Page 69 of The Backtrack
Sam shot up and the CD player fell to the floor, but she was too busy gaping at thetreein her room.
“Come on.” Bonnie grabbed Sam’s hand. It was the first time she’d touched her mom in over a decade, and Sam found that she felt nothing. Or maybe it was the shock of the tree in her room. “We have to get out of here and into the hallway.”
The hallway became a windowless hurricane fortress when all the doors were closed. This was the spot where they hid out during particularly intense storms, and a place where Sam and Damon used to play Flashlight Tag.
Sam swung her legs around, got out of the bed and followed them out.
“We thought you were dead!” Pearl said. “There was a big bolt of lightning, and we heard a boom and then the house shook.” Her grandma’s voice cracked, and Bonnie, to her credit, gave her an empathetic look.
Bonnie closed the door behind them, and they were in complete darkness.
After a click, a flashlight turned on and shined up directly at Jessie’s face. Pearl huffed out, “Jessie, can you evernotscare the shit out of me?”
Jessie gave a delighted grin. “It’s just too easy. I can’t help myself.”
Bonnie flipped on another flashlight and took the opportunity to pull Sam aside. “When we went to check on you, it was like you were in some kind of a trance. I was shaking you, and you didn’t respond. Are you feeling all right?”
Sam’s heart rate ticked up, and she swallowed down a lump in her throat. The CD player was still in her room. Every part of her wanted to stand up and retrieve it, but now that her mom was on high alert, she couldn’t without provoking suspicion. “That’s weird,” Sam said. “I must’ve been in a really deep sleep.”
Bonnie eyed her, then grabbed her elbow and leaned in. “Is there something going on, Sam? Something you want to tell me? Like my therapist says, I can be a safe space.”
“I think you lost all rights to knowing what’s going on with me when you left.” Sam shook her arm free from Bonnie’s grasp.
“I’m worried about you,” Bonnie said.
“Well, you don’t have to be. I was just exhausted.” Sam sat down on the floor and leaned back and into the wall for support.
“What are you two bickering about?” Pearl asked.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “Bonnie just doesn’t realize how potent Jessie’s hurricane punch is.”
“It’ll take the paint off your car,” Jessie said with the kind of authority of someone who’d actually tested it out.
Sam’s jaw clenched as she curled her legs into her chest. “I’m fine,” she said.
Bonnie smoothed the front of her button-down shirt, and the veins in her hands popped against her gently crinkled skin. In Sam’s mind, her mom had been permanently stuck at thirty three. So seeing her with two prominent frown lines, crow’s feet around her eyes and a silvery hue to her blond hair was like meeting a completely new person.
Her pencil-thin eyebrows that she’d plucked obsessively hadn’t ever filled out, though, so there was that.
Bonnie sat close to Sam. “I know you’re mad,” she said. “I completely understand. But I do hope—”
“Bonnie,” Sam started to say. She grabbed a couch cushion they’d dragged into the hallway and laid her head on top of it. “Can we just talk in the morning, like Pearl asked? I’m exhausted, if you didn’t notice.”
Bonnie opened her mouth as if to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. “All right.”
Sam closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep. Eventually, Pearl and Jessie’s argument over Scrabble died down. The wind outside kicked up. And her mother’s breaths continued to come in evenly next to her.
When the threat of actual sleep came this time, Sam let it take her.
29
Sam woke with the kind of stiffness that only comes from sleeping in an awkward position—something she’d experienced many times when having to stay overnight in airport terminals due to flight delays. As Sam sat up, she was alone and the storm had passed. It was bright and sunny outside, and she realized she had slept through the entire morning. Sammassaged a spot on her neck as she walked through the hall and toward her bedroom.
Waking up and immediately thinking of the CD player was silly. Almost as silly as the fact that she wanted to check her phone to see if Damon had texted her back. She was not a teenager, and her thoughts shouldn’t be fueled purely by the guy she had a crush on, but well, they were.
She turned the knob on her bedroom door and there, staring her down, was the palm tree.Thiswas what she should be worried about—a hole in her grandma’s house—but instead her eyes roamed the space to try to find the CD player.
“Hey!” Grandma Pearl called out. Sam looked up and out of the space that used to be her window to find Pearl, Jessie and Bonnie in the driveway. “Get out of there, it’s not safe!”
