Girls of Salt and Sea by Natalia Macias Lucia

Author:Natalia Macias Lucia [Lucia, Natalia Macias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

Desperate hands wrench me upward, and a sickening, squelchy cough bursts from my lips.

Someone yells, “Throw me a robe!”

It sounds like Palmer.

“I don’t see any—”

“For goodness sake, Mojo, a towel, then! Hurry.”

A broad blanket of terry cloth drops over my shoulders, hands rubbing frantically down my arms through the towel.

“Snap out of it!” Palmer screeches, shaking my limp form like a rag doll. “Don’t make me slap you, Dell. I swear I will. Open your eyes, dammit.”

I do as she says, my eyes shuddering alive, and I’m stunned to find that I’m back in the bathroom, plucked from the consummate darkness, from the depths of the ocean.

But...it had all felt so real.

“Thank God.” Palmer exhales. “What the hell were you doing?”

My cousin is perched on the edge of the tub, gaping at me in profound shock, while Mojo idles in the doorway, head turned away from me. I glance down and quickly realize why.

I’m propped up in the bath, my lower half still obscured by sudsy water, but my chest is exposed and peaked by the cool air, my shoulders wrapped in the towel Palmer aimlessly threw around me. I pull my legs up, drawing my knees to my boobs for coverage, and cross my arms around them securely. The towel gets soaked in the process.

“H-how did you get in here?” My voice is small and gurgly.

“Briggs asked us to find you. He gave us a key”—Mojo holds it up to the light, still not facing me directly—“in case you were sleeping or couldn’t hear us over the storm.”

“What on earth were you doing?” Palmer asks again. “What happened?”

How can I even begin to explain what happened? How can I describe what I saw, or thought I saw, in my dream—if that’s even what it was?

“I was just taking a bath,” I offer weakly, my mind racing. “I guess I must’ve fallen asleep at some point.”

“And you just casually slipped underwater?” she huffs, breathless. “We were knocking for a long time.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear—”

“And you’re a crappy liar to boot.”

“Uh, ladies,” Mojo pipes up, waving his hands to get our attention. “How ‘bout we shelf this argument for later? We gotta get going, like, yesterday.”

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Hurricane Ophelia,” he says, eyes hovering somewhere above the wooden doorframe. “Category three. She shifted course and is making a beeline for us. Power grids on the island will be down within the hour. The beaches are already flooded to shit.”

“What time is it?”

“One in the morning.”

I inspect my shriveled, raisin fingers. I’d been in the bath since a little before ten, meaning I’d been soaking for over three hours.

“Dell!” Palmer snaps her fingers in my face to pull me from my stupor. “Cliffmoor House has two backup generators, and it’s on the highest ground of all the island. It’s the safest place we can be tonight. So we need to go, right now, before this thing intensifies.”

The safest place. That’s laughable. Nothing about Cliffmoor House, or this godforsaken island, is safe.

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