by Dixon, Ruby
Callie's Catastrophe
Icehome Book 9
Ruby Dixon
Copyright © 2019 by Ruby Dixon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Kati Wilde
Editing: Aquila Editing
Created with Vellum
Contents
CALLIE’S CATASTROPHE
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The People of Icehome
Need more to read? A few backlist suggestions!
CALLIE’S CATASTROPHE
What’s a bigger disaster than being stranded on an ice planet with a bunch of aliens, never to return home? Resonating to the biggest jerk of all those aliens, of course. I hate M’tok, and it seems to be mutual. He thinks I’m ugly and unpleasant, and doesn’t understand why I don’t just fling myself at him. In his eyes, resonance has decided, and that’s that.
Problem is, resonance keeps pushing us together. And when that doesn’t make me jump into his furs…he steals me away from the camp. I can’t avoid him if there’s nowhere to go.
I want to hate him even more for that. But I keep finding out that M’tok isn’t who I thought he was. And the man I hate? Doesn’t hate me at all…
Foreword
In this book, I touch very lightly on depression. Out of respect for mental health issues, I wanted to say this in advance of you starting the book. If you feel this will be triggering for you, this is a heads-up that perhaps you might want to skip this book. <3
1
CALLIE
"I can't believe there was a tidal wave overnight and we missed it." Sam picks at a huge clump of seaweed on the beach, looking at it with fascination. “I mean, it wasn’t much of a tidal wave or it would have killed us all…but still. We miss all the cool stuff."
"You think that's cool?" I wrinkle my nose at her. "Are you on some sort of ice planet drug? Because if so, I need a hit of that shit."
Steph chuckles, sidestepping both of us to move down the beach. "Ice planet drugs—can you imagine? The biggest high would be if it kept your toes warm.”
"I'd get the biggest high from running water," I tell them. "Or if it tasted like chile relleno." Just thinking about my mother's cooking makes me ache. It's been a month and I still haven't gotten over the fact that I'm never going to get home. My family thinks I'm dead and gone, and they're probably imagining me in the clutches of some serial killer. No one would ever imagine that I was taken from Earth and dumped on an ice planet to live with aliens.
It's been a weird month.
Everything's starting over. My family? My grandparents and great-grandparents? My cousins? My sisters and brothers? The family's tailor and dressmaking business that I wanted to expand on someday?
All gone. Poof.
I get to start over with a new life. And while Sam is little miss sunshine and greets every day with a smile, I'm…less so. I'm Cuban. My family is my life. My best friends are my cousins. There's not a day I didn't go home and was surrounded with loving relatives, good food, and the comforting chatter of voices. The warmth of Miami sunshine.
Here, it's totally different. It's cold as fuck, the sunshine is practically non-existent despite the fact that there are two suns, and there's no home cooking filled with spices and goodness. There's lots of meat and a bunch of weird plants and they keep making it into the blandest of white people foods—stew.
I'm starting to hate stew. I need to take over and make a thick, hearty pozole to show them how a proper Cuban would feed a big group, but I can't find it in me to put in the effort. I've had a lot of trouble doing most everything, actually.
I'm struggling. I know I am. It's hard to get out of bed and face another day when I know it's just going to be more shit piled atop the shit cake.
I pick up a thing that looks like a stick. "This almost looks like wood." I squeeze it. "Feels like wood, too."
"There's no wood around here, Liz said," Sam corrects me. "The trees aren't like Earth trees. That's why we keep burning animal shit, because the dvisti dig up all the plants and it makes proper fuel."
I fight the urge to roll my eyes at her explanation. "I know that, dummy. But look at this and tell me it's not wood?"
She straightens and tosses her hair back, looking at the stick I'm holding. Then, she gives me a sheepish smile. "Okay, you're right. It looks like wood."
"Thank you," I say, twirling it like Harry Potter's wand. “Lumos!”
Sam frowns at me. “What?”
I blow out a sigh. “Chica, do not tell me you don’t know Harry Potter?”
“Never read it.” She moves past me, peering at the beach.
“Steph?” I turn and look at the other girl. “You read Harry Potter?”
Steph shrugs, picking up a large shell and shaking the sand out of it. “Yeah, I read it. Seven books, right?”
Seven books? She needs confirmation that there’s seven? She doesn’t have the story memorized? She hasn’t read Deathly Hallows half a dozen times? She hasn’t watched the movies over and over again? I shake my head at her. “I can’t believe I’m stuck here with people that aren’t Harry Potter fans. This is hell, right?”
“Hell would be warmer,” Sam says cheerfully.
She’s definitely a Hufflepuff, I decide. I tuck the stick into my belt and put my hands on my hips, surveying the beach. I know I’m a Gryffindor. I try to suss out a lot of my new tribesmates by assigning them houses, but I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of damn ’Puffs on this beach. Devi’s a Ravenclaw for sure. Harlow, too. Liz is a Gryffindor with Slytherin tendencies but her mate’s all Slytherin. And the rest? Lots and lots of ’Puffs.
Maybe that’s why they’re all so happy to sink into daily life and I’m the one struggling with it. I feel sometimes like I’m the only one that hasn’t adjusted to being here. That isn’t waking up to greet each day with excitement. I haven’t taken up hunting like Nadine and Penny. I haven’t decided to learn tanning like Raven or taken to helping with the cooking like Steph and Flor. I sure haven’t jumped into the fishing like Sam has. Hannah has taken over the supplies and manages them. Everyone seems to be slowly finding their niche.
I guess my niche is “the angry one.”
“Do you think we can use these for something?” Steph asks, holding the shell out to me.
“Something like what?”
“I don’t know. Something?” She shrugs and puts it in her bag when I make no move to take it from her. “Man, there’s all kinds of weird stuff washed up this morning. Devi’s going to shit her pants.”
I snort at that, because it is pretty funny. It took all of a few days before Devi started racing
down to the beach every morning and picking through what washed up on shore. Flor says she cuts it up and dissects it, but Flor also likes to joke around. If it makes Devi happy to poke at dead things, at least she’s happy.
That makes one of us.
“Boy, the tide sure is high,” Sam exclaims, putting a hand to her eyes as if to shield them from the nonexistent sunlight. “Look at how far up the sands it goes. One of the big blue guys said that when it first washed in last night, it came up to the edge of his tent.” And she points up the slope, where the tents are clustered.
I turn back and look. “Bullshit. He’s lying to you, chica.”
“Why would he lie? I think he’s right. Look at how far up the water still is. And all this new stuff washing up? Something happened.” She purses her lips. “I hope Lauren and Marisol are okay, wherever they are.”
I shake my head at her. Lauren and Marisol disappeared at the same time the aliens sank the remains of the spaceship that brought us here. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, even though Mardok still likes to swear that he gets signals on his devices about the two of them being alive. “You know as well as I do that they’re dead.”
Sam turns to look at me. Her mouth trembles slightly, and then she walks away. “I’m going to see what’s farther down. Grab it before Devi does.”
Well, shit. I upset her. I press a hand to my forehead, frustrated. I never seem to say the right thing to these people. To anyone. Mi madre would kiss my head a dozen times, shove a cookie (or three) into my mouth and tell me everything would be all right.
I miss her. I miss all of them so much it hurts.
“Can we talk?” Steph says, touching my arm as Sam moves purposefully down the beach away from us.
I cross my arms over my chest, trying to tamp down the frustration I’m feeling. “Sure.” I brace myself for the inevitable scolding. I know my glass is half-empty. I know I’m being a pain in the ass and ruining everyone else’s day. I just can’t help myself. I’m miserable and I want everyone else to be miserable too, I guess.
“Are you okay?” Steph gives me a worried look.
“I’m just in a bad mood—”
“No, I mean…are you okay?” She emphasizes the last word gently. “Because you seem really unhappy.” Her unnaturally blue eyes bore into me. I still can’t get used to the cootie-blue eyes of everyone on the beach. It’s like something out of a body-snatchers horror movie—except it’s reality. She looks at me with those uncanny glowing eyes and smiles. “I know we’re all struggling to figure out how to handle the fact that we’re going to be here for the rest of our lives, and I just wanted to tell you that it’s okay to grieve.”
I dig my fingers into my arms, because I feel like that’s the only thing keeping me glued together—that if I let go, I’ll splinter into a million pieces. “What, are you some kind of therapist?”
“That was the plan, actually.” Steph gives me a rueful smile. “Took a few classes and was looking at getting a degree. You can see how that turned out.” She gestures around us, and then stoops to pick up a rounded brown object that looks a bit like a coconut. “My point is, if you need someone to talk to, I’m available. Or if you don’t want to talk, I just wanted to let you know that I understand that you’re in pain, but lashing out at others won’t make you feel any better. It’ll just cause rifts. And we’ve got enough on our plates right now.”
I lick my lips, trying to swallow down the knot rising in my throat. Her words make me feel naked. Miserable, and naked. Like I’m being the biggest bitch on the beach and she needs to straighten me out with love and affection. And…she’s not wrong. “You think I’m being unfair?”
“I think you’re depressed. I think it’s easy for you to struggle to stay on an even keel every day, and it’s normal given everything we’ve gone through. We’ve lost a lot. Some of us more than others.” Her smile is gentle. “So maybe you start being kinder to yourself and you’ll be kinder to others, too.”
My eyes are tearing up. She knows exactly what to say to make me crumble. Depressed. I absolutely am. I can’t stop thinking of my papa, and how much he’s going to miss me, of the plans we had for me to take over the business part of Mama’s custom dressmaking shop to expand our business, and how excited both of us had been at the prospect. I think of my mother, who’d tsk at all our plans and go back to work on the latest dress. I think of my abuelita, who would make me blouses with pretty embroidered flowers on them, because her abuela did the same for her, never mind that I’m twenty-four years old and have been buying my own clothes for years. Of abuelita’s stories about her mother and her obsession with Santeria, and how her father had yelled every time he came home and found great-grandma was sacrificing a chicken again. It’s my wonderful, colorful family and god, I miss them so much I want to scream, but I just feel hollow inside.
“So how do I get past this?” I whisper. I don’t want everyone to hate me. I don’t want to make everyone miserable. Not really. I’m tired of being sad. I’m tired of my unhappiness ruining everything, but I can’t move on.
Steph gently puts the naked coconut thing in my hands. “Well, on the days that I’m struggling—and there have been plenty of them, so you’re not alone—I try to sit back and list five things that I’m thankful for in that moment. It reminds me that even though this isn’t ideal, it also isn’t the worst thing that could happen.” She smiles. “And it reminds me that there are things to enjoy even in dark times, and maybe eventually the dark times won’t seem so dark.”
Practical. “I think I can do five things.”
Her smile broadens. “Well, your stick is number one.”
I arch an eyebrow. “My stick?”
“Of course. Your wand obviously chose you. Isn’t that how it works in the Harry Potter books?”
I laugh, looking down at the wet stick poking out of my leather belt. My wand. Maybe Steph read more Harry Potter than I thought. “I guess you’re right.”
“So that’s number one. What’s number two? What are you grateful for in this moment?”
I look around the beach, at the slushy, ice-cold waves, and burrow a little deeper into my fur-lined tunic. “I’m grateful for this ugly-ass tunic because it’s warm.”
She grimaces. “It’s not that ugly. It’s just leather and it’s harder to make pretty, colorful clothing, I imagine.”
I squint, unwilling to concede this. “It’s pretty damn ugly. But it’ll do.”
Steph huffs with laughter. “Well, no one’s stopping you from making it prettier.”
No, I guess they aren’t. I turn the coconut thing in my hands. “I guess I’m grateful for the shit washing up on the beach today because at least it’s something to do. Something to talk about.”
“There’s always something to do,” Steph says, poking through another pile of detritus near her feet. “Something to talk about, maybe not so much.”
She’s right. There’s a lot of sameness to the days. We eat, we sleep, we work on leather. Some of us hunt. There’s always supplies needed and it’s always cold, so it gets monotonous for me fast, but I know that’s also my depression. Now that I have a word for the helpless, hollow feeling in my belly—depression—I feel better. Identifying it helps. I’m not an awful person, I’m just sad and struggling.
“One more,” Steph reminds me. “Then that’s five.”
“Right.” I look around, gazing back at the camp where several other figures are distantly huddled by the fire. As I watch, I see someone stumble over the sand—that’d be Veronica—and just as quickly, a big, golden-skinned man grabs her arm before she can hit the ground. That’d be Ashtar, her new “mate.” “I think I’m grateful I haven’t resonated.”
That makes Steph pause. “Really?” She glances back at camp. “Because you don’t like Thrand or Vordis? I think they’re good looking.”
I shrug, thinking of the red-skinned twins. “They’re handsome, sure, but mating? I’m still trying to figure out my own shit. The l
ast thing I need is someone else’s.”
“Mmm, you have a point. Still…” Steph looks back at the camp and there’s a wistful expression on her face. “If what they’re saying is right, though, there’s a lot of single women and only two guys. If you ever want to fall in love, your choices are kinda narrow.” She gives me a half-grin. “Unless you don’t mind waiting ten or fifteen years for one of the sa-khui kids to grow up.”
I haven’t given it much thought, but clearly Steph has. Am I prepared to be alone in this new world while others mate and have babies and make families? I miss my family something fierce, but Thrand and Vordis leave me cold. They’re nice enough, but I don’t feel a spark when I talk to them. I don’t feel anything at all. Doesn’t change the fact that there’s only four men to our sixteen women. Male slaves aren’t as popular as female slaves, I guess, because not a single human man is amongst our survivor group. And out of the four men that are stranded with us? Two of them have already mated, which means we’re just down to two single men.
Vordis and Thrand.
Like she said, it’s either one of them, or waiting for the next generation to grow up.
“If that’s the only choice I have, then I guess it is what it is. I hope they’re into cougars.” I make a mock-scratch at the air. “By that time, maybe I’ll be ready for a relationship. Right now? I just need to fix me.” Waiting fifteen years more for love and to start a family sounds depressing but I also know I need to take it day by day right now, and I see how much Ashtar is all over Veronica. She loves it, but I’m not sure I would. I’ve got enough shit in my head. “So yeah. Glad I didn’t resonate.”
