Page 13 of Sublimate
“Thank you,” I told the librarian. “I appreciate you helping me.” I went and sat in one of the big chairs next to the fire where it was so warm and cozy. I imagined that Nolan also had a fireplace, and that he could have sat in front of it on a day like this. But then I imagined him taking out his flask.
“Vivi?”
I opened my eyes, startled. Cadence stood in front of me, holding out a piece of paper. “This is the address,” she told me.
“What?” I sat up straight and looked at the fire, which was a lot smaller. The big logs had disappeared—they’d burned down to ashes.
“This is the address,” she repeated. She still offered the paper to me. “I figured that if I can find it online then anyone can. You could yourself, too, so why would I try to hide it? It was a mean thing for me to do.”
“No, that made sense. You thought I was going to do something bad,” I said. “You were being…” I had to stop to yawn. “Youwere being a good friend, even if you said that you two aren’t really friends.” I reached and took the Post-it from her. “Thank you.”
“You’ve been asleep for a while,” she told me next, and I sat up straight.
Had I? I looked through the window at the snowy lawn and it did look quite a bit darker.
“We close at five today, and it’s almost—”
“It’s almost five?” I jumped up and got a little dizzy, since it had been a while since I’d eaten. “I have to go. Thank you for your help, Cadence.”
I rushed but as soon as I could see the house in the distance, I knew that I was ok. Kolter’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Since I didn’t have a working phone, I didn’t know where he was, but I wasn’t concerned. He also hadn’t known where I was, so there was no reason for me to be nervous. He wouldn’t be angry that I’d been at the library for most of the day, resting in warmth and safety.
I didn’t have either of those things that night. I slept in two pairs of pants, multiple layers of socks and shirts, and with every blanket piled over me. I still wasn’t very warm, and I wasn’t comfortable, either. First, all that clothing was pretty confining, but second, I was worried. Kolter never came home and I got concerned that he’d been hurt or, more likely, arrested. At least it was warm in jail but I knew that he would be furious when he got out.
It was also strange to be in this house by myself. I had grown up in apartments and shared rentals with many other people, and I was used to noise, light, and movement as I slept. It was just so quiet here…
I didn’t like it. There were a lot of things that went on at night that you needed to be scared of, real things. But I was also scared of things that I wasn’t quite sure were real, like shadow people and vampires.
Anyway, without someone next to me, I found it hard to sleep and by the next morning, he still hadn’t returned. I went to clean two houses and afterwards, I had the money to replenish the minutes on my phone. The first thing I did when I had it fixed up was to look at where Kolter was, and then I also texted him. When he didn’t respond, I called.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Are you ok?” I asked. “Why are you at your mom’s place? Is she ok? Did something happen and that’s why you didn’t come home?”
“Lots of questions. I came over here to play Squid Crash with my cousin,” he said, yawning loudly. “Then Ryker and I went to get pizza and I stayed the night.”
“I had no idea where you were!”
“You don’t keep up with your phone,” he told me. “That’s your problem. Figure out how to pay for it. And you don’t get to bother me and scream about what I’m doing. It’s colder than a witch’s tit at my house.”
“I’m not screaming but I was concerned. I thought you’d been in an accident or gotten arrested! I know that it’s no fun to sleep here because I’m freezing, too. Couldn’t your mom help pay to fix—”
“Shut your stupid mouth,” he said, and then the call was over.
Well, the good news was that he was fine. The bad news was that he was going to be very, very angry with me when he got home. It had been a dumb question, anyway. Obviously, his mom didn’t have the money to fix his furnace, because she would have given it to him already. It had been a terrible idea to bring up the fact that he couldn’t pay for those repairs, either. I knew that it would make him furious—why had I said it?
I really had been worried about him and scared since I was alone but…I had to admit that I’d also felt relieved. When Kolter was home, I was always at attention, trying to head off problems or smooth down moods before they became bigger. I had been freezing and uncomfortable in all that clothing but I hadn’t felt like I was also waiting for trouble, at least not from him. Supernatural beings or bears still could have been an issue, though.
The whole situation made me angry and that was why I made the decision to waste more of the precious minutes on my phone. I texted the number I had memorized back in December, the one that belonged to Nolan Whitaker.
“This is Vivi. Vivienne O’Keeffe,” I added. “We met when you were walking on the road at night. Do you remember me?”
It took a long time for him to respond and my car got pretty cold. I was about to start it when he answered.
“Of course I remember you. How are you doing?”
I thought for a moment about what to say. “I’m all right.” Things could have been a whole lot worse, so that was true. “How are you?”
Then it took another few moments but he did write again. “I’m at the airport. Did you need something?”
