Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,88

suspicion I didn’t want to have confirmed, so anytime Luke tried to talk to me about it or ask me what was wrong, I changed the subject so fast I gave myself whiplash.

I missed Piper—my Piper, not the creature she’d become—so badly it hurt like a physical pain. She was the only person I could even imagine talking to about the emotional jumble I couldn’t seem to deal with. She’d always been the one I talked to about girl stuff, about my thoughts and feelings and fears. She’d been there for me during the terrible last few months of my parents’ marriage, when our house had been like a verbal war zone and I felt like a helpless witness, watching the two people I loved most in the world tearing each other apart. How I wished she could be there for me now.

Though I don’t suppose I’d have been able to talk this particular dilemma over with her anyway, seeing as Luke was her boyfriend. If Piper were still in the picture, none of this would have happened in the first place and I wouldn’t have anything to be confused about.

The quarantine dragged on, though the government’s assertion that the city’s madness was the result of some contagious disease grew increasingly absurd. With my dad gone, I no longer had a way to get inside information about what was really going on, but there was no way the government hadn’t sent people in hazmat suits into the city at night. Surely those people had seen what the rest of us were seeing, and the hazmat suits would prove it wasn’t some disease or hallucinogen. But the quarantine stayed in effect anyway, and people who tried to sneak out were arrested and thrown in jail.

The continued quarantine meant there was little to no chance I would be able to make my planned trip to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with my mom and sister. Unlike me, Luke had family who lived within the city limits, and Dr. Gilliam didn’t so much ask me to join them for Thanksgiving as assume I would. Sitting in on some other family’s Thanksgiving dinner was an incredibly unappealing option. However, my other option was to spend the day alone in my house, which sucked even more.

I wished the dinner were happening at Dr. Gilliam’s place, so that if I found it unbearable I could slip home. Unfortunately, her father and her stepmother would be hosting us in their condo down by the Delaware River.

“We’ll all spend the night there,” Dr. Gilliam told me. “That way we won’t have to worry about trying to get home before curfew.”

“But I can’t leave Bob home alone all night!” I protested, thinking I’d found a way out of going, and wondering if that was a victory or not.

Dr. Gilliam smiled. “Of course not. Bob’s invited, too. My folks have a black Lab who’d be delighted to make his acquaintance.”

I doubted Bob would be similarly delighted. He wasn’t particularly aggressive with other dogs, as long as they weren’t aggressive with him, but he was … let’s just call it standoffish.

“We’ll be careful about introducing them,” Dr. Gilliam assured me. “If it seems like they won’t get along, we’ll separate them. It’ll be fine; you’ll see. And I’m sure he’ll forgive you for uprooting him when you give him his own turkey dinner.”

I had to admit, a turkey dinner would be a big hit with Bob. So apparently I was going to have Thanksgiving dinner and spend the night at a stranger’s house. It was going to be one hell of a tough day, full of memories of my dad. I was going to have a hard time thinking of things to be thankful for. But when I called and told my mom about it, she burst into tears and said how very happy she was that I wouldn’t have to spend the holiday alone, and I realized that in spite of my ambivalence, I was pretty glad about that, too.

* * *

Thanks to my family being scattered all over the country—and out of it, because of one aunt and set of cousins who live in England—the biggest family gathering I’d ever been to had been no more than eight people, counting me and my folks. Luke had warned me that his family was a big one, and when we arrived at his grandparents’ condo, I found he’d been telling nothing but the truth. There were fifteen people, most of whom were