Chapter 17June 27th
“No, Mike!” I startled myself awake with a yell, still half-dreaming of that night last October. My tenuous connection to that night snapped like a rubber band, leaving only the too-tight cuffs of my pajamas to remind me of Ricky’s old Tinker Bell costume.
With a thunder of footsteps up the stairs, my mother burst through the door, a flurry of red hair and white powder. I stared at her blankly as she stood frozen in the doorway, as though she’d startled herself.
“Are you okay?” she asked after a long moment of maintained eye contact. “I heard you yell out.”
“I had a bad dream,” I said, absently scratching at my arm. “What’s that you’re covered in?”
“Flour,” my mother supplied, coming to the side of my bed slowly, as if approaching a deer in the forest. “I’m making
