Violet Shadows

28

Clarity and air were stolen. Even Christine's gaze, struggling against the sea, was stolen of any awareness. The first time she plummeted beneath the water, it was the panic that forced her eyes open. The force was terrifying. A pressure in her chest grew, the kind that wanted her to gulp at icy air. But she knew she couldn't. And so her chest pounded.

    Christine reeled throughout the unknown, colder than she'd ever been. Her limbs were limp from all the flailing—she didn't even know where up and right and down and left differed. Throughout it all, the rotten fear pillaging inside her purred with a sickening vindication. You knew something could happen.

She sank faster, if down was where she was actually going, but her heart hammered against her ribs like deafening blows all the same. Fear tore through her, mind rioting at the jagged sensation. The familiar, coiling depths that pierced her mind with claws about to ribbon.

Swim. Swim. Swim. Christine did so, trying to find her way up by following the tendrils of light. But the current was not silk. It did not purl through one thread. It was uneven, swept into a million strings and then knotted into one. Two. Three. She couldn't tell, only that she was hurling through all of them. This, Christine knew, was because of the gift of the girl above. Still alive, still fighting against Nicol.

The corners of her lips burned, begging to open. Her jaw clenched shut. No. She couldn't give up now. Because giving up—she didn't have much time, and that panic tore memories that rippled through her as hard as the waves. Of the recital she missed walking the streets while beetles hoarded dim-light street lights, wondering how angry Dad would be. How disappointed Mom's face would look. Of the engine of Stephen's car roaring as he threw his foot onto the breaks, Violet reaching for him when he slammed the door shut after parking it. The curling lip he bared to snarl right at Christine. She'd been missing for hours, ignoring the world as she wallowed in misery.

"Get in the car."

Christine spared no glace to the vehicle. She didn't want to see how Violet was watching her. "I'm not getting in the car with you and her."

Stephen stepped forward. "I'm not fucking joking around—"

"Why do you even like her?" Christine cried, the rage that carried her these hours springing up like the first fall of rain. It was a thing heavily compressed, storming inside of her until she could no longer mist it away. "Why does it have to be her?"

Christine remembered that night. The taste of her mouth as she said the words. The metallic, sick flavor as if she'd bitten her tongue and was swallowing the blood. It was what she tasted now.

There was no end and no beginning to the sea. She continued on, whorling through the threads of utter dark as the memories flashed. Chest tightening, fear inclining.

"I'm not having this conversation now," Stephen said, the edge of anger present in the words that hadn't been before. As if his hold was unraveling. "Mom and Dad are freaking out. Why can't you even pick up your phone for once? They've been calling you all fucking night."

She wouldn't let him guilt her again. "You don't have to pretend to give a shit because Violet is here."

"Please, you two, stop it!" Violet had gotten out of the car even after Stephen's disapproval, running to divide them  before words weren't the only thing being thrown around.

Christine paused, before a storm born of hate ripped across her eyes that left Violet tensing. "You know how shitty this is for me? Oh, stop giving me that look like you don't know. He's my brother. He hooks up with so many girls and if you think he's actually being serious about you—"