Prophecy Girl (Lacuna Valley #1)

Chapter Four

“I think I'm crazy. Totally and completely lost it. They're going to lock me up, Chloe.” Sam stared up at the blue morning sky. “And if they weren't before, now I'm talking to my cat. Not that you're not a great listener, Chloe baby.”

She'd gone to bed replaying all that had happened with her father. She'd watch him plead with her to give in and be nice to her mother. She'd cringe as she saw herself yelling, defying him. Defying her. And then she'd watch his face go slack, notice the rest of him go slack, and watch her father fall to the floor. She'd rewind that moment over and over to try and avoid the moment that came next—where she'd just stood there. Frozen. Where she hadn't gone into the kitchen to help him. Where she hadn't called 911. Where she hadn't done anything but watch her father breathe.

Eventually Sam had convinced him to see the doctor in town the next morning, but she still felt uneasy about the situation. At some point while the scene replayed in her sleepy mind something clicked and Sam got a knot in her stomach. She tried to ignore it, but it only got worse—more demanding. She sighed, giving in, and got out of bed to get her diary. But once it was in her hands, she couldn't bring herself to open it. She just sat there in bed with the diary in her lap until the sun started to peek through her curtains, when she'd gotten up and went to her chair in the backyard.

By the time Chloe came up to her, she'd already opened the diary up. She'd flipped through it for a while, reading the same complaints about boredom, her parents, and the weather. When she wrote in her diary she always thought she was more interesting than she found herself on review. When she finally found the right entry the knot in her stomach got much worse.

Though it wasn't quite the same, the similarities between the dream Sam had during the summer, and the fall in the kitchen the night before, were hard to explain away. He'd fallen, he'd hit his head, Sam had been a coward, their mother hadn't cared, she'd made that phone call... it felt like too much to be a coincidence, but if it wasn't a coincidence, what was it? Everything she could think of was absolutely ridiculous. She stared at the open diary like it might give her more answers, or magically make sense of itself.

The sun rose up over the hills and into the sky, and still she sat there, waiting for something reasonable to occur to her. The only new thought she had in all that time was that Nick and his questions had obviously gotten to her. This was his fault, somehow. She was making connections where there weren't any to be made. And still, it felt more real than it should have.

Tires crunched gravel in the driveway. Sam ran to the front of the house. Her mother walked straight past Sam and in the front door. She waited patiently for her dad to get out of the van.

“So, Dad, what did they say?”

“Eh, they said a lot of stuff. She thinks I have this head thing where I get vertigo and she thinks that's why I pass out every once in a while.” He walked past Sam over to the garden. She followed, her steps staggered.

“You've passed out before?” Sam stopped walking.

He cringed. He clearly hadn't meant to say that. He pulled out a hose and watered the sunflowers. “Yeah. This started back when we lived in that big house with the chandelier on Berry Creek.”

“Why didn't you tell me?” Sam felt the ground fall out from under her. Her whole world was slipping away. Everything she thought she knew wasn't real. Why were there so many lies around her?

“You know your mother.”

They both shrugged in defeat.

“What is the doctor doing now?” she asked, trying to focus on what was important now.