Thief Eyes - Janni Lee Simner [10]
I drew a shuddering breath and coughed on sulfur-scented steam. This wasn’t just about some nightmares or a few failed tests. Whatever was going on, I should talk to Dad. If he couldn’t cope, maybe he’d find someone who could. Maybe this was a matter for professionals.
It’d be easier to talk to Mom. I want to talk to Mom. I turned off the water and watched the steam disappear. Tomorrow, I promised myself. I’d get some sleep, make sure I didn’t just have the worst case of jet lag ever, and then I’d talk to Dad.
I wrapped myself in the towel, dug some Band-Aids out of the first-aid kit Dad had stuck in the medicine cabinet, and ducked into my room. As I pulled on jeans and a Desert Museum T-shirt, I heard Dad start the shower.
I still had the boy’s bloody handkerchief. Meeting him and Flosi, at least, had been real. I shoved the handkerchief into my jeans pocket, a reminder that I wasn’t crazy about everything. I ran a brush through my wet hair and pulled it up into a new elastic. Then I jammed a water bottle and the phrase book into my backpack, grabbed my jacket, and headed into the kitchen. I felt a little better after the shower. I filled a bowl with cornflakes and poured on the milk.
Or what I thought was milk—I sputtered and only barely managed to swallow. When we’d gone shopping on the way home last night, my phrase book had insisted mjolk was milk—but this tasted like yogurt mixed with sour cream. I dumped in a bunch of the Noa Kropp malt balls I’d also bought. They didn’t taste like malt balls, either—more like chocolate-covered Rice Krispies—but at least they helped take the edge off. I stashed the rest of the bag in my backpack, in case lunch was no better than breakfast.
Dad joined me in the kitchen as I spooned up the last few bits of chocolate. Mom wouldn’t have approved of mixing candy with breakfast. Dad didn’t even notice. He was dressed up, for Dad, in khakis and a button-down shirt, his hair combed into submission. I tossed the bowl into the sink and we headed out.
The sun was bright, the sky so blue I wondered if I hadn’t imagined the fog after all. Dad focused on the road and on shifting gears in our small rental car, but he kept stealing glances at me, like he wanted to ask what had really happened during those six hours. I stared out the window, where a few puffy white clouds clung to a black volcanic hillside. No, not clouds—steam, rising up from within the earth, like a mini-volcano. At the base of the hill a green field was streaked with bright yellow dandelions. Didn’t they know better than to grow in a place like that, where molten fire could wipe them out at any time? We drove past more black hills and more stretches of startling green, dotted with purple and yellow wild-flowers. In a field, a pair of shaggy-maned Icelandic horses scratched each other’s backs with their blocky teeth as we drove past.
Silence stretched between Dad and me. The green gave way to a rocky gray wilderness, the rocks to a grassy hillside with a shining blue lake down below. Beyond the lake I saw the gray walls of the rift valley, row upon row of them. Dad turned, turned again, and pulled into a parking lot beneath the cliff we’d stood on yesterday, in front of a red-and-white building a road sign had labeled the Hotel Valholl.
Cold wind hit me as I got out of the car, in spite of the clear sky. “It really didn’t feel like six hours,” I told Dad.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair—so much for his combing it—and I knew he didn’t believe me. I sighed, too, and followed him inside, past an entryway hung with—yuck!—animal skins, and into a small dining room. A gray-haired couple in matching puffin sweatshirts sat at one table, a boy scribbling in a notebook at another. The boy closed the notebook and looked up. I blinked hard. It was Flosi’s owner.
His hat was still jammed over his ears, but he’d hung his leather jacket over his chair, revealing a faded Star Wars T-shirt. His mouth quirked into a smile. “You’re