Peri

Chapter 17: No, I'm Peri

Finally done crying, I lowered Peri's body back to the pavement and wiped my nose on the back of my hand, though I was so soaked that I couldn't tell whether or not it did much. At some point while I knelt there, cradling the fresh corpse of my former childhood friend, I had made up my mind. It was time to go back home and face all that I had come so close to running from.

Just as I was about to pick myself up off the ground, I realized that the asphalt was sagging beneath us, creating a little crater in the road with Peri's body and I in the dead center. Rainwater rushed down the sides, but the water level around me didn't seem to rise as much as it should have, as if the water was soaking through. The ground was quickly thinning, giving way where my knees and the toes of my shoes were pressed into it. I thought that maybe I should get up, try to escape this sudden sinkhole, but, before I could get even one foot underneath me, the earth split open, sending me tumbling down, down, down.

I landed on nothing. Though I lay in a thin pool of water, I couldn't feel anything beneath it. And though it seemed I had abruptly stopped moving, I hadn't felt any impact. Once again, the world was replaced with darkness, but this time there was water, blood, and soaked fabric against my skin, all of which I could feel, could smell. When I had landed, I had heard the wet slap of my body quickly displacing the liquid. And, if I looked hard, I could see an almost imperceptibly faint light shining somewhere far in the distance.

At first, I tried to stand and walk towards it, but vertigo brought on by the inability to feel the ground or see my surroundings made me quickly drop to my hands and knees. I crawled forward, still intensely disoriented but thankful for the small comfort the water provided. If I really tried, I could almost pretend I was crawling overtop the glassy surface of a still lake in the dead of night, anything to make me feel more grounded.

Almost immediately I bumped into Peri's body. It had seemed strangely light before, but now it was nearly weightless, little more than a husk or a shed layer of skin. I cast it to the side, laser-focused on reaching the light.

My panic spiked once I hit the edge of the water, but I grit my teeth and forced myself to take that first step forward. Only, when I pressed down my hand, something gave slightly, then held firm under the weight. It felt almost fleshy. When I smacked it gently with my fingers, there was the sound of skin slapping skin. I put my hand back down and shifted some of my weight to it, readying to crawl forward. As I did, I could feel the surface twitch. But that wasn't all; I also felt something more subtle, like the gentle pulsing of a vein. I found myself wondering if I could split the skin.

I dug a fingernail into it, intending to peel the layer back, but it was so thin that the whole digit slipped through the moment I broke the surface. There was a cold breeze against my finger. I yanked it out, and was immediately met with the smell of dry, winter air and the sight of some dim, ambient light leaking in. I ripped the hole open all at once with both hands, causing whatever tension that had held me aloft to break, sending me tumbling forward into the grass. I was lying at the edge of Korina's yard, my back to the blazing red glow of her house. I looked up toward where I had come from, but all I could see was the light-polluted night sky. I reached an arm upwards, stretching my fingers in hopes of finding the underbelly of whatever space I'd just inhabited, but was met with nothing but empty air.

I looked around for a moment, getting my bearings, when I noticed that I didn't feel quite as heavy as I just had. I was dry, completely dry and wearing my own clothes, not Trevor's hand-me-downs. I no longer smelled like blood and rain. My ankle felt just fine. My eye was back. I was excited, so giddy and excited that I didn't know what to do with myself. Instinctively, I whipped out my phone to tell Peri about it, but our conversation was gone. Her number wasn't even in my phone, though I did have a number of missed calls and texts. The excitement ebbed, and I started to freak out a little, because I definitely couldn't walk all the way home. The memory of what it had felt like to be beneath that red light was still too fresh for me to even consider going back in and asking for a ride. I didn't want to text any of them either, because I was scared of them judging me for running out, refusing to come back in, and then demanding to be driven home.