All country summer sounds she knew as well as her own voice, and nothing to put that odd little click in her throat.īut now, awake, she felt that heat, like gauze soaked in hot water and wrapped around every inch of her. She sat straight up in bed, blinking at the dark, hearing nothing but the hum of the fan, the high pitch of the cicadas, and the lazy, repetitive hoo of an owl. Naomi went from sleep to awake in an instant, as if someone had given her a good shake or shouted her name in her ear. The heat didn’t wake her, nor did the soft rumble of thunder from a storm gathering in the distance. Still, she was used to that, to lying on top of summer-moist sheets, with the windows open wide to the relentless chorus of cicadas-and the faint hope even a tiny breeze would slither through the sultry. The humming fan on her dresser stirred it, but it was like sleeping in the steam pumping off the pot. Summer turned the air into a wet, simmering stew, one smelling of sweat and drenching green. She didn’t know what woke her, and no matter how many times she relived that night, no matter where the nightmare chased her, she never would.
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