Page 1 of Crash Over Us
ONE
Margot
Nightmares didn’t happen in the middle of the afternoon when the sun sparkled on the water surrounding Marshoak Island. When the birds frolicked on the crests of waves, teasing each other with blue fish clasped in their beaks. Not when three teenage girls laughed on paddleboards, hoping not to fall off.
“Stop, Sabrina! No, I’m going to get wet!” the girl in the pink bathing suit giggled. Her board wobbled beneath her spindly legs.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Sabrina squeaked. She tried to steady her friend’s board.
No, nightmares didn’t happen like this. Nightmares happened when the lights went out. When silence engulfed my body. When I was teetering on the verge of waking out of a deep sleep, but couldn’t find the rungs of the ladder to climb up from the abyss.
I had arrived on Marshoak Island months ago in one of these nightmares. Haunted by my parents’ family demons. Wrecked by my choices. Chased by my own decisions. I had walked and sometimes crawled through the fog to cobble together a new life for myself, despite the obvious—I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong in the city. I sure as hell didn’t belong in a small coastal town in North Carolina.
I didn’t pretend it was simple or easy. I wasn’t cured from grief and loneliness. I wasn’t naïve.
Yet, somehow, when I was sleepwalking, I had outpaced the nightmare. I had gained a stride, vaulted a hurdle, and created distance between the worst-case scenario and me.
I had inched farther ahead without realizing it. Maybe that was the most beautiful part of it. All I did was breathe. One day of breathing turned into two, turned into twelve, turned into fifty. Now I breathed full, abundant breaths. Hopeful, easy breaths. I didn’t want to go back to breathing laced with anxiety and dread.
Nightmares are a manifestation of our anxiety. The thoughts that plague us deep below the conscious levels of our minds. They like to attack when we’re defenseless. The most defenseless we can be is when we are asleep. I’d gotten used to breathing effortlessly. With joy. With love. With Caleb. With the sun in our faces and salt air whipping our cheeks and lips. What I thought was living was putting my mind to sleep when it should have been watching for the shadows. For the reality of the dark things that eventually would find me on Marshoak.
I blamed myself. I was the only one who could take responsibility for lowering the walls. For forgetting to protect myself. Happiness was no guard against a nightmare.
My greatest fear caught me. Gripped me. Tried to strangle all the shiny new hope from my lungs and heart.
As soon as I opened the screen door and saw her standing there, I knew. Every part of my body knew something was wrong. My skin prickled with icy pain. My fingertips were instantly numb. My ears hummed as if I were underwater. Because my nightmares had arrived dressed like Josie Queen in cutoff shorts and a surf shirt.
Her eyes were sad. Soulful. I’d never seen them with that kind of expression. Most of my time with Josie this summer had been at a party or watching her steer a jet ski over choppy waters with a huge grin on her face. She had brought me into the Marshoak social circle before anyone else was ready to accept me as an outsider. She didn’t see me that way. She was my first friend on the island.
I never wanted to see her like this, though. Not when her eyes told me things without her mouth moving.
I crumbled to the floor before she spoke. My knees hit the threshold with a thud and a slice.
“No,” I cried. “No. No. No.” I buried my face in my hands.
Josie crouched next to me, kicking the door open to give her body space against mine. “Shh. Shh. Margot, come on. We don’t know—” She patted me on the back. “I haven’t even told you anything yet, Margot. How do you know something is wrong?”
I couldn’t look at her. Any words would be hollow and meaningless. There was nothing she could say.
I choked on a sob. “Am I wrong? Is he okay?”
She was here for one reason and one reason only. To tell me something had happened to Caleb.
“You’re not wrong,” she whispered.
My heart felt pricked a thousand times at once. I didn’t know if I could breathe. The pain was debilitating. Like sleep paralysis, when I was frozen in agony.
I was awake in the nightmare.
TWO
Margot
SIX HOURS EARLIER
An anonymous donor.
They were the most unlikely set of words to string together. Words that worked their way into novels and Hallmark movies, not real life. Not my life.
