Jeanne’s eyes flared open to the sound of planes and motors. She stumbled out of her room, banging down the staircase until she reached the bathroom, and the growling engines faded. She threw up the contents of her stomach into the toilet, retching pathetically even when nothing else would come out. She tasted bile and burnt flesh and it hurt.
She hung over the bowl for a long, long moment, her whole body shaking. Finally, aware she could not be found asleep on the bathroom floor again—don’t make Maman worry, or the others, they are transparent as it is—she wiped her mouth and flushed away the remnants of her dream, leaning over the sink to spit and rinse and wash away.
She was so tired. Spitting one last time, the taste gone but for the smooth blankness of water, she stumbled back ups
