Page 66 of Grave Matter
“And he has a thing for you. I’ve at least noticed that,” I say. “So? How is that going?”
“Well, nowhere because neither of us has made a move. God, I feel like I’m in high school again.” She sighs and looks off into the dark inlet.
“That’s not a bad thing,” I say. “You have all summer to explore that. You don’t want to jump into anything right away.” I look over at the fishing boat that’s rocking slightly, the ripples making the water glow. “What happens if Natasha and Justin break up tomorrow and they have to deal with seeing each other for the rest of the summer? No, thanks.”
“That’s true,” she says. She leans over and dangles her hand in the water again and sighs. “But actually, I’m not sure how I can survive the next couple months. I wonder if I can request to go home early.”
My eyes widen as I’m struck with fear.
“Why? No. You can’t. You can’t leave me.”
She gives me a soft smile. “You can leave too.”
But I can’t. I have no money and nowhere to go.
I shake my head. “Why do you want to leave?”
“You mean, aside from the fact that I would fucking die to just check my email and Instagram for a minute?” She brings her hand out of the water and peers at it, flicking tiny pieces of seaweed off her pruney skin. “I just don’t feel tested here, you know? My senior synthesis was supposed to be on fungi that survived the ice age, and yet, we haven’t gone anywhere nearthe peninsula yet. The classes are all over the place. Professor Kincaid’s are thought-provoking, but they’re still holding so much back from us. Lab work with Everly is just lip service. I just feel like I might be wasting my time.”
She’s right about all that.
“How are your sessions with Kincaid?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Fine. He’s not very thorough. We just mainly talk about this and that. What TV shows I’m missing, how it feels like the world is passing me by while I’m stuck here.” She pauses and shoots me a furtive glance. “Though I don’t tell him everything.”
I frown. “What aren’t you telling him?”
“Sometimes this place vibes me out.” She finishes her drink and then leans in close. “I’m not going crazy, don’t worry. But sometimes it feels like I’m being watched. When I walk to class. When we’re foraging. When we’re in the common room. It just feels like…eyes on me. Studying me.”
I swallow hard.
“And sometimes,” she goes on, her voice lower. “I see things…in the forest.”
“What things?” I whisper back, feeling my stomach churn from the wine.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I don’t even know. Just…things. Like…shapes. Shadows. Sometimes I think I see glowing eyes.”
“Well, there are a lot of wild animals here. Could be anything.”
“I think the forest plays tricks on us,” she says.
I want to fight against that, but I know she’s right. “Yeah, well, the other night, I thought I saw Amani again. She was knocking on my door. I followed her outside to the boat yard, and it started snowing.”
“Snowing?”
“Yep. I can’t figure out if Amani was real or not, but the snow was. It was cold. I felt it. I watched it melt. It was real. And gone with the rain in the morning. The forest really is playing tricks on us.”
“Well, snow in early June this far north isn’t totally impossible. And it has been cold lately. Maybe a freak weather system passed over us?”
“Still doesn’t explain Amani,” I say quietly, staring down at my empty cup.
We both go quiet, thinking.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” I ask.
“No. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No.” We both laugh. It feels fucking good to laugh, to put it all out there.