Ferencik, Erica - Girl in Ice by Ferencik Erica

Author:Ferencik, Erica [Ferencik, Erica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

eighteen

I woke with a jolt. My battery-powered alarm clock read 3:24 a.m., the minute the battery must have died. But it had to be much later than that. The air brimmed with the smell of coffee and pancakes. From beyond my thin walls, muffled conversation, the stomp of boots up and down the hall.

I dove into my clothes, working a brush through my hair as I hurried down the hallway. The day had broken gloomy and overcast; a pallid light leaked into the main room.

Wyatt, fully suited up, stood at the door. “Sleeping Beauty awakes.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Girl’s asleep. Jeanne’s helping Nora and Raj fix some piece of dive equipment in the Dome. You’re lucky for that. Otherwise we’d’ve been long gone.” He zipped his parka and flipped the hood. “I’ve got to deice the cat. Soon as Jeanne’s back, we leave.”

“Fine,” I said, gulping lukewarm coffee.

He left, a frosty blast of air in his wake.

I sat on the bottomed-out couch considering my options. Facing the Enormity without assistance wasn’t one of them. I needed alcohol, something, anything to take the edge off. And I had to act fast. I had a bad feeling about the wine; I checked around the kitchen. The boxes of red and white had been drained the night before; the empties sat by the door. Had Wyatt planned this? Maybe, maybe not. Normally only a red and white were kept in the Shack; the bulk of it was stored in the Shed, since the kitchen was so cramped.

Limbs quaking, I paced the room, viscerally craving the surge of calm from my daily pill. I mourned its powers of transformation: from a tiny white disk in a bottle to an elixir that soothed my monkey brain with its velvety embrace. But it wasn’t to be: I was naked, a newborn under klieg lights. I looked around. The furniture no longer looked shabby but cozy, it looked shredded, as if some wild animal had attacked it; the vials of blood weren’t science, they were ominous forebodings; the searing primary colors of the chipped breakfast plates stabbed at my retinas, vibrating me into migraine. Snow pellets gunned the windows, always wanting in. Dry heat thrummed from the radiator, but my back was cold; some part of me was always numb with cold, my hands, feet, the back of my neck.

Drug-free, I felt the ghosts of everyone in the room, could smell Wyatt’s, Raj’s, Nora’s, Jeanne’s sorrows, angers, their griefs, their regrets—all so apparent, so viciously raw. I balanced on a precipice with no shell, no fur, no feather, no human skin; I was an anemone on a dying reef helplessly siphoning oil from a spill, veins blackening. I couldn’t last here like this.

I had to move. Find some alcohol. A pathetic Band-Aid, but a necessary one. Someone had to have a stash.

Listening for Wyatt’s footsteps, I tiptoed to the low freezer on the kitchen floor and opened it. Frosted air ballooned up into my face as I gingerly lifted

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