Page 35 of Crave

“Pretty sure if that were true, dentists everywhere would have sounded the alarm.” And still, I checked to make sure my sleeve hadn’t ridden up, exposing the telltale pink scars scoring my wrist. The bruising at my face and neck had faded. I no longer felt dizzy every time I stood up. But no matter how hard I tried to call to my wolf, I still couldn’t shift.

On the TV, the news switched over to three-year-old footage of #DashCamVlad. The image was grainy, but what you couldn’t easily make out, digital enhancement and teams of FBI specialists had analyzed down to the last blade of grass in the shot. The expensive German sports car. Did all vampires favor that brand of jeans? Didn’t matter. They sold out all over the world within hours anyway. Perfectly cut blazer. Preppy Italian sneakers. Blond hair that was stylishly mussed and spiked with gel, which let’s face it, did nothing to hurt Vlad’s social media following.

My phone chimed in my pocket. Pulling it out, I checked the screen.

Thor: Your proof of life, milady.

Attached was an image of ghostly green eyes peering out from an Amazon delivery box.

Thor: Fancy says to tell you I’m fine, btw.

Me: 1. The text is your proof of life (obviously.) 2. You are not renaming my cat. 3. Why am I getting delivery notifications?

Thor: Ordered some more stuff for Fancy. Amazon’s gonna two-hour it over to your place.

Me: GODIVA

Me: And you realize you’re becoming one of *those* people? An entire box of cat toys? Organic kitten food? Could this be why she’s suddenly afraid of us?

Thor: Did she eat it?

Me: I sense you’re missing my point.

Thor: Figured with the whole shoving her in a grapefruit box thing the other night, plus you not letting me feed her that cupcake…

Me: Please see the refrigerator once more for the list of allowed kitten foods.

Thor: …a few catnip mice couldn’t hurt. Got her a cat tree for my place, too.

Me: Um, you remember the part where it took us an hour this morning to trap her?

Thor: Fancy’s got skills.

Me: We are so never telling anyone we got our asses handed to us by a four-pound cat.

“There’s something wrong with this town.”

I froze, instantly recognizing my mom’s altered tone. My phone chimed traitorously with a new text notification. I stuffed it into my apron pocket. Shoving away the trays of turkey and smoked sausage, all of which had been provided by The Spoke, I dragged her straight past the cranberry jelly station to the door.

“I remember. They came late at night—"

“It’s okay.” Tears blurred my eyes. I punched the crash bar to release the door, ushering us into the blinding midday sun.

Right now all that mattered was getting her home, convincing her to lie down and take her meds. For whatever reason, deep sleep caused her mind to reset. The episodes never seemed to come while she was working. The concentration required to stay focused when she programmed kept her centered. My mom didn’t wander away when she slipped into one of her episodes. She didn’t set the stove on fire. I was the source of her anxiety. I had caused it. If I wasn’t there, she called me obsessively until I answered. And I came running. But it was the same every time. She couldn’t work her way out of the mass of thorns the Tracers had left of her neural pathways, couldn’t untangle real from not real, and existed suspended in a world where a voice in the back of her mind recognized something wasn’t right but was unable to touch it because of the mental blocks in place.

“We have to get out of here,” she slurred as I shook one of her pills out of the dark orange medicine bottle. “They’re coming.”

“S’okay.” Tears blurred my eyes. “I won’t let them find us.”

My phone chimed again just as I was peeling out of the parking lot. Dallas, no doubt. For one terrible, selfish second, I allowed myself the wish that my mother and I could have had a different sort of relationship, one where rather than constructing lie upon lie, I could have cried with her after what had happened with Ethan. Where I could have told her I was scared I might be falling for Dallas, the two of us bonding like epic mom and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore over coffee and Indian takeout. In another world, I would have taken Dallas home to meet my mother. I could see it now, the three of us shouting at Top Chef over buttery popcorn and my latest batch of cupcakes. How many times had I wished I could step back in time to that fateful night and make a different choice, take back the answer I’d given when she’d looked up distractedly from her laptop to ask where I was going, one split-second decision rippling out across time and space to change both our futures.

An alternate reality where Dallas and I never would have existed at all.

The night after Dallas was sent to Calgary, my mom’s memory was wiped by Tracers. Gone were the nights where I lay with my head in her lap while we watched Gilmore Girls, her cool fingers playing through my hair, arranging it into braids. Gone were the rainy Sundays where I’d danced through our kitchen baking cupcakes to Shakira while she coded and threw out crazy flavor combinations like peanut butter banana and blueberry bacon. Gone were our special mother-daughter brunches with banana macadamia nut pancakes to celebrate after my Saturday morning track meets. All of it erased, an alternate reality constructed in its place where a Lacey who never existed slammed out of the house, stayed out all night and told her mother she hated her.

The second week staying with the Caldwells, I snuck into the bathroom with a pair of scissors from Sofia’s sewing chest downstairs. Eyes cast downward, I released my hair from the ponytail holder. The cold metal shears scraped across my scalp, my heart hammering, the rasp of the blades seeming to scream in the silence. And then it was done. My hair lay strewn around me on the woven bathmat like the feathers of a plucked bird. I couldn’t go back. They’d already killed every part of me that mattered. Everything I’d once loved. And I wanted no part of the girl I’d become.

My mother believed Dallas and I had broken up after a year in Calgary. She had no idea that for the past five years he’d snuck across the road to visit me nearly every night in between checking the smokers. She could never know about our secret shared language of cupcakes, beef ribs and memories of a night we could never take back. Most days, the false memories the Tracers implanted held. When they didn’t, and she fought to recall what had really happened despite splitting headaches, nausea and dizziness, seizures and blackouts followed.