"I didn't know how to say it– still don't, really– so I just made that up cuz it was a good enough reason why I got back so late, and then we all got on with our lives. But lately, life's been getting weirder and weirder and it's driving me nuts, you not knowing, and it's going to sound nuts and you just have to stick with me, kay? So I was abducted," she said, the last four words of her uneasy ramble coming out the clearest of them all.
And yeah, part of her knew that word wasn't gonna gel with Rosario the same way it gelled with Avery, but she'd spent the last few weeks devouring story after story of abductees, the vocabulary came natural right now. "There's a tourist trap, in West Virginia. Was closed when we was passing through cuz it was February, but I was having a look round anyway. There was this... this creature, person thing, with grey skin and strange hands and strong, it was stronger than anything or anyone I ever knew. It pulled me underground–" she could hear herself, as she was talking, and shit she wished she sounded more adamant, less nervous, but the nerves were making her feel so jittery it was hard to sound sure. After such a strong clear start with I was abducted she was losing it.
"Pulled me underground, and the place was packed. It was– they were faeries, Roz. Honest to god, there were trolls. Partying like no party I've ever been to since. It was like... there are stories, right? Of people stepping into faery rings and a night passes for them but in the real world, times passing different? That– that happened to me. I thought it was like, one long long night, but when I got out, it was May." Lyra rubbed her arms roughly, even under her jumper her skin was turning to gooseflesh, and her stomach was squirming with the same horror it always did when she thought about her lost months. It shouldn't be possible and something in her body knew it, and tried to rebel against this impossibility by making her wanna be sick.
She couldn't bear to look at Rosario. On top of everything else, saying it out loud made her feel like she was stripping naked. At least, when she'd told Avery, she'd already been naked, and so was he so it kinda didn't make her feel as naked as this. Lyra pushed herself back in her chair and pulled her damp, chewed sleeves up over her hands, trying to disappear into the imagined safety of the jumper.