The Shuddering

Scott. Her fingers drifted across Stoker’s Dracula , one of the few she’d read. All those books made her feel small, uneducated, but they also made her inwardly grimace at how ostentatious they were. Not a trace of King and Koontz, of books people actually read and enjoyed.
    “Does it?” Sawyer asked, stepping away from the couch as if to assess his morning back pain. April frowned as she tugged down on the hem of her shirt, her bare legs growing cold.
    “Don’t get mad about it,” she said. “I’m just making an observation.”
    “Did I say I was mad about it?” he asked, tossing a folded sheet onto the bed. April took a sip of soda before grabbing the end closest to her, sliding an elastic hem over one of the mattress corners.
    “You don’t have to say it,” she told him. “It’s kind of obvious.”
    “What?” Sawyer straightened, pushing his fingers through his hair. “That I’m upset they aren’t like us ?”
    She didn’t like the emphasis he put onto that last word. It made it sound like there was no us at all.
    “Why are you so touchy?” she asked. Jane had left a folded comforter on the chair in the corner of the room. April grabbed it, tossing it at Sawyer with a scowl. “You’re acting completely weird.”
    Sawyer shook his head. “Sorry, it just bothers me.”
    “What does?”
    “The whole ‘they aren’t like us’ thing. I hate it.”
    April stepped around the bed as he straightened the comforter, stopping when she was chest to chest with him. She gave him an apologetic smile before sweeping a strand of his hair behind an ear.
    “I’m sorry,” she mewed, tugging on the neckline of his shirt. “I like your friends.”
    It was a bald-faced lie. These were the kind of people who made going to school a living hell for her. Ryan all but made her skin crawl with how much he reminded her of the jocks, the preps, the guys who twisted their faces up in judgment as the girl in the combat boots and ankle-length duster tried to make her way to class. Lauren had most certainly been on the volleyball team; probably dated the quarterback and wore the homecoming crown. And Jane…she was the one who piqued April’s curiosity. There was something about her—a shadow of something that April was picking up on but couldn’t place.
    “Let’s just go to bed,” Sawyer suggested.
    April nodded, allowing her hand to trail down his chest before grabbing the soda he’d brought upstairs for her and turning away. She frowned as soon as he couldn’t see her face. She’d always been a bad liar. If she had been better at it she would have laughed it up at the dinner table with the rest of them, convinced them all that, oh yeah, The Sound of Music was her favorite, that she’d grown up watching Mary Poppins and Oklahoma! and whatever other ridiculous musicals she could think of on the spot. She would have convinced Sawyer that she did like his friends when, in fact, she would have been happy driving back to Denver in the dead of night.
    “Ape.”
    She crawled onto the bed, waiting for him to say what he was going to say. But Sawyer shook his head after a while, dismissing whatever had been on the tip of his tongue.
    “I still say you’re acting weird,” she said.
    This time Sawyer didn’t dissuade her uneasiness. He held fast to his silence instead.
    Exhaling a sigh, she pulled the covers over herself and closed her eyes. He had been right to discourage her; she shouldn’t have come, but she didn’t like being alone and had figured, hell, if she had already met his parents she might as well meet his friends too.
    Sawyer fell asleep almost immediately while April tossed and turned. At first she blamed it on the mattress, but after half an hour of lying in the dark, she realized that it wasn’t the bed; it was the noise outside. She was a light sleeper, and even the faintest of sounds could keep her awake all night or rouse her from sleep. This was an odd moaning noise; a deep, throaty, repetitive groan accompanied by scratching, like something skittering across the porch one story below. Nearly convincing herself to get up to peer out the window, she decided against it. She was warm under the covers, and she wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. If Ryan wanted to leave his dog outside in the cold, that was his problem. It would have been nice if the guy had an ounce of courtesy and realized the husky was probably keeping people up, but what was she supposed to do, march down the