Chapter 17She awoke with a start, sitting upright, eyes wild with fear as she tore the headphones from her ears, and looked around in the gloomy darkness of her room. Her heart pounded in her chest, its rhythm throbbing in her ears, yet regardless, in the distance, she could hear the faint sound of the television in the living room, although she had no idea what was being said.
Fearfully, she looked down at the Walkman laying upon the bed, the cord of the headphones stretched out like some silent and lifeless snake, the blue of its face catching the light of the lamp that still shone upon her desk.
Trembling, she took a breath, then another, trying to orientate herself in the dim light, trying to process the things she had heard in her sleep.
She was silent, unmoving but for the rise an
