No, no, I don’t care. I want to live. I press myself against Tyler’s back, and I want to live. That’s all I know—one greedy breath after another.
There’s the shabby house, overflowing ashtrays still on the porch. The gate is padlocked. Tyler tips me over the fence like a sack of potatoes. He lands hard in the dirt beside me. “Come on, come on.” He grabs my hand, pulling me up. Banging on the front door, calling out. Finally LeighAnn appears.
“Hey. What’s … holy hell, what’s going on?”
Tyler pushes past her without answering, dragging me along too.
Max is wearing shorts and no shirt. “She’s got … are those flowers?”
“We need to pull them out.” Tyler leads me to the living room couch. Somebody kicks the drum kit. The thump bounces off carpeted walls.
Max turns on a lamp and runs careful fingers across the leaves and petals. “How … ? How is that even happening?”
Tyler shakes his head. “Later. First, we just get them out.”
Max holds my arm while Tyler plucks one of the flowers. Root torn from muscle—I scream, body bowing up.
“We should get her to a hospital, man. If we—”
“No.” I shake my head. The roots have reached past my elbow. They’re part of me. I feel the blossoms open with a sugary sort of fizzing. “They’ll kill me before we get there. Pull them out. Please, please.”
Tyler pulls one. I grit my teeth against the pain but can’t keep from screaming again. LeighAnn cradles my head, wiping sweat away with the hem of her T-shirt. She murmurs, “Doing good. Almost through. Doing good.”
I’m too tired to scream anymore, so I just whimper. Tyler plucks the last one. “Jane? That was it, Jane. You okay?”
My skin looks scraped raw. Blood trickles down, turning gummy in the creases of my palm.
“Okay, what … what the hell?” LeighAnn asks.
Tyler’s face is fish-belly white and slick with sweat. “Something attacked us out on the lake. It pretended to be Holly and lured us out there, then—”
“No.” I sit up. “That was Holly. I mean, her body was mud and weeds, but I talked to her. It’s Holly’s soul inside.”
“No. Holly would never kill her pa-paw.”
“Whoa. Somebody was killed?” LeighAnn asks.
“She didn’t do it on purpose, Tyler. I don’t think she knows she’s dead.”
“Um, how about we figure all this out on the way to the ER?” Max asks.
“No.” I half sit up. “I can’t go to the hospital.”
“There were plants growing through your skin!” He pushes his glasses up, leaving a red smear on the lens.
“They’re gone. I can feel it.” Standing makes my head spin, but I force myself not to puke. “I just need to wash the cuts real good. You have any antibiotic ointment?”
I follow Max down the hall to the bathroom. The hallway wall is covered in dozens of concert flyers, some of them wrinkled from rain. In the green-tiled bathroom, Max gets ointment and gauze from under the sink, then steps out. I pull my phone out of my pocket. It won’t turn on anymore. My dad once dropped his phone in a puddle, then stuck it in a bowl of rice to draw out the moisture. But I went swimming with my phone, so I doubt that would work. The only other thing in my pocket is the twenty-dollar bill. I unfold it carefully and lay it on the counter to dry.
Next, I peel off my shirt and wash my arm under the tub faucet. The water turns pink as I scrub away blood and mud. The pain makes my hands shake. Muscles tighten into ropes. My face twists shut like the top of a plastic bag.
You killed your pa-paw, Holly. We were coming to save you, and you killed him, and you don’t even know what you’ve done or what you’ve become. What happened to you down in the drowned forest?
I flex my fingers. My arm still burns, deep in the muscle, when I do. I want to go to the ER. They could zap my arm with about a million x-rays to make sure every last root tip was dead. I want to go home. Even if Mom and Dad are furious, I’d just hug them tight. Even if they sent me to Dr. Haq or grounded me for a year or gave me a lobotomy, I wouldn’t care.
I want to give up, Holly.
I want to run back home and never talk about this night. Resting my forehead on the tub’s cool lip, I beg God to let this cup pass from me. But God has forsaken us, left us both blowing in the wind.
And you had to talk about the church flower gardens.
I open the cabinet under the sink and find some Windex. Unscrewing the spray top, I pour it across my arm. The ammonia and detergents seep down into the tiny cuts, killing off any root tips still buried under my skin. It burns like the edge of a hot pan. I bite down on a hand towel and empty the bottle.
I won’t forsake you, Holly, no matter what.
I smear ointment on my arm and bandage it. I fix my ponytail in the mirror and shove my fear down into a tight knot inside my chest. I can still feel it, but I can also walk and talk and force a smile. For once, I’m glad I can’t cry.
Tyler and the others are still in the living room.
“ … I don’t know,” Max says. “A catfish and ring, some ghost made from mud. It’s just pretty hard to believe.”
“Well, you pulled flowers out of my skin,” I say from the archway. “You saw that yourself, right? You believe your own eyes, right?”
Tyler looks over his shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
I step past him, continuing to talk to Max and LeighAnn. “I know it’s nuts. I’ve spent the last day trying to figure out how everything I’m seeing must not be what’s actually happening. I’d be a lot happier if somebody could convince me I’m crazy. But Tyler sees the same things I do. And now you guys have seen it. What’s happening is what’s happening, and what I’m seeing is what I’m seeing. Here.” I offer my wounded, scabbing arm to them. “Feel the cuts if you want, but really, what’s happening is what’s happening.”
Neither of them take me up on my offer. Max says, “Okay, what’s happening is what’s happening, but, I mean, what is happening?”
I shake my head. “Don’t know yet. But I need a big favor. I need somewhere to stay until we figure that out, and figure out how to help Holly.”
“Jane … ” Tyler shakes his head. “Are you sure that’s really Holly?”
“Yes. She talked about stuff only she’d know about. She’s scared and confused, but that’s Holly.”
Tyler doesn’t argue. I look at the others again. “My parents won’t believe any of this. They haven’t seen it, so they can’t believe it. And if I keep talking about it, they’ll probably have me committed or something. My friends from church won’t believe it, our pastor, he … I just need to stay somewhere until we figure out what to do. I … I can’t really pay right now—”
“Nah, don’t worry about that. You know how many freeloaders have crashed here?” Max slaps the worn couch cushion. “You’ll be sleeping in the buttprints of giants.”
“Except none of them had some sort of river ghost after them,” LeighAnn says. “What if it comes here and attacks us?”
“Lee-Lee, we can’t just kick her out.”
LeighAnn snorts. “Some people, a few nights on the street might be good for them.” She walks off without another word.
Max agrees to drive Tyler back over to the marina to get his truck. First, he finds me a sleeping bag and pillow. I wish he’d offer me some dry clothes to sleep in, but he doesn’t. And I don’t want to ask these people for any more than I have to.