Chapter 6

6

She squeezes my hand now as we wait outside the bar after calling for the shuttle. It’s past midnight but shy of one, dark and bitter cold. My toes are numb again, my fingers, my face. My wrist aches like it does sometimes, just to remind me it was once broken. Little flurries whirl around, not really sticking to anything.

“We should just walk,” Naomi says, hiccuping. “Can’t be that far.”

“We’re not walking,” I say, craning my neck to look for the van.

“Why not? It’d be an adventure. The night is young!”

“First off, you can barely stand.”

“I could run a fucking marathon right now,” she says, and she means it. Her endurance while she’s drunk is pretty remarkable, her resolve transcending intoxication.

“Okay, sure. But it’s pitch-black and it’s snowing.”

She attempts to catch a snowflake on her tongue. “Not enough to eat.”

I look down at my phone. Still no reply from Joel, which has me sick to my stomach. I tap a frozen finger on the screen to open the weather app. “Great. Now the forecast is all snow. We could get hit with up to four feet. What if we get stuck here? I have a meeting Monday and I didn’t bring my laptop.”

“It’s New York in January,” she says, her tone shifting, going sharp. “It snows. There are plows. You always assume bad shit is gonna happen.”

“You always assume it won’t.”

She doesn’t say anything, just blinks at me. There are flurries caught in her eyelashes.

“This is what you do, Nay. You put me in this position. You make me feel like I’m crazy for being practical.”

She throws her hands up, shakes her head. “It’s some snow, Sloane. Not an apocalyptic blizzard. But you can’t see that because you’re always reading about the fucking Carolean Death March.”

I’m surprised she remembers. I told her about it a few years ago, after I fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

“You’re obsessed with disaster. Right now it’s Chernobyl. Before that, Aberfan. Before that, the Hindenburg ,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s teasing or being mean. “Remember when we went to the cape for June’s wedding? You brought a book about Columbine to the beach. You love a tragedy.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m friends with you.”

“Hey,” she says, eyes wide and glassy. Hurt.

“Well…” I mumble, looking down at the sidewalk. She called me out, and I got defensive. But I’m not walking it back.

The shuttle pulls over to the curb. We stare at each other as Todd opens the side door.

“Good evening, girls! Bringing you back to Whispering Woods?”

“Yes,” I say, stepping into the van. Naomi lingers on the sidewalk with her arms crossed, defiant. I give her a minute before I lean my head out the door and hiss, “Get. In.” Like she’s a stubborn toddler and I’m her exasperated mother.

“Maybe I’ll walk,” she says, digging a lollipop out of her pocket. “It is a beautiful night.”

“Naomi. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

She unwraps the Dum-Dum, gives it a lick. “No, I’m not. I’m embarrassing you.”

“Just get in the van.”

She laughs coolly and finally relents, climbing in.

Todd clears his throat and shuts the door. I’m sure to him, or any other outsider, it sounds like we hate each other, like we’re in some vicious fight. But this is a form of unconditional love. Of release. We gift each other the freedom to gnash our teeth, to growl and gnaw. Behave badly. Be terrible. Because we’ll love each other through it and no one else will. Because this ugliness is not permitted anywhere else. At least, not without consequence.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder. “Don’t be mean to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, staring out the window. “I thought you were being mean. And you left me alone all night to go flirt with that guy.”

“I struck up a conversation with a nice, handsome gentleman,” she says, doing her best Blanche DuBois. “I am terribly sorry.”

“Okay,” I say.

“That’s not why you’re upset, though,” she says, dropping the Southern belle shtick. “There’s something else.”

She’s right, and it’s so annoying. My skin feels like a straitjacket. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Talk to me. I’m right here.”

It’s Joel. Why isn’t he responding? What is he doing? Why did he send me on this trip? And why am I asking myself these questions when I know the answers?

“Sloane?”

“I don’t know, Naomi. Take a wild guess.”

We’re already back at our cottage. Todd opens the door. “Good night, girls.”

“Good night, Sir Todd,” Naomi says as we stumble out of the van. “I miss you already.”

The air feels like tiny ice daggers stabbing my face, leaving my lips raw. I hurry up to the cottage door, slam the key card against the lock.

“Look at the lake!” Naomi says. “It’s so pretty. Fuck. Should we live here? I want to live here.”

I open the door and step inside. “Come on. You’ll freeze.”

“All right, all right,” Naomi says, her boot heels click-clacking as she steps over the threshold. “Ooh, should we start a fire?”

“Let’s just regroup in the morning,” I say, massaging my temples as I start up the stairs.

“No,” she says. “Let’s stay up and brush each other’s hair and gossip about people we don’t know.”

I look back at her.

“I’m sorry I got caught up at the bar,” she says, kicking off her boots. “I had too much Soylent Green.”

I sigh. “I know you did.”

“I can’t help it. I just love people.”

“I know you do.”

“You most of all.”

“So you say.”

She frowns at me. I’ve hurt her feelings again, and now I feel like a villain.

“Okay. I’ll try to stay up,” I say, plopping down on the couch. It’s dark in here. I don’t know where any of the light switches are and I’m too tired to hunt for them. “But I don’t think either of us should attempt to start a fire.”

“Don’t trust me?” she asks, cozying up, pulling a blanket over our heads. “Did you do this at sleepovers when you were a kid? Make blanket forts?”

“Probably. I don’t really remember,” I say. “I barely remember yesterday.”

“That’s not true. You remember everything.”

“I remember some things in very specific detail. The rest is hazy.”

“Mm. We would have had fun as kids,” she says. “My only regret in life is that I didn’t know you sooner.”

She can be so sweet sometimes. I wish it made me feel something other than unworthy.

“That and the Playboy Bunny tattoo,” she says.

I laugh.

“Hey! You’re supposed to say, No, it’s cute .”

“Are we being honest here?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Are we?”

I yank the blanket down, freeing my head. “I can’t breathe under there.”

“Come back,” Naomi says. “Trade secrets with me in the safety of the blanket fort.”

She’s doing her best to get me to confess. She knows something’s wrong, and she’s working me. She’ll get it out of me eventually, so I might as well tell her now. I give a quick eulogy for my pride— You had a rough go of it. Goodbye —and then tell her the truth.

“I think he’s doing it again,” I say. “And I don’t know what bothers me more, the fact that he could be cheating or how little I actually care.”

After a beat, she says, “You know, I’ve tried to be there for you in the way that you need, I’ve tried to give you space, and I—”

“Naomi, it’s fine. Can we just—”

“No, let me finish,” she says. “I don’t know what it’s been like for you. And I don’t pass judgment. I trust you, and I’ve trusted that you’re dealing with it in the way that’s best for you. But maybe I fucked up. Maybe I should have stepped in sooner.”

“I don’t need your help. I’m a grown-up.”

“You’ve been a grown-up since we were teenagers. Have you ever thought about, like, trying to be happy?”

“Don’t be cute,” I say, standing.

“I’m serious!” she says, grabbing my hand before I can walk away.

“What does happiness even look like, Nay? Is it even real? Is anyone happy? Are you? I’m sorry. I’m…I’m not trying to chase some unicorn just to find out it’s a horse with a cone glued to its head. I just want to be in my house with my things and watch a movie on a Friday night and garden on the weekends and…I don’t know. Buy groceries. And it’s not lost on me how that must sound to you, but what am I supposed to do? Get a divorce? End up alone, stressed about bills? Let me just…” I take a breath. “Everyone has their problems. This is mine. I’m not going to upend my life over it only to wind up miserable in a different way. It’s not worth the risk.”

Silence squirms around the cottage. The walls seem to inch in. That woody smell grows rapidly in strength, becomes cloying. The air is too warm and too dry; it scrapes against my skin, claws at my throat and eyes. Through the windows, the walls of glass, I can see flurries scurry across the dark.

The quiet becomes unendurable. Naomi squeezes my hand.

“What?” I ask.

“You’ve always settled for less because—” She stops, shakes her head. “I wish you saw yourself the way I see you.”

I give a hollow laugh. “Yeah. I guess me, too. I think I’m going to turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night, Sloane. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Up in the loft, I sit on the bed and stare at my phone.

I should have some water. I should take off my makeup. I should apply my nightly retinol, my moisturizer. I should change into my pajamas. I should forget what just happened, everything I said, everything she said.

I shouldn’t have had so much to drink. I shouldn’t have eaten so much goddamn cheese. I shouldn’t have come here. I really shouldn’t have come here.

I should go to bed. I should just go to sleep.

I shouldn’t do what I’m about to do.

Maybe Naomi’s right. Maybe I love a disaster.

Because I open up the doorbell-camera app I installed on my phone that I pretended to be too tech inept to use so Joel wouldn’t worry about it—if he even would have thought to worry about it. And it takes me a minute, because I actually am tech inept, but I do figure it out. I do find her. Three and a half hours ago, right around the time I texted him, I see a car that I don’t recognize pull up in front of the house. I see a woman walk up to the front door, think better of it, and promptly change direction. Probably heading in through the garage.

It’s hard to tell, because the camera isn’t particularly good and she doesn’t get close enough to it, and it’s nighttime, so the footage is blurry, that unnerving black-and-white, but she looks pretty. She looks young. Younger than me.

My shoes feel too heavy, too difficult to remove. I leave them on, fall sideways down to the mattress. I let my phone slip from my hand, disappear somewhere. I pull up the blankets, hoping I disappear somewhere. Underneath them, into sleep. The wind whirs outside, rattling the windows.

“Go away,” I tell it. “You can’t come in. You can’t come in.”

I close my eyes as the room starts to spin.

—

When my eyes open, the haze of sleep is slow to fade. There’s music. The trees dance to it.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

It’s almost like jazz. Like the faint, nostalgic jazz of Main Street. Only it isn’t.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

No, it isn’t like that at all. Because it isn’t pleasant, this music, this sound. It’s insistent.

Tap-tap.

There are windows on either side of me. Pure glass. The woods. Nature. There are no curtains to pull. There’s nowhere to hide.

Why would I think that?

I need to go back to sleep; the longer I stay awake, the harder it will be. But it’s loud. I turn over, stare at the ceiling. It’s so tall, pitched so high above me.

Tap-tap.

Is it getting louder?

It’s the wind. That’s all. All it is.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Wind at my window, shrieking with urgency.

But it’s not only the wind. There’s a whisper hiding underneath. A voice. And a…

A clinking. A chattering.

My teeth.

I reach for my trembling jaw, hold it still. My hands are freezing. I’m freezing. There’s no blanket. Where are the covers? Why am I still wearing my shoes?

A sourness bubbles up my throat. I swallow it down, run my tongue over unbrushed teeth. I shudder.

Sitting up to remove my shoes, I catch a glimpse of the moon, a slim crescent shining like the blade of a sharp knife. The sky is black and starless. There are no more flurries, and without them, the scene is ominous. The threat of a storm looms; I feel it in my gut.

I pull off one of my shoes. The other. I let them fall to the floor with a clunk-clunk .

What follows is stark silence, and I understand immediately that it’s a listening silence. That the wind and the whispering have ceased to press their ears to the windows. That they want to know if I’m awake. That they don’t want me to hear what they’re saying.

I hold perfectly still. Hold my breath. Make no noise.

Why this paranoia? Why am I so afraid, so fearful of the wind? Of these big, big windows. Of a view of the sky.

The whispering resumes, and my eyes slide right, toward the front of the cottage, and somehow slowly but all at once, a dark silhouette appears at the glass. A figure.

There’s someone at my window. There’s someone out there.

Only there can’t be. I’m on the second floor.

It’s a tree. A shadow. It’s not what it looks like. Or it is, but I’m dreaming, and this isn’t real; it’s a nightmare.

It must be a nightmare, because that isn’t a shadow. It isn’t a tree. The shape of it, there, at the glass, at the corner of my eye—it’s—

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.