Fever by Lauren Destefano

Author:Lauren Destefano [DeStefano, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

SOMETIME AFTER DAWN we board a bus that will take us to Pennsylvania. After that we’ll have enough money to take another bus to New Jersey, and from there, Manhattan. Gabriel told me all of this before the bus even came, but still the name of my home is echoing through my head. Like a gift. Like an unattainable thing. I can’t believe we’re so close.

I take the seat by the window, and Gabriel takes the aisle, with Maddie wedged between us. My mouth has gone dry. I try to contain my smile, and can feel it inside of me anyway, tightening the muscles of my face and neck, making me giddy. Manhattan. Home. The engine is thrumming under my legs.

When I crane my neck over Maddie and rest my head on Gabriel’s shoulder, he says, “I’ll take first watch.”

“Okay,” I say. But I doubt I’ll be able to get any sleep, even when I feel my eyelids becoming heavy.

I do not dream about the mansion, or about Greg, or the haunted blue flowers on the wall. Instead I dream that the bus has stopped, that when I step outside, there is a wealth of people. Not first generations or new generations, but people: children, teenagers, young adults, adults, the elderly. Like a moving snapshot from a newspaper clipping of the twenty-first century.

I am holding something in my hand, and I look down at it. Annabelle’s tarot card: The World. The whole world.

Something is not quite right about it, though. I can’t find Rowan. I have a horrible thought that maybe nobody has told him that the world is saved, that I have the proof right here in my hand. Too late, a voice is telling me. You got here too late.

I recognize the voice just as the people recede into blackness, and I do not get the word out in time.

“Mom?”

My eyelids are rising on their own, and the daylight is unwelcome and harsh. I shield my eyes with my forearm. “Where are we?” I mumble.

Gabriel doesn’t answer right away. He leans forward just enough to look at me, where my head rests lazily on his chest, and he peels some hair from my eyes. I repeat the question.

“Just making sure you’re really awake,” he says. “You were talking in your sleep.”

“I was?”

“You’ve been doing it a lot lately,” he says, and for some reason he looks unhappy before he tilts his head back so I can’t see his face. He works his fingers through my hair. I close my eyes, lulled back toward sleep by his touch and the whirr of the engine. And I’ve forgotten my question by the time he answers it. “You could sleep a little more if you want.”

“I’ll take next watch,” I mumble. “Thank you.”

His fingertips tap the rhythm of the engine. They’re warm and alive with his pulse, his energy. And I drift into a half sleep, listening to the voices on the bus, sometimes dreaming of faces, street signs passing by too fast for me to make out the words printed on them.

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