancakes. If they want seconds, they have to wait until everyone else has eaten. Got it?”
I nodded just as the first residents pushed through the double doors into the cafeteria. But twenty minutes later, when everyone had been served, Greer’s pile of pancakes had dwindled to a single stack of five, but my bacon tray was still full. I’d only served two girls. All the others had passed me by after one glance.
“That’s weird.” Greer frowned as I covered the full tray. “Bacon’s usually a hit. Now what am I going to do with all this?”
I had no answer, so I hung up my apron and crossed the cafeteria in silence, avoiding eye contact while I was still so warm and full—and obviously sending out creepy-vibes—from BethAnne’s nightmare.
It wouldn’t take long for Greer to notice that no one was eating whatever I was dishing out. I’d have to find a more solitary house chore and wait to eat with the general population, no matter how loud my impatient stomach complained.
Or so I thought...
I spent most of my second day at Holser House alone in my room, avoiding people so they couldn’t avoid me. That night, I was still pretty full—or at least not starving—from BethAnne’s nightmare, so I decided not to feed, hoping people would find me a little less spooky the next day. It turns out solitude is a lot easier to deal with when foster parents are the only people trying to ignore you. Though I would never have admitted it, being alone in a house full of girls my own age ... well, that kind of sucked.