Page 44 of Theirs to Crave

“Five things you can see, Estrella. Can you see me?”

I nodded, trying to force my brain to focus. My vision wavered and jumped as I tried to find something recognizable. “You,” I said, my voice a croak. “The palapa. Stream. Uhhh, trees?”

“Good. Excellent. What can you feel?”

I stumbled through my answer, my hand gripping hers like a lifeline. What I could hear came easier, and by the time I was registering my “haven’t brushed my teeth in a month” mouth flavor, I’d mostly stopped shaking.

I let out a slow breath and squeezed her hand. “Therapy, huh?”

“So much therapy,” Cass agreed, her face sympathetic.

I arched my back, feeling like I’d wrestled a bear. Pinche anxiety attacks wiped me out.

“Can I ask what brought that on?” Cass asked. “It’s okay to say no.”

I poked the dirt, feeling it gritty against my fingertips. “It’s stupid.” Cass made a disagreeing sound, and I sighed, steadying myself. “The moons. I used to watch documentaries sometimes, at night when I couldn’t sleep. A lot of serial killers—”

Cass snorted again, quieter this time.

“But other stuff too. Animals, food. Space.” My fingers tripped over a root, and I brushed the dirt away, following it. “Mars has two moons; did you know that? And this place is red,” I tapped a waxy leaf, making it bounce. “But the pictures that robot took didn’t look anything like this.”

I chewed on my lip until I tasted blood. “We’re so far from home, Cass. Unimaginably far. When I see those moons—” My chest tightened and I forced myself to take long, slow breaths. “It’s like they’re screaming at me, ‘You’re never going home!’ Everything I knew, everything I loved, hell, everything I hated. Gone. Lost forever.”

I wiped my fingers off and ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Tonta, like I said. I know all that already.”

“It’s not stupid.” Cass’s voice was solemn. “No eres estúpida. All this—” She waved to the sky, then flapped her hand, making me smile, just a little. “I’d be more worried about you if you weren’t freaking out.”

I sniffled one last time and looked over my shoulder with exaggerated movements. “You mean like Mr. Cool As A Cucumber Shane? Or All Jokes No Fear Ria? You’re right. They’re probably going to snap and kill us all.”

Cass grinned at me as heavy drops began to splatter from the sky. “Until they do, let’s get some more sleep. I have a feeling things aren’t going to calm down for a little while.”

We helped each other up and hurried towards the palapa as the rain came down with more intention. As we snuggled back into our nest with the others, I whispered, “What do you think the chances are that they have therapists on this planet?”

Cass’s body shook with quiet laughter.

I drifted to sleep, smiling.

???

In the morning—really the morning, this time—I felt like one gaping, raw wound. As if every nerve had been pulled from my body to wave in the air, exposed.

The straps of my top rubbed my shoulders, and I wanted to go after them with a knife. Shane said something nice about my body, and I wanted to bury myself in the cushions until I disappeared. Mariano saidnothing, andnotscreaming at him took a monumental effort.

The rain continued, but as if it recognized my delicate state, its fall was soft. Gentle, even.

I decided to help with breakfast—it being the lesser of two evils. Talking was pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster in my current mood. Cooking—for me—was only slightly less likely to end in tragedy, but since the Teterayuh seemed to stick to raw or already smoked food in the morning, I figured I couldn’t do too much damage.

I cut myself. Just a slice across my palm, but it bled pretty good. With all my other cuts and bruises, I barely noticed. But it caused a slight panic among our hosts.

I hadn’t been paying close attention—too busy fantasizing about the chilaquiles Mariano had promised me a lifetime ago—and my knife slipped. In my defense, the rind of thesoruwas hard, and neither the knives we’d stolen from the bugs nor the ones the Teterayuh had were built for human hands.

Afterward, I was “encouraged” to rest next to Yin by a very grumpy Revik, while Zafett hovered nearby with his magic ointment. I’d glared at Litha—who was laughing, so rude—then proceeded to pout.

Xe wasn’t interested in talking either, so we formed a little island of quiet amidst the conversations eddying around the palapa.

I spent my time drilling holes in Mariano with my eyes. He pretended to pay attention to this morning’s episode of See and Say, but there was definitely something wrong in that fool’s head. I was hoping if I glared hard enough the wrongness would fall out.

Yin spent xyr time staring into the jungle.