Struck by Jennifer Bosworth Page B

into bouts of terrified screams that quickly left her throat hoarse, so she could only produce strained wheezes. The scar tissue on her cheeks and chin stood out in stark relief, bunched and waxy.
    Parker hovered over her, unsure what to do. Whether to keep his distance or touch her to try to bring her out of the flashback. Back to this reality. The one where she was safe in her own home, not buried alive, waiting to die.
    I sprang into action. I couldn’t say I’d gotten used to these episodes over the past month, but they no longer left me paralyzed.
    “Get the Thorazine from her medicine cabinet,” I told Parker. He rushed to Mom’s bathroom. I heard him riffling through bottles of pills. Heard things clatter as they fell into the sink below the cabinet.
    I bent to Mom’s ear and spoke softly to her. “Mom, it’s Mia. Can you hear me? I’m right here with you, in your bedroom. You’re safe. You can come back. I promise this is a safe place. Nothing bad will happen to you here.”
    If she heard me, she gave no sign. Still, I kept whispering my words of comfort. But all I could think was “This shouldn’t be happening. This shouldn’t be happening.” I was no pharmacist, but the amount of Thorazine and Xanax I had Mom on should have ended these episodes.
    The TV was on, and Prophet’s face filled the screen. The opaque globes of his eyes seemed to bore right into mine as he spoke.
    “I do not relish being the bearer of these bad tidings,” Prophet said, his crooner’s voice more somber than usual. “I wish with my whole heart that it had not come to this. But know, my Followers, that you need fear no evil, for we will walk together through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and we will emerge into the light on the other side. If you have surrendered your soul to God and pledged yourself to His service, then you will be protected from the coming devastation. While the world falls down around you, while the storm rages, you will be safe in the eye. On April 17, three days from now, the storm will arrive, but you will be saved.”
    All at once, Mom’s wheezing cries ceased, and her rigid body unclenched. She sat up, blinking at the TV, back-handing tears from her face. She didn’t even seem to realize I was there. Her eyes were for Prophet only. It was his words that had brought her out of the flashback, not mine.
    Parker appeared in the bathroom doorway, his hands full of pill bottles. “Is she—”
    “I’m fine now,” Mom said. Her voice was the clearest I’d heard it since the quake. She sounded … not like her old self, but at least like someone who was present. Who was not mumbling through a dream.
    She looked at me, squinting, as though my face refused to come into focus.
    “Mia.” She said my name like she was trying it out, seeing if it fit. “Parker.”
    She touched one of the scars on her face, and then nodded, as though accepting something. “I need to be alone.”
    She looked at the door, a clear cue for Parker and me to leave. But neither of us moved. Mom hadn’t been this lucid in weeks, and I was afraid if I so much as blinked I’d miss the moment.
    “Please,” she said, her tone sharpening. “Leave me alone so I can think.”
    Parker looked like he’d been slapped. The anger I’d felt toward Mom that morning, the crazy-making frustration that had been building inside me for a month, surged to the surface.
    “We’re trying to help you.” I didn’t quite shout the words, but close enough.
    Mom’s eyes held mine, unblinking. “You can’t help me,” she said, her voice regaining some of its usual slow dreaminess. “I’m lost. Lost in the dark. In the Valley of the Shadow.”
    She looked at the TV. At Prophet.
    “He says a storm is coming to finish what was started. The storm that will be the end of all things. He says it is God’s will and God’s plan.”
    The tiniest of smiles lifted one corner of Mom’s mouth.
    “He can protect us.”
    I punched the power button