“She’s upstairs, and no, it’s not okay.” I close my eyes tightly. “Nothing is fucking okay.”
Thorne cautiously approaches me. “Hey, tell me.”
“She broke,” I say, meeting her eyes. “It was all too much, and it fucking broke her, and I don’t know where to go from here.” I point to the stairs. “She’s up there right now rocking the fucking dog thinking it’s her dead sister, Mindy.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe I thought she was talking about the dog the entire time. That she named it Mindy. This…this wasn’t anything I fucking saw coming.” Anger and guilt tug at my heart. “I knew she saw things from time to time, but she always explained it as a coping mechanism. She always knew they weren’t real. This…this is different.”
Thorne looks like I’ve just punched her in the fucking gut. She wraps a hand around her throat and the other around her midsection. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls back with glistening eyes. “Any idea what you’re going to do?”
I shake my head. “Not a fucking clue.”
“What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go upstairs and keep an eye on Mickey?” She sniffles. “Give you some time to think things through?”
I nod and rub my hands over my face. “Yeah, thanks, sis.”
She bites her lip and heads up the stairs.
Gutter would be the person I’d call to find out what the best thing to do for Mickey would be, but he’s fucking dead.
As dead as the look in Mickey’s eyes.
I grab the first thing my hand lands on, a gold bowling trophy, and launch it across the room with everything I have. It crashes into a glass case, bursting it open, glass shattering everywhere.
The sound of my own scream is all I can hear until a tap on my shoulder has me spinning around, startled.
Thorne is standing there with a frightened look on her face, but I realize it’s not me she’s afraid of. It’s what she’s reluctant to say.
“Just say it,” I spit.
She bits her lip and nervously twirls the bead dangling at the end of her belly-ring. “I went upstairs to find Mickey, but…she’s gone. So, is the dog.”
17
Pike
By the time the sun begins to rise, I’ve run out of places to look for Mickey.
My phone rings. It’s Thorne.
“Any luck?” she asks, sounding almost as anxious as I am.
“No,” I reply, slamming my hand against the steering wheel.
I pass the Welcome to Logan’s Beach sign where I found Mickey that first night. A thought occurs to me. One last place she could be.
Yanking on the wheel, I turn the truck around, bumping over the median. I head in the direction of the causeway, toward the beach. It’s literally the last place I think she’d go, and yet it’s exactly where I’m hoping to find her.
I pull up to the boarded-up beach house and get out of the truck. The one she spent summers with her family in. Where I took her the night I found her on the road.
Please be here.
I don’t hear or see any signs of life. Even the seagulls aren’t out and about this early. The sounds of the crashing waves and the bristling of the palm fronds are the only sounds in the salty air.
“Mickey?” I call out, rounding the building to the beach.
The puppy comes barreling over to me, crashing into my legs. I lift it in my arms and scratch its neck. “Where is she, girl?”
I find Mickey sitting in the sand facing the water. The rising tide splashes around her body, sinking her body into the wet sand. Her dark hair is blowing all around her, and other than the slight rising and falling of her shoulders, she’s completely still.
“Mic?” I ask, setting the puppy down.
The puppy jumps onto her lap, and when she doesn’t get any sort of reaction from Mickey, she jumps into the sand. When her paws hit the water, she leaps like a cat back into the dry sand, curling up in a ball behind Mickey’s back.
“Mic?” I ask again, standing beside her.
She’s staring off into the distance, tear stains on her pale cheeks.
“I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore,” she finally says.
“I’m real,” I tell her, my fucking windpipe closing in on itself. I clear my throat. “I’m very fucking real.”
She looks up at me. Her eyes are no longer dead but sad and confused. I sit down beside her in the wet sand, and she rests her head