Page 10 of Such Sharp Teeth

“I’m here because I want to be here,” I say. “That fast city life wears you down. I needed a break. Change of pace. This is as good for me as it is for you.”

“Stars aligned,” she says, smiling like she doesn’t believe me.

She shouldn’t. I’m not telling the truth. I love my life in the city. I love my job. I love business-development consulting, putting on suits and walking into posh conference rooms and telling C suite executives everything they’re doing wrong. I love my apartment: a prewar walk-up with a beautiful but useless fireplace and a cute, pathetic little kitchen. I love staying out until four a.m. and doing karaoke in Midtown with tourists. I love trying trendy new restaurants and getting handsy with strangers in the bathroom of a seedy Lower East Side bar. I love complaining about the subway and brunch at Balthazar and the Union Square farmers market and the occasional trip to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone and cheat death.

I would only ever leave this life for my sister. And only temporarily. I didn’t move out of my apartment; I sublet it. I didn’t quit my job; I took a leave of absence. I have every intention of going back after the baby’s born and Scarlett’s settled.

“All right,” I say. “I guess I will go lie down. Maybe take a nap. I like the idea of waking up from a nap to fresh bread.”

“Sweet sleeping,” she says, flicking some flour in my direction.

I hop off the stool too quickly and my side screams. I shuffle slowly toward the stairs. Scarlett doesn’t comment.

I go up the stairs on all fours because it’s easier that way.

Scarlett has always called the guest room “Rory’s room.” She painted it a muted blue and hung vintage postcards on the walls. The bed has a pretty wrought iron headboard; the linens are hotel white. The antique double dresser we shared as kids is in this room, above it the silver-framed mirror I saw my reflection change in as I grew up. There’s a tweed armchair in the corner by the window, next to it a teetering stack of unread books and a small parlor palm. On the nightstand sit a squat lamp and a classic alarm clock. The rest of the house is colorful and cluttered with eccentric artwork and knickknacks and taxidermy and oversized furniture. The rest of the house is Scarlett. This room is me.

I’m too afraid to change out of the clothes that Scarlett brought to the hospital for me—a pair of my Columbia University sweatpants and a long-sleeved Grateful Dead tee, the only article of clothing she and I ever fought over as teens. If I were to undress, to change out of these clothes, I would see.

I don’t want to see the bandages. I dread the bandages.

These clothes don’t smell like hospital, but I do. I smell. They cleaned me up this morning, but I haven’t had a proper shower since yesterday. Since before.

Bad things have a way of severing your life into “before” and “after.” It’s really annoying.

“After you” is never quite the same, so I’ve learned.

Fuck it. I climb into bed as is. I can always wash the sheets.

—

I wake to the smell of bread and the drum of rain on the windows. I yawn. I’m alarmed by the click of my jaw. It’s not so much a click. It sounds like tearing paper, like breaking down cardboard. My chin descends, my mouth opening, opening, opening. The parting is unnatural. There’s a cave in my face.

I sit up in bed, mashing my elbows into the pillow behind me. I look directly in front of me, into the mirror above the dresser. I’m there, inside the mirror, but I can’t see myself because all I can see is the thing on the floor. The mass of matted fur crawling next to my bed, silently creeping on all fours. I can see the bend of its hind legs, the considerable hills of its shoulders. I can see the back of its head, the sinister sharpness of its ears. It’s almost graceful in its movements, careful and calculated. But it’s a predator, so it can’t be graceful, because grace is a virtue, and predator’s virtues all serve a violent purpose, so they really aren’t virtues at all.

I watch as it reaches up to me, as it begins to extend its long, ugly fingers toward the mattress, up over the side. I want to scream for my sister, but I don’t want her to come up here. I don’t want her to be a part of this. I don’t want her to see.

I check my reflection and connect with eyes that aren’t mine. Red eyes, set back in a face that isn’t mine, perched on top of a monstrous body that also isn’t mine. But it sits where I sit. Unmoving, with a wide-open mouth. Vicious jaws salivating, a slowly extending snout.

The realization is pure heartbreak. Last night changed me. I’m going to be different now.

Its nails dig into my thigh.

I’m not going to be the same.

—

There’s snarling and gasping, and it takes me a minute to understand that I just had a nightmare.

Having a nightmare during a nap seems particularly cruel. Regular sleep, fine. But to be betrayed by a nap? Uncool.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

Reaper, Scarlett’s disgruntled old Jack Russell terrier, growls at me.

“What? What do you want?”

He barks twice. He’s got the ugliest bark.