Page 54 of A Perfect World
“Thirty minutes,” he taunted.
“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, but I was grinning like an idiot. Hot air from the blow dryer lulled me into a daze vignetted in milky white.
The blow dryer tumbled from my hand as the fog swallowed me whole.
It’s pitch black, the tiniest dot of light grows far, far away. I reach for it, desperate to get back to the warmth. I’m so cold- numb and cold to the core. As the light nears, numbness fades, replaced by piercing agony. I almost turn away from the light. My nerve endings shriek.
Something slices through the pain and inwardly lifts me with a force I can’t fight if I try. Flashes of my life crack like lightning across the darkness. The nightmarish and euphoric weaving in a spider web above me. I rise to meet them and pass through with an electric shock, my entire soul ricocheting in bright red. I float suspended in the dark beating red pool until I feel my body beating in time with it.
“Baby, wake up, please wake up.”
I winced at the assaulting light. I was floating- suspended in the red pool-
“Thank fuck,” Ollie sighed.
I wasn’t floating. I was cradled in Ollie’s lap on the tile with a hair dryer next to my foot. Just a vision, albeit, the weirdest one I’d ever experienced.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I had a vision.”
Ollie drew me closer to his chest. “You faint every time you get one?” he asked. “What if you’re, I don’t know, in class or dancing or-”
I pressed a finger to his lips, silencing him.
“You’re panicking. I’m fine.”
He glared down at me. “I’m allowed to panic, I heard a bang and then you fell to the floor, I thought they-” He cut himself off and ground his teeth. “It scared the shit out of me.”
In the comfort of his arms, I basked in his adorable fussing. My thumb made a pass over his lower lip.
“It wasn’t them. I’m ok,” I whispered. The tension in his body refused to abate. He buried his nose in my semi-damp hair.
“You were out longer than the last time you pulled that shit.”
“You mean when I saw you withher?”
He pinched the underside of my breast. “Am I with her now?” he asked.
“No,” I grumbled. He kissed my hair, helping me up. He snaked his arms around my waist from behind, curling over me so his humid breath caressed my ear.
“What did you see?”
I held his gaze in the mirror. “I don’t know yet.”
26
Ollie
Onehandonthesteering wheel and the other on Courtney’s thigh, we cruised through Marie’s neighborhood. A cookie cutter street with homes piled on top of each other, all painted in shades of tan or beige; my sister idealized a mundane existence. It wasn’t unexpected with the volatile way we grew up. She sought aboringlife, I couldn’t fault her for that.
Beside me, Courtney’s spine straightened as she peered out the window. “How do you know which one is hers?”
“It’s the one with the light up reindeer.”
Her brows knit in the adorable pensive way that meant she was skeptical. After spending every hour together for weeks, I learned to read her facial expressions almost as clearly as if I breached her mind. I gave her thigh a squeeze and parked in Marie’s driveway. Killing the engine, I twisted to face my angel and brushed the curtain of silky hair over her shoulder.
“You sure you’re ok?” I murmured.
I knewIwasn’t ok. The clatter of the hair dryer and her body slumping to the floor- I thought Merit found us and shot her. I’d collapsed to the tile, finding no blood, nothing but her milky white stare.
