Page 16 of Sexy as Sin
The voice got scratchier, but it kept going, and he rode its waves and held on. “We moved every year or two, and in between postings, we came back to Australia. It was warm, like home—like wherever home was at the time—but it was so wet. Like today. So humid, though I didn’t know what that meant. It was justwet.We’d see my cousins, and they were big and strong and tough. Rafe and Jace. I thought they were wonderful, even though they were scary, but not as scary as my uncle. He was a sergeant-major—isa sergeant-major, and I was always a little afraid of him. I was a timid girl, you see. Used to playing quietly on my own, making up games in my head, and scared of everything. They were so loud, and they were always moving.”
Wait.Rafe and Jace. The names hung there like constellations in the whirling dark behind his eyes. There was a pattern, but he couldn’t see it. Reaching for it was too hard, and he was so cold.
Noise, then. Another voice, alarm in it, and the good voice went away. He was groping in the freezing dark. Something soft settled over him, and he cried out. It hurt. Ithurt.
“It’s a blanket,” somebody said. “You’re cold.”
“Hat,” he tried to say. “Hat.”
“You want a hat?” It wasn’t the good voice. “I can give you this.”
“No. Her. Red... girl. Hat. Water.”
“I have water,” the good voice said, sounding more like the wind again, and not like prickly sawdust. “Brett. I have a hat. I’m fine. I’m good.” The hand was around his again, and he held on and tried to breathe. “Do you want to hear more? Do you want me to talk to you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Talk. What came... next.” The pain was trying to send him away, and he held on to her and kept himself here. It was too hard, and he had to do it anyway. He had to hold on.
“This part isn’t happy.” Her voice arrived and receded like waves on a shore, and there was danger. Bad danger. A shark, and the water. He wanted to tell her to hurry, that she was in trouble. He wanted to grab her, and he couldn’t. The waves would get her, too, and pull her under. There was a noise like a fly buzzing, or a mosquito. A noise you couldn’t drown out. Wailing. Bad. “There was a plane crash,” she said. “They’d gone to a conference in Cairo, then on to Tamanrasset, in Algeria, for a weekend before they came home. It was their twentieth anniversary. They loved each other first, you see. They hadn’t known they’d have me. I was a surprise. So they took their chance to get away, and on the way back to Cairo...” The hand around his shook, and he held it tighter. “The plane crashed. One survivor. Not my parents. I woke up, and they were gone, and they wouldn’t come back. And then I was in Australia. Here. Home was gone. Start again.”
He wanted to tell her he knew, to tell her it was all right, that you always had to start again, but there were more voices. Hands, too, touching him. Hurting him. He cried out and started to shake, and that hurt more, and the hand was gone.
You could never hold on long enough, hard enough. You always had to let go. And it hurt too much. Like it would kill you, but it never did.
Rest in peace.
You never got to rest, though. You were still here, and you had to be strong.
There was something touching the back of his hand, something else, not the girl, and then a pain there like a pinprick. How could he feel that when the red pain from his leg was everywhere, chewing him up, breaking his bones? It didn’t make sense. He needed to make it... make... sense.
Darker, and he was falling again, going away. The constellations behind his eyes wobbled and faded, and everything went dark.
Too much noise. The people in the next room were talking and rattling things, trying to wake him up. Hewantedto wake up, but he couldn’t.
He knew it was a nightmare, but he kept falling back into it again anyway. Hewasfalling, trying to grab hold of something, anything, and unable to, knowing that when he hit the ground, he’d die, and so would the girl. She didn’t have water. He was trying to get her water, but he couldn’t.
After that, he wasn’t falling anymore. He was diving under the waves, trying to pull the girl up, but he kept running out of air. Her hand kept slipping out of his grasp. She was stuck, and he couldn’t pull her up.
Her hand was so cold. He couldn’t hang on. If he didn’t hang on, she’d die. Her hand was gone, and he couldn’t find it.
He was crying.No.You couldn’t cry. You had to save the girl.
Wake up. Be strong.
He tried, but it was hard. His head was so fuzzy, and his thoughts kept sliding away from him.
Finally, he got his eyes open. His cheeks were wet. Hehadcried, then. This wasn’t good.
Dim light. A ceiling. Wrong ceiling. Fluorescent lights. He never did those. Hotel, then. Oh. Australia. He was in Australia. Wasn’t he?
He hurt, and he couldn’t move. He must still be asleep. Still in the nightmare.
Wakeup.
Start again. Start from here.Two sentences, six syllables, repeating in his brain as they did every morning, and itwasmorning.
That’s right. That was how you started.You write your own story.He remembered that, too.
Something was wrong. His brain wasn’t working right, even though he was awake. Wasn’t he? Why couldn’t he think? He started to panic, and pulled himself back. He held on, because that was what you did. You held on.
