Free The Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci Page B

to stone.
    Tessa sat on the first stair and wept.
    “I’ve killed us all,” she thought.

 
     
    chapter
    twenty
     

 
     
    chapter
    twenty-one
     
    Alarm clocks always rang too early. They buzzed and buzzed, the loud chime shaking away the safety of sleep or the bliss of a dream. Tessa had hit the snooze button more often than she should have. She would be late. She didn’t care about that. She didn’t want to go at all.
    She was cold and her hair was a mess. She hadn’t brushed it since she had come out of the water and the curls had come together to form thick dreads. She touched her feet to the floor and recoiled. She felt around for her slippers. She felt so heavy.
    She rummaged through all of her clothes, there were piles of them and she could not find a single thing to wear. She pulled on a pair of dark skinny jeans and a T-shirt. Knowing that she was too skinny to keep warm she found a sweater and pushed the sleeves up. The scab was still there. Perfectly readable now: I died.
    Tessa could smell breakfast downstairs. They were trying to tempt her to eat. They were always doing that, though they hardly ate themselves. Tessa had no desire to eat anymore. Foods looked foreign to her. She thought of the things on a plate as fuel. If she managed one or two bites, it was OK.
    “Think, Tessa, think,” she said out loud.
    Remembered a wrist cuff. Slipped one on. It covered most of the scar. All you could see was the I. It looked like a cat scratch.
    She padded down the stairs quietly.
    Her mother was in the living room, her jeans hanging loose off her hips. Her sleeve tattoos lacking in color. She was putting a CD in the player. She couldn’t stand to hear the news anymore.
    “Too much sadness in the world,” her mother said as she turned up the volume on a CD of a band from her youth that she’d rediscovered.
    Tessa left her mother in the living room, swaying to the sound of crunchy guitars and jangly melodies. Her mother’s hand slapping the beat against her thigh. Eyes closed. Music was surely going to bring the color back. There was always comfort in music.
    “I’m making a salad for your lunch,” her dad said. He tried to sound chipper. His long hair was brushed and his clean-looking shirt made him seem pulled together. His piercings were extra shiny as though newly polished. But it was all an act. The hair was dirty. The shirt was likely unwashed as well. He scooped salad into a Tupperware container for Tessa.
    “First day of school,” Tessa said.
    “First day,” her dad said.
    He looked as though he wanted to say something else. His eyes glanced at the wrist cuff. He didn’t say anything about it. But she could see his eyes had gotten watery. He looked to the side, avoiding Tessa’s gaze. She knew if he said anything else, he would likely cry. He couldn’t cry. He had let Tessa and her mother be as sad as they wanted to be and when they were done, he would take his turn. But right now, he had to be the strong one. Tessa counted on that.
    “Maybe I should be homeschooled,” Tessa said. “Maybe I should stay here for this semester. After all, everyone else has been there for two months already.”
    “We talked about this in counseling, Tessa. You’ve got to go back to school,” her dad said. “We all have to get a routine right now.”
    Tessa traced the pattern on the 1950s table. She drank the coffee that her father placed in front of her.
    “Oh, Tessa,” her mother said, entering the kitchen. “Your hair.”
    Her mother came over and tried to smooth the curls, but Tessa knew that it was no good. From weeks of neglect, the hair had curled and dreaded. It would have to be cut off if she ever wanted to comb it again. Right now it was half dreads, and it looked terrible.
    “Go get a scarf, and cover it for today,” her mother said. “I can cut it later. Or we could go get our hair done.” She said it as though it would be a fun thing to do but they both knew that it wouldn’t be fun