THE SANDMAN ☞ TRAVIS STOLL

SEVENTEEN

SOMETHING IS WRONG.

    Travis Stoll feels the wrongness behind his ribs. In the same place where the absence of Valerie lives, the same place where all of his love for her is stored, there is a pulsing feeling of something not right.

    He hasn't felt like this in almost two years—not since the Battle of Manhattan. Not since she was halfway across the city and he didn't know if she was alive or dead. Just like right now, that panic and strange void of her has rooted itself behind his ribcage.

    It blindsides him, forces him to let go of Clara's hand and stumble blindly over to a park bench, collapsing onto it, eyes unseeing but trained on the ground.

    "Travis?" The littlest Greenwood asks, and her bubblegum pink Converse high-tops come into his blurry vision as she steps closer to him. "Travis, are you okay? You look sick."

    He manages to take a sharp breath, and his gaze travels to her face. Her eyebrows are furrowed together in concern. "I'm—I think I'm okay. It just feels weird. In my chest."

    "Are you having a heart attack? Do you need me to call 911?" Clara asks, insistent. Her green eyes narrow as she looks at him with too much wisdom for a ten year old. "It's my sister, isn't it?" There's an all-knowing expression on her face that makes her question wholly rhetorical, and she's pulling out a cell phone before he can answer.

    He starts to protest, but she holds up a freckled hand—such a Valerie gesture that his throat bobs. "I know. Monsters. Val told me. Just shut up and let me call Joss."

    Travis is stunned into silence by the realization that the younger Greenwoods are just like the Sandman herself, and he can only watch mutely as Clara taps the phone's screen a few times before holding it up to her ear.

    They are both quiet for a few moments, listening to the dial tone that comes from the phone's speaker.

    "You've reached Josslyn Greenwood-Fisher. Leave a message."

    Clara visibly deflates. "It went to voicemail." She stares at the phone briefly, as if willing her oldest sister to call back. "She always answers when I call, even if she's in a meeting. She'll yell at me for interrupting when she answers, but she always answers."

    He finds his voice then: "I can't feel her."

    The presence of Valerie that has lived within his chest for the past decade and a half has gone cold. What had once been a burning, raging fire within him is no more than embers now.

    She has disappeared from his mind and the place she has always occupied in his heart.

    The freezing cold inside of him is terrifying. "We need to go. Now."

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    Valerie Greenwood had her jaw wired shut, just once, a little less than a decade ago. She'd gotten into a fight with Clarisse LaRue on one of her first days at camp and Clarisse, two years younger than her but eight inches taller than her then, had punched her so hard that Valerie's jaw had been broken in two different places.

    While she hasn't forgiven Clarisse, ten years later, she still remembers the pain, the discomfort, of not being able to open her mouth.

    She feels the same in this moment, watching mutely as the only love she's ever known stumbles into the restaurant with her sister and nephew in tow. She wants to scream, beg him to turn around and leave, shout at him that he is in danger here—that he is in danger with her.