Heloise was foreshadowing during the whole time Mora lived with her, but Mora wasn't really listening hard enough. She thought Heloise was just trying to scare her:
But as the other girls start cheering on their partners with chants of “Book it Lexi! Come on hurry!” all I can hear is Heloise shouting at us:
“Hustle you three! Run like the snake man is coming for your skin. Do you want to wake up in the freak show with a dozen creepy strangers paying to see you cry? Do you want to be stuck in a tank like some kind of overgrown goldfish? Get a move on!”
Mrs. Rayford used to tell Heloise not to scare us so much, but every time her mother wasn’t around, Heloise would pull us to the side and whisper a horror story in the most chilling tones she could manage.
Her favorite was the one about Vermeil and Carmine.
They went into the woods away from their grandmother’s house, but by the time they got back, there was nobody there.
“Someday,” she would say, in a tone like ice, “None of us are going to be here to take care of you guys. Somebody will find us, and kill us, or drag us away, and you’ll never see us again.”
But I thought I was too smart to believe her.
