Long after Stanley has gone to sleep, I lie awake on the couch, staring at the ceiling. The mugginess in my head has cleared, but the queasy feeling in my stomach remains. Did we really just have that conversation?
Why are you so afraid of being loved?
I roll over, burying my face against the couch cushions.
Tomorrow, we will have breakfast together. I’ll drive him to school, and we’ll pretend that last night never happened. I’ll seal it away, along with everything else I don’t know how to deal with. There’s no sense in trying to untangle these feelings when our relationship is already irreparably broken.
You’re just using that as an excuse.
I curl into a ball.
He’s right. I just keep running, making excuses for myself, because I don’t know how to be close to someone.
I won’t run away this time. I can’t repair the damage, but I can stand my ground and face the consequences of my actions. After everything he and I have been through together, I owe him the truth. All of it. And if he doesn’t want to be with me after that . . . well, that’s probably for the best.
Quietly I get dressed, pull on my coat, and lace up my boots.
I have to open the Vault, and when I do it I can’t be anywhere near him.
I don’t know what will happen.
Outside, the world is still and white, cold and clear. I drive and drive, through subdivisions and snow-covered woods, until I see the dark expanse of the lake. I park, get out, and walk, snow crunching under my boots until I’m at the edge of the water. Despite the cold, the lake isn’t frozen. It laps at the sand, like hands reaching for me. I close my eyes and see the towering, shadowy doors of the Vault in front of me.
I can’t just reach out and open them. They’re too well constructed. When I built this place, I made it so that even I wouldn’t be able to break it open on a whim. But there is a way.
Standing on the shore, I begin to undress. When I strip off my shirt, the frigid air hits my bare skin, raising goose bumps. Ignoring the discomfort, I fold my clothes, placing them in a stack, leaving my car keys on top. I’m shaking hard, and not entirely from the cold. Every instinct is screaming at me to turn and run, run, run. The panic is like an alarm bell clanging in my head, drowning out my thoughts.
This is madness. I could get hypothermia. I could die.
But I have to do it. If I don’t face this now, I never will.
Naked, I wade into the icy water. It caresses me, wraps around me. My brain is still screaming, but I ignore it and keep wading in until the water reaches up to my chest. My breaths come quick and shallow. The cold eats into me, as though my skin has been stripped off and I’m burning alive.
I take a deep breath and submerge myself completely.
Cold water presses in around me, dark as tar. I open my mouth, and the air escapes my lungs in a flurry of bubbles. Mama’s face floats in the blackness, ghost-pale, hair drifting around her in a halo. Her eyes are closed. For a moment, we’re weightless.
Then we’re plunging down.
My mind is a chaos of static, but my body knows what it wants: it wants air. It wants to live. I claw off my seat belt and fumble in the darkness, my fingers numb with cold, my eyes straining against the black. When I find the car door handle and pull, it won’t open. It’s like something is pushing back, trying to close it.
Above me I can see a faint light through the water, but it’s dwindling. The ache in my lungs has sharpened to pain. My mouth wants to open, but I keep my lips clamped shut, knowing that if I give in to the urge, it will be over. Finally, in a burst of panicked strength, I force the door open.
A cold hand grabs mine, pulling me down. I struggle, kicking out. My nails rake over the thin, gripping fingers, but they won’t let go. I claw and kick and pry until finally the grip loosens and slides away, into the blackness.
I kick out against the water and shoot like a bullet toward the surface.
My head breaks through, and I gulp in air. A wave crashes over me, roaring, shoving me back under. The roar fills my ears and drowns out my thoughts. I kick to the surface again, and another wave drags me down, as if the lake is alive. My head breaks the surface and I drag more air into my lungs. Choppy waves break all around me, and foam swirls.
Where is Mama?
Dizziness bursts inside my skull, and my vision blurs. My legs and arms strike out blindly, fighting the water. The shore looks so far away, but I push myself toward it, even as the lake roars around me.
Mama. Where is she?
I remember a hand tugging mine, then slipping away. Slipping down into darkness. Then the memory vanishes, too.
Another wave roars down on me. The rush of water is all around me, and a current pulls at my legs. A bit of information—the Great Lakes are the only lakes that have currents—spins through my head like a leaf on the wind. I fight, arms wheeling. The shore is receding. I’m being pulled back and down.
It’s hard to see anything, but for an instant I think I glimpse a figure on the shore, beckoning me.
Mama.
When a current has you, you’re supposed to swim sideways. Teeth gritted, I dog-paddle, struggling against the pull. The current releases me, and I lunge toward the shore. My head goes under again. More water fills my mouth. My limbs go heavy and weak, but I force them to move. Mama is waiting for me on the shore. She’ll take me home, and this will all be a bad dream.
At last, I crawl onto the sand and collapse. A fit of coughing wracks my body, and cold black water floods from my mouth. Weakly I lift my head and look around. But Mama is nowhere to be seen.
My head drops to the sand. I don’t know how long I lay there, dizzy and sick, floating in and out of a dull fog.
Two figures stumble into my view. One of them is a teenage girl, laughing. A boy follows her, shoving his hands underneath her shirt. “Brad, stop! Someone will see us!” she gasps.
“Nobody here but us chickens, babe.” He peels off her shirt and squeezes her boobs, and they fall to the sand, him growling like a dog while she giggles and squeals.
A weak moan escapes my throat.
Their heads turn toward me. Their mouths drop open.
“Holy shit,” the boy says, “is that a kid?”
My vision goes blurry again, and darkness folds around me.
There’s a long stretch of nothing, and then a bright white room. For a while, I don’t know where I am or what’s happening. Doctors drift in and out of the room while I drift in and out of the dark fog in my head. There’s something covering my mouth and nose, and my breathing sounds raspy.
I hear a man say: “Amazing that she managed to swim to shore on her own. That takes some strength. She’s a lucky girl.”
And a woman’s voice replies, “I wouldn’t say that.” A pause. “Her eyelids just flickered. Is she conscious?”
If the man responds, I don’t hear it. I’m already sinking back into the void.
Later, a nurse is looking at the machines around me, writing things down on a clipboard.
“Where is Mama?” I whisper.
She looks at me and doesn’t say a word. Her lips tighten, and she quietly leaves.
I remember the car driving over the edge of the pier. I remember a cold hand sliding out of mine and into the nothingness below.
Everything clicks into place. For a moment I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move. A blinding red pain fills my whole body, like every nerve is screaming. Then all at once, the pain is gone, the nerves dead and cold.
Alone.
I’m alone.