Page 33 of Not Quite Dead Yet

Wouldn’t open them. Lay there and waited for sleep.

Not counting sheep. Counting the hours she had left before she died, moving on to the minutes.

Monday

November 3

7

‘What’s all this?’

Jet rubbed her eyes, following the noise of dinging plates and low voices, into the dining room.

Luke and Sophia were here, sitting at the table, Cameron’s high chair tucked in at the end. Something green and swampish wiped around the baby’s mouth.

Mom was serving from a platter of scrambled eggs, bacon on every plate except Dad’s. Too much sodium.

‘Finally,’ Luke said, glancing up at her. ‘You’re awake.’ Like he was annoyed about it somehow.

Not as annoyed as Jet. Couldn’t sleep for hours, worried about running out of time, then slept in till eleven, forgot to set an alarm. Didn’t forget, actually. Didn’t have her phone.

Her parents could have woken her. Actually, it was very out of character that Mom hadn’t.

‘What are you doing here?’ Jet asked her brother.

‘Come sit down, Jet,’ Mom said, handing out pieces of toast. ‘I asked them over, thought we could have a nice family breakfast.’ Emphasis on thenice.

‘Jet, hi,’ Sophia said, a tremble in her bottom lip. ‘I’m just … just so sorry …’

‘Why?’ Jet pulled out a chair. ‘The eggs aren’t that bad, are they?’

The last thing she wanted right now was a family breakfast, for people to ask stupid questions, like whether she was OK or whether she’d slept well.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Sophia asked.

‘Like the dead.’ Jet took a bite of buttered toast.

Dad picked up his coffee, inhaled it, hiding his face in the oversized mug.

Luke shoveled eggs into his face, picking up a piece of crispy bacon with his fingers, taking a bite. The crunch of the bacon, not a world away from the crunch of a human skull.

‘Luke, slow down,’ Mom told him, like he was a teenager again.

‘Gotta get to work,’ he spoke through his mouthful.

Mom banged her elbows on the table, put her fingers by her temples. ‘You can be here for your sister, Luke,’ she said, suddenly tearful.

Luke slowed down.

Paused to pick up his knife too. That’s when Jet noticed it, the graze on his knuckles, both of them actually. Freshly scabbed, the surface cracking when he tightened his grip on the cutlery.

‘What happened to your hands?’ Jet asked him.

Luke coughed. Banged his chest until the eggs went down.

‘Sorry, wrong way.’ He held his hands in front of him, fingers outstretched, flexing. ‘Oh, this? I was visiting one of our sites on Friday morning. Tripped over one of the foundation trenches, banged them up a little, catching myself. Just a scrape, it’s nothing.’

‘I hope you were wearing a hard hat, if you were on site?’ Dad said, the mug echoing his voice back.

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