The Crescent

Chapter 16

When am I?

Zacari came to the median of sleep and wake, where time is fickle and lithe. She sensed she was being carried, but that was all she could discern. It was comfortable for time to be undecided, a plain canvas bursting with promise and void of disappointment. But too easily she grew bored of comfort and decided the time herself.

She was five. She vomited twice and spent the rest of the night watching cartoons on the couch until she finally she drifted to sleep. Very late, or very early, her father scooped her up and carried her into her parents' bedroom. She slept in between them like the cream of a cookie, until her father left for work. Zacari knew the memory by heart. She'd wake, watch more cartoons, stomach toast with her mother, and in the evening her father would come home. Everything would be wonderful until it wasn't, but that would be two years later. Was there something she could have done differently, so he wouldn't have to leave –

"Cari. Cari." Zacari blinked awake to the calloused hands of her father cradling her like she was five again. He set her on her bed. "Why you sleeping on the floor?"

She stared at her father's face. His hair and goatee were flecked with gray, like metal flakes had been dusted across the top of his head. He was a leaner now too. But he didn't look much different from the father Zacari knew as a child. His eyes were still dark and clever, and his mouth could still work itself into a charming smile. Strange how unchanged this father and the father from her childhood looked, yet in her mind they were two different people.

"Just 'cause," she muttered. It'd been a nice dream, but it was dangerous to forget her anger. Her father was predictably unpredictable. Luckily, she only had to recall the watery mix of slush and the silent car ride home to fortify her disdain.

"I know you love Googles, but you don't have to sleep on the damn floor with her. Put her in bed with you. Jesus," he sniffed. "I think she pissed on you. Give me your hoodie and I'll throw it in the bathtub for now."

She tugged off her hoodie and opened her mouth to ask where he'd been but decided it didn't really matter. She stayed out of his business, and he stayed out of hers. He took the damp hoodie from her and chunked it in the bathtub.

"You feel alright?"

"Absolutely peachy. Night."

Her father grumbled a good night and slumped into bed.

She wasn't pleased with him, of course, but as shadows of Baker encroached her mind her father's snores were a comfort. Mocking against the lamplight, the windows were cracked, and the bathroom door was ajar as if nothing had happened. But it had; she'd agreed to hear out a notoriously atrocious doctor whose medicine had ended so many lives. Lela trembled against her like a last autumn leaf, as if Baker hadn't left the lounge. Zacari turned over away from the windows and noticed the camera perched at her bedside, staring open lensed at her. She capped it and turned back over, wondering, What have I gotten myself into?

She hardly slept, and when she did, fretfully. The sky turned from dark to watercolors, and she admitted defeat, rising to find Lela something to eat. Surprisingly, her father had remembered to get dog food. It was crumpled on its side next to the minifridge, a discount sticker slapped on the face of an English Mastiff. She peeled off the sticker. Pedigree for big dogs. She sighed and poured a bit into an empty takeout box and set it on the floor, then grabbed a paper cup from a sleeve on the dresser and went to fill it with water from the bathroom tap. She caught a glimpse of her reflection and recoiled, her "frown-dimple," as her mother coined it, appearing on her right cheek. There were bags under her eyes and two zits above her left eyebrow, and it looked like someone had taken a leaf blower to her hair. She set the cup of water beside Lela's food as she crunched on an eyeball-sized piece of dog food. Zacari's own stomach protested, yesterday's spaghetti miles away.