Prophecy Girl (Lacuna Valley #1)

Chapter Ten

 The spider man sheets confused her the next morning, but not as much as the woman staring down at her from the ceiling. When she'd come into the room the night before it had been too dark to see much and she'd had no interest in turning on the lights. If she didn't go straight to sleep she'd start to think and then she'd never get to sleep. Now that it was morning it was time to let herself think about things, and she'd much rather have gone back to bed. This was the big day. As impatient as she'd been, she didn't feel ready for the answers to all of her questions. She didn't even know what to make of the answers she did have. The woman staring down was distracting her. She hadn't recognized her at first, being barely dressed and all, but she now recognized the woman with red hair and black panties as Scully, of Scully and Mulder fame. Even in her underwear she managed to have an intelligent look on her face, skeptical of something. Maybe she was skeptical that she'd ever end up in her underwear on someone's ceiling; wondering what in the world she was doing there. Good question Scully, I was just wondering the same thing about myself. What would Scully do in her situation, with her intelligent, skeptical, eyes? She'd step back and take herself out of the equation. She'd critically survey the facts and take nothing for granted.

Easier said than done.

"Oh, Scully. Maybe you could at least tell me what my situation is, exactly." Sam sighed. Her life had gone from complete boredom, to complete chaos. The emotional twister of her mother planning to kill her sister and herself, let alone hearing she was destined to marry someone, was all a bit much. Putting those things together made something click. How could she actually die if she was supposed to marry Nick? Did that mean she'd get through somehow? The excitement she felt was quickly squashed when she remembered the dreams were abstract. They could mean anything, and there was no one to really say one way or another for sure.

And even if it was true, and the destined marriage meant she was going to survive, that didn't save Violet.

She shook that thought out of her head and sat up to look around the room. It was... chaotic. There were large photographs in black frames of places far away. Bright and colorful African sunsets, the streets of Tokyo, the Eiffel Tower, and giant glaciers surrounded her. Blocking the view of many of them were all sorts of space ships hanging from the ceiling. There were books stacked on the floor against every wall, everything from paperback novels to old hard covered books on things like traveling, edible plants, and dreams. One on dreams caught her eye and she crawled down on the floor to look through it. She flipped through different chapters, but all she found was information on interpreting particular symbols in dreams. She couldn't see how knowing that dreams about teeth often symbolized a fear of aging was ever going to help her in the real world. But, then, her real world was all a little different now, wasn't it?

But that wasn't really true, either. Everything in her world was exactly as it had always been, there just wasn't any denying it anymore. She'd always known her mother hated her. The fact that her mother might kill her someday was always a part of her reality. She'd thought it countless times and it had only become clearer over the years, she'd just done her best to ignore it. She focused on the goal: turning eighteen, when her mother would no longer own her. She clung to that goal even when it made no sense. Even when she knew she could never leave, with the constant worry about her mother starting in on Violet weighing her down. There was just no more lying to herself about the truth of it all. It was time to piece together the facts. To be a skeptical, and intelligent, adult.

Of course there were some new things in her world. The seasonals, for example. Apparently it was important to know that they were creepy monsters in the night. That warning had come through nice and clear, and filled her dreams with images of deer she'd like to never revisit. How did they actually fit into everything, though? And there were werewolves. Somehow she hadn't gotten Nick to say anything about that. Who knew if that was relevant. She definitely needed to find all the pieces to the puzzle, and there was no better time than today. No more lies—especially to herself. With a new resolve, she clapped the heavy book shut and looked around for her bag. There was a knock at the door while she was trying to remember where she left it.