Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series)

by Rae, Nikki

“You’re going to keep it down.”

  I nod, but it’s just so he’ll stop talking. Every command he gives me causes the blood to become thicker, like lead is forming in my stomach. Then it’s quiet. So quiet that I can hear my heart slowing down. I can hear everything slowing down.

  “You okay?” Myles asks after a long time.

  “I don’t know.” I don’t think I’ll ever know.

  “Do you feel better?” he rephrases.

  I blink a few times. My head and muscles still hurt, but at least I can move now. When I test outstanding, my legs lock into place and allow my full weight. I feel heavy and it’s hard to adjust. “No,” I say. “Not really.”

  He studies me for a few seconds without saying anything. “You’re not as pale anymore,” he notes. “Your hair is back to normal.”

  I glance at the ends and he’s right. Nothing but magenta. No white. “Well, great.” My voice is flat. “As long as I look okay, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “We can try something else,” Myles says. “If you’re uncomfortable with me controlling your body like this.”

  “What else is there?” I have to lean my hands on my knees because I suddenly feel dizzy, like I have to throw up but it won’t happen.

  “We could try a donor,” he says. “You could feed directly from a donor.”

  I shake my head. The thought of putting my mouth on a human being as their blood fills my mouth causes my stomach to lurch.

  “I can’t do that.” It’s not fear, it’s a fact. If I do, I’ll become what I fear the most: a monster.

  “I won’t force you,” he says. “And if you want me to take the hold I have on you away, I can do that too, just wait a little while, at least the rest of the trip to Georgia.”

  So that’s where we are now...or where we’re going, at least. I sniff up the last few tears pinching the backs of my eyes. “Am I okay now?” My voice is tight.

  Myles stands too. “I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t tell anymore.”

  I think I’m supposed to be angry with the words, but how can I be when I can’t answer that question anymore either?

  Chapter 12

  Learning How to Crawl

  “There is nothing in the world that we can count on. Even that we will wake up is an assumption.”–The Dresden Dolls

  It’s dark when I open my eyes but I already know I’m not awake.

  I can’t see too well in this dark, but I can feel. The walls are cold, damp, and crumble at my touch. It’s dirt, I realize. The smell fills my nostrils.

  I can hear my own breathing, coming out in hot, wet bursts. “Please,” I say. But my voice doesn’t belong to me. It’s the voice of a young boy. I also recognize the word is in some language I’ve never heard before instead of English. One where the vowels stretch on too long and the consonants crash into one another. “Please let me go,” I say in the same strange language. I search the space I’m in again, turning around over and over, smacking the back of my head hard into the wall behind me.

  A voice comes from above me. “Quiet down there,” it says. An adult. Mother. It’s my mother speaking. “You’re breaking my concentration, Micaiah.”

  I can smell her. The familiar scent of long burned wood, rain, and sage. She is making something up there, in her room. I remember when she dug this hole in the bottom of our hut. It was a few nights passed.

  She used her bare hands and made me sleep under the stars as she worked. When I asked what she was doing, she told me that it was a gift. A gift that was given to her that she was going to soon return. But she couldn’t reach the person the gift had come from. She had to have me return it. When she called me back inside, she pushed me down into the hole without any words between us. She dug it deep enough that I wouldn’t be able to dig out. She made it wide, so I could lie down, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see where she was. Where I was.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been down here.

  “Mother,” I cry. “Please let me out.”

  “Hush now,” she says. “In time, you will thank me. Once I am finished and you are a man, you will rule over all.”

  I’m confused. I don’t want to be this person she says I will be. I don’t know how she thinks this will be possible. “Mother–” I start again.

  “Silence!” Her voice makes me jump.

  I hear her footsteps fade away above me, and I wrap my arms around myself. It’s so cold here. I just want Mother to hold me. I won’t disobey her ever again if she just promises to hold me and make the cold go away.

  It’s so quiet for the longest time except for a gust of wind outside once in a while. My hands begin to tingle. The darkness is coming.

  Yes. It will be as dark as this hole inside me soon.

  I don’t want it.

  But I also do. More than anything.

  Darkness means Mother will have succeeded with her spell. Darkness means I will be whomever she wants. This warrior who will save our people. The one who will rule all. Mother will let me out when she sees the shadow inside me begin to grow. She’ll hold me and make the cold go away.

  The bus hits a bump and I’m jolted out of my thoughts, out of the empty, dark hole. I’m not exactly wide awake, but I don’t think I’ve felt completely awake since I came back.

  I roll onto my side before I bother to turn on my light and clutch the pillow to my chest. Just a little bit longer, I think. A tiny bit longer in bed in that time between waking and sleep where I have no thoughts or problems. I would give anything to hold onto that and let it surround me. I don’t want to think of this memory, these things that happened to the person who is trying to kill me. But another bump in the road jostles the bus again, nearly throwing me out of the bunk and onto the floor.

  It was nice while it lasted.

  “Sophie.” I hear my name, but I can’t grasp onto it. My nose and mouth fill with dirt. I can’t breathe. Hands on my shoulders. “Sophie.” It’s Trei’s voice. Are we on the bus or somewhere else? Are we in the dirt or in a room?

  “She won’t wake up,” she says to someone, her voice on the verge of panic.

  New hands on me. I need to push them away. I cannot become a part of the earth. I cannot become a part of the darkness when there are hands on me, pulling me up and out of the hole mother has dug for me. Such a good mother, making me strong. Making me a warrior who will rule all.

  “Sunshine,” Jade says into my ear. “Come on,” he says. “It’s not real.”

  Those words break me free. When I was having nightmares about Jack, when I was screaming in my sleep and unable to move, he said those words. He pulls me back into reality. I’m in the bus again, in my bunk, and Jade’s hands are locked onto both of my shoulders. I put my hands up in front of me protectively, just in case I get sucked back into the dream. In case I’m still stuck in the hole in the ground.

  “Jade?” I whisper, and my throat hurts.

  “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

  The grip on my shoulders loosens, but he doesn’t let go of me completely until I nod my head.

  “Jesus,” I hear Boo say from the bunk above me. “Finally, you shut the hell up.”

  I kick the ceiling, aiming for his ass. The half-hearted grunt he makes tells me I’ve hit my mark.

  “You sure you’re okay, Sophie?” Trei’s voice comes from above me too, just across from where Boo is. She sounds groggy, but not as pissed off as her brother.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Go back to sleep.”

  Jade waits for both of their lights to flick off before he squeezes into the cramped space of my bunk with me, having to hunch over so he doesn’t hit his head. “Want to talk about it?” he asks.

  I sit up the little bit I can, wrapping the blanket around me. “Not really,” I say. “I don’t really know what it was.”

  “A memory?” he asks.

  “Maybe.” I shrug, not wanting to add anything else to the growing list of things he has to worry about.

  Jade
takes in a deep breath, not letting it out until his hand is covering his face. He looks exhausted. He takes his hand away and smiles. “You sure you’re okay? Want me to stay up with you a while?”

  I shake my head. “I’m going to get up and walk around for a little bit. I don’t want to lie here right now.”

  The small space of my bed only reminds me of the hole. The hole a mother dug for her son. A hole she left him in. Maybe to die. Maybe something worse.

  “Okay,” Jade says. “If you need me,” He turns his head slightly. “I’m right across the hall.”

  I snort the softest I can so I don’t wake anyone up again. “I love you,” I tell him.

  He gives my hand one last good squeeze before ducking out of my little cubby hole. “Love you too, Sunshine.” He slips back into his bunk, closing the curtain around him.

  I take my time moving. For some reason, my limbs are extremely stiff. Like I haven’t been able to stretch them out in a long time. When I’m finally upright, it’s hard for me to gain my balance. But these things are nothing compared to how thick everything is. I can still feel my heart pumping, the blood I drank in me, but it’s barely moving in my veins. I feel like at any moment, my entire body will turn to stone.

  I have to hold onto the wall as the bus jostles around, hitting potholes and bumps.

  The front is dark and I can barely make out the couches. The only light in the room comes from the one above the driver, and someone sitting on their laptop at the table.

  Manny smiles at me when he sees me coming, and I self consciously smooth my hair down. Maybe I should have stayed in bed. I wasn’t prepared to talk to anyone right now, let alone him. Manny, who was in my dream-memory of Michael. It had to be some sort of trick, but I can’t trust anyone.

  He takes out his headphones and pats the seat next to him, offering it to me. “Couldn’t sleep, eh?”

  I inch my way over to the table, sitting down across from him. The faint bluish light from his laptop illuminates mainly the bottom half of his face, but if I squint a little bit, I can make out the rest of it. I’m not necessarily nervous, just cautious.

  “Thought I was the only one with insomnia,” he comments, clicking on different things here and there. Although he’s looking at the screen in front of him, he’s not really absorbed in it.

  “I don’t have insomnia,” I say.

  Manny looks up and smiles. “Oh,” he says. “Are you awake because you’re hungry?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Well,” he says. “Not hungry, I guess. Thirsty? I’ve worked for them for years and still have no idea what the right term is.”

  It takes me a minute to connect what he’s saying. The thought of blood makes my hands heavy against the table. My chest still hurts but now it’s more of a dull ache.

  “Oh,” I say, backtracking. “No, I’m fine.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, cool,” he says. “Because I’m fine with you guys and all, but I ain’t into that donor shit. Just isn’t for me.”

  I can tell by his tone that he’s joking, so I laugh a little bit, just to show that I’m not offended. “Don’t worry,” I say, going along with him. “You’re not my type.”

  “Good,” he says, clicking something else now.

  “I just have nightmares sometimes,” I say. I don’t know why I feel the need to tell him. “That’s all.” If only it were that simple.

  Manny sets his laptop off to the side. “Dude,” he says. “That sucks.”

  I pull my pajama sleeves over my hands, just so they’ll have something to do. “Yeah,” I say weakly.

  “I used to have this dream...” He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. “That I was at the doctor’s office and out of nowhere, a big chunk of chewing gum–like fifteen stories high–would come and eat the whole thing.”

  I let out a laugh without meaning to. Not just because his dream is funny, but because whenever I try to think of Manny as a little kid, I just get the image of a boy with a huge mustache and it’s hilarious. There’s no way the dream with him and Michael meant anything. Well, anything bad about Manny, anyway. It probably means something really bad otherwise.

  “So is it like that?” he asks, breaking me out of my thoughts.

  “Are my nightmares like bubble gum attacking?”

  He nods.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “They’re...worse than that.”

  “That’s no good,” he says. “How long have you had them?”

  “Since I was younger.” I try to brush off his question. I don’t want to talk about my dreams or what they mean. I don’t really want to talk at all. But it’s kind of nice having a normal conversation for once. At least, anyone on the outside looking in would think so. That’s good enough for me.

  “So, what are you working on?” I ask, gesturing to the computer.

  “Oh,” he says. “Just some songs and junk.” He snaps the laptop closed before I can ask him anything else. “You ready for the show tomorrow?” he asks. “Excited?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s all really exciting.” I hope I sound convincing.

  “That’s cool, Pinky. I’m really glad you could come.”

  I smile a little bit. “I’m happy you invited us.” At least it’s a distraction. When I can remember things like playing, anyway.

  So now you know.

  Michael’s voice again. Right in my ear. I was stupid to think that once the dream was over, the nightmare would be too. When I turn my head in the direction of where the sound came from, he’s there, sitting across from me, right next to Manny.

  Manny can’t see Michael of course, and I blink a few times to try to shake him out of my head, but he’s still there. His sunken in eyes, sharp bones beneath the skin. He’s as real as I am.

  I wasn’t always like this, he says.

  “You okay?” Manny asks, but his face is completely red, everything around him fading in the background.

  I nod, trying to stay calm. I take one of the many notebooks from the table to occupy myself and start doodling, so it looks like I’m not just staring at Manny. What I should do is stop the bus, get out and run somewhere, but there’s nowhere safe and I can’t move anyway.

  I wait for him to continue and even if I could think of something to say, I don’t know if I’d be able to interrupt.

  You’ve been having my memories, have you not?

  I nod slightly.

  You are probably wondering if they are real. If any of this is. I think you already know the answer. Michael stands and I watch out of the corner of my eye as he walks slowly around the table, standing right next to me. I move back. Relax, he says. This is a protected place. He says flatly. I cannot hurt you. Not quite yet.

  I don’t know if that’s true so I keep my distance.

  He smiles, the skin stretching too far. Like a corpse that hasn’t moved in years is suddenly trying to be human. I am close, he says. So close I can smell you.

  I don’t know if it’s even going to work, but I try to think something in his direction: What do you want?

  He laughs; my skin becomes hot. That is simple, he says. You. Dead. Now he moves in even closer. I can feel his breath on my face. I can see the hollowness of his brown eyes.

  “Sophie?” Manny says, but it’s only an echo. I can’t look up.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. Myles cannot use you if you are not alive, he says. And you will not be alive much longer.

  When I open my eyes, Michael is gone and Manny is staring right at me. “Are you okay?” he asks. There is no red now, but I’m still searching his face for any sign of it.

  I shift my gaze around the living room-kitchen area. All the seats are empty.

  “Hey,” he says a little bit louder as he shuts his laptop. “You’re shaking.”

  I stare at my hands on the table; they’re sending tremors through the whole thing. I stick them into my lap. “Sorry.” My voice comes out in a whisper. “I�
��m just...tired.”

  With that, I stumble back to the bunks, where I crawl in next to my sleeping brother and stare at the ceiling until everyone else wakes up.

  ***

  “No way!” Boo is shouting. “The drummer of Led Zeppelin beats the drummer of Def Leopard!”

  I hear Manny laughing and then from Skinny, “No, man. He’s like, the Carlos Santana of drums.”

  I hear an exaggerated gasp from some people then, “Not even from the good days. Like, early nineties Santana.”

  The bus erupts in laughter over the sound of Boo saying, “You take that back!”

  My head is pounding, my stomach flipping over and over. With knives pinching each time it lands. I roll over slowly and Jade has an arm wrapped around my shoulder. “You slept here all night,” he says.

  “I’m sorry.” I take his hand away from me and get out of the bunk. He follows.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re back in Maryland,” Jade says. “We’re making our way back to New York, I think.”

  Now we’re both standing in the hall, not saying anything. “Did Myles help you?” he asks after a long time.

  More laughter from the front of the bus, more arguing. My temples pound. My chest aches. “I don’t know,” I admit.

  Jade stretches his arms behind his back. “Did you have a nightmare?”

  A freezing cold chill runs through me. “Yes,” I say. “Only I was awake.”

  Manny steps into the hall, and we both whip our heads in his direction. “Sorry,” he says. “Don’t mean to interrupt anything. We’re at the hotel.”

  I can still feel the bus moving under my feet.

  “He’s just finding a place to park. Then we can shower and get ready for tonight.” Manny smiles at me. “Just wanted to let everyone know.”

  The bus stops at that moment, jolting us forward a little bit. I shake it off, grab my backpack and shove a change of clothes from my suitcase into it before heading towards the front, but I trip and bang my knee on the wall.

  Jade grabs onto my elbow, steadying me. “What’s up?” he asks quietly, next to my ear.

  I stretch my free arm in front of me to steady myself. “Nothing,” I say. “I’m fine.”