The November Girl by Lydia Kang

Author:Lydia Kang
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mindy McGinnis;Kendare Blake;Holly Black;magical realism;superstition;forbidden romance
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2017-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

HECTOR

It’s not the most glamorous thing to say when you wake up in the arms of a stunning girl. A girl who does unspeakable things.

Anda leaves me so I can stagger to some trees and relieve myself. When I stagger back, I’m more than happy to be lying down again. My head swims and my mouth tastes like a dead fish, but I’m alive. Barely.

I close my eyes, and she sighs, as if relieved that I’m going back to sleep. But I can’t let it go.

“You sank that ship, didn’t you?” I say quietly.

She’s quiet for a long time. I wait. I have nothing but time, after all. Finally, she whispers her answer.

“Yes.”

“And that man, you drowned him.”

Another long pause. “Yes.”

“There was another person in the water, an old lady. What happened to her?”

“I let her survive. The Coast Guard rescued her.”

My eyes quickly snap to her face, searching. “You did? Why?”

Several emotions flit over her face. Panic is the overriding one. But sadness and confusion are there, too. Her mouth opens to answer, but she says nothing, instead picking up an aluminum mug at her side. “You should drink more water, Hector. It will make you feel well.”

I sag back onto my sleeping bag. There are a lot of things I want to say, but right now, none of them include asking Anda to go away. I love being alive too much for that. And as much as she may be a monster of some sort, she can’t completely devalue life, right? After all, she just saved this pathetic one.

The last time I got this sick was five years ago. Strep was going around and gave me a raging fever and throat that killed so bad, I couldn’t swallow anything solid. Dizziness forced me to stay in bed for days. I remember being fed oatmeal from a spoon. I remember the taste of the nasty, bubble gum–flavored antibiotic syrup, and my uncle on the phone with the pediatrician every day. He took a week off from work to make sure I didn’t croak.

I remember these things, but I don’t want to. Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something really wrong by running from him. But I have to run. All the other memories tell me to.

In the next few hours, my fever returns along with that warped feeling in my brain. Anda makes me take an antibiotic pill and offers me bites of a granola bar between her fingers. There’s an aluminum cup of hot water, too.

I take the pill, but when she offers the food, I don’t open my mouth. I don’t touch the mug of steaming liquid.

Her face contorts with confusion, corrupted within my fever. It’s a grimace. Before Anda, I refused to take drinks or food from people. I didn’t trust them. Now I can’t trust her anymore.

“It’s only food, Hector.”

But I turn away, feeling the sweat drip off my temples.

Anda leans closer. “It’s not poisoned. Poisoning is complicated. There are far easier ways to kill people.

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