Halcyon

C H A P T E R O N E: HE CAME FROM THE NIGHT

"Suppose . . ." Marley trailed off, staring out the window again, admiring the way the sunlight shone on the snow that blanketed the red rocks. "Suppose . . ."

"Would you quit that?" I snapped, hands clenched tight around the steering wheel. Marley glared at me in the rearview mirror, folding her arms across her small chest.

"Look! Just because you -"

"Shh," I hushed quickly, glancing over at my mother in the passenger's seat, her head lolling against the window as her soft breaths fogged the glass.

Marley snuck a peek at her too, the scowl that marred her perfect face softening a bit, before she whipped back to me. "It's been hard for all of us Bonnie, I know that, but don't you get tired of lying to everyone? It's been so long since we've had normal that I don't even remember what it feels like."

I sighed, my grip on the wheel lessening as I felt exhaustion flood me, despite the earliness of the day. My contacts were making my eyes itch and I rubbed at them with a closed fist. "I know what you mean Marley, but that doesn't change the fact that this is what she wants, it's hard, yes, but we have to do it for her, okay? I'll be turning twenty-one in a few weeks and I'll talk to her about it again. She'll listen now that I'm older."

Marley looked skeptical, and voiced it, "It's not fair that we have to use fake names while she keeps her own, even Toby got to keep his‒"

Toby, who was in his booster seat, stirred sleepily at his name and Marley had to lower her voice again.

"-name, I have to constantly watch my mouth, even with something as harmless as Starbucks orders, I just don't understand it. Why?"

I frowned at her darkly in the mirror, "You know why." For the barest moment, her blue eyes flickered down to the exposed scar at my forehead before I shook my hair to conceal it. I hated when she looked at the scars. Because I knew she wondered, guessed, even considered asking what had happened on that night all those years ago. I hadn't told her and once I'd sobbed out the story in a hospital bed to a grim policeman, mother had forbade it.

After that, she dropped the subject leaving me to wind my way through a pass in the Wasatch Range to Wildgate, which lay nestled in between the snowy climes of the mountains and the foothills with their skeletal trees. The sun sparked off the freshly driven snow, which lay in great heaps along the road where plows had rode through. Jill, my mother, didn't like when we used a credit card too many times in one location, too 'trackable,' she said. So with a lot of grumbling, we'd all packed into the car early this morning and driven down to the grocery store in Flemming.

I wasn't sure why we always had to go as a team. I could have easily juggled Toby while my mother had toppled things off the shelves and into the cart, while Marley stayed home. But then again she never liked for us to be alone either. Sometimes she'd show up between classes at school, her normally beautiful face white and pinched, at least until she saw me. Then her thin shoulders would relax the tiniest bit, she'd run her fingers through my hair while planting a kiss on my forehead, then leave without a word.

Perhaps, we all went together everywhere to present a united front against the curious onlookers. A front that screamed, 'We are a family. We are normal,' we don't wander the lightless house during the day like pale, listless ghosts, or wake from our nightmares with mouths gaping, hands clawing at sheets as we gasp for a courage that's not there. I shook those things from my thoughts and glanced at the clock, realizing I'd missed my first class.