reactormag.com
Read an Excerpt From Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
Excerpts
Horror
Read an Excerpt From Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
An eerily seductive look at the desire for community connection and self-improvement—and the darkest places inside us all…
By Sarah Gailey
|
Published on April 9, 2026
Comment
0
Share New
Share
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey, a new horror novel publishing with Tor Books on May 12th.
Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family—to belong to someone. That’s why she’s going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost.Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef—she will find herself.She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed.She’s ready to believe.
Salt Festival
day one | afternoon
Celia’s hands trembled at the sight of the crowd amassing on the shore of the island. The people seeped out through the trees and sluiced down toward the waterline. The little water shuttle beneath Celia felt like a tin can cut in half. There were two hundred of them up there, maybe two hundred and fifty. The passengers on the shuttle tried as hard as they could to look toward the island without seeing each other. Some of the children of the island hoisted tall branches with bright scraps of fluttery cloth tied to the ends. Unsmiling adults touched the children on the shoulders without looking down at them. Behind the gathering crowd, near the trees, a high banner read Welcome Salt Festival Visitors in uneven letters.
She was nearly there.
As the shuttle approached the land, a man stepped out of the crowd on the shore. His skin had a leathery quality that spoke to frequent sun. His bright, penetrating eyes were pinned to Celia. She felt like a spider in the shadow of a housecat. But then his gaze shifted to the woman next to her, and Celia found herself able to draw breath again.
“Welcome to Kindred Cove.” The man sounded neither hostile nor friendly, as though they were expected but not invited. He doesn’t want us here, Celia thought. Then she checked herself: That was negative thinking, toxic thinking, making assumptions and ascribing intent. She reminded herself not to let her anxiety control her. She fixed her eyes on the banner and made herself focus on the first word: welcome.
“Where should I tie up now the dock’s gone?” The stringy kid who had piloted the water shuttle across the lake was chewing his gum at a volume that could not be accidental. He wore a sweat-stained white polo shirt with Vetiver Tours embroidered over the breast pocket. A small goiter on his neck moved in time with the rhythmic working of his jaw.
He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Celia couldn’t remember if that was too young for a goiter. She couldn’t remember what caused them—something that was supposed to be in tap water, she thought, or in table salt. Too much of it, or not enough. She wondered what the kid wasn’t getting in his diet, and immediately felt overwhelmed by the idea of trying to find a way to fix it.
She looked away from him, and the feeling of overwhelm faded.
She was embarrassed at her own relief.
“You can tie up in a minute,” the man on the shore said. He wasn’t looking at the kid either. “Before we welcome you onto our shore, I want to be sure everyone’s in the right place.”
“I made ‘em check in, just like you said,” the kid replied. “They all—”
“I want to make sure,” the man continued, louder now, more theatrical, “that everyone here is ready to step into an experience that will change their lives. The next four days will transform you forever. The Salt Festival is about connection, purification, cleansing, and community. It’s about releasing yourself from the anchors that hold you back from the life you could be living. But more than any of that—it’s about celebration.”
His face opened into a wide, warm smile. Celia wanted to learn how to smile like that.
“It’s about celebration,” he repeated. “Are you ready to celebrate with us?”
A lukewarm shout rose up from the group on the boat. There were twenty of them, packed onto the tiny shuttle too tightly for anyone to yell without it landing in someone else’s ear. Celia worried that the man on the shore would do one of those you can do better than that routines, trying to get them to shout louder. She hated those— hated the faux-chastising tone, hated knowing that it didn’t matter how loud the first yell was because whoever was running things was always going to ask for a second one anyway. She hated the hard seed inside of her that choked off her ability to perform bright wet excitement on demand.
But he didn’t try to extract another display of enthusiasm from the visitors. Instead he strode forward into the water, his movements quick and efficient, his response so immediate that Celia tipped backward. The tall, tobacco-smelling guy standing just behind her caught her by the shoulders with a murmured whoa there.
Buy the Book
Make Me Better
Sarah Gailey
Buy Book
Make Me Better
Sarah Gailey
Buy this book from:
AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget
Even though the sun-worn man was moving farther into the lake, coming at her fast, he didn’t sink any deeper than his knees. He raised an arm and yelled the name Caleb, and a second man jogged out of the crowd to join him. This second man, this Caleb, had short brown hair and deep brown skin, and wide wet eyes fringed with thick dark lashes. He didn’t look at the shuttle at all, just kept his eyes on the water, picking his steps carefully.
Celia realized they were both walking on some kind of structure just below the surface. It was a structure that led straight to the shuttle.
“Want me to swim down to one of the cleats, William?” Caleb’s voice came out in a soft baritone.
Celia repeated the name William to herself, as the man who seemed to be some kind of leader here made his way to the shuttle. “No,” he said decisively, not looking back at Caleb. “We’ll anchor to the black gum there.” He made a gesture at the teenager who had piloted the boat across the lake. “Toss me your bow line.”
The kid looked back through the tight cluster of people on the shuttle. He let out a heavy sigh. “Okay. Can y’all try to make room for me to get through, or.” There didn’t seem to be anything lined up to come after the ‘or’.
Celia followed the path of the kid’s gaze and realized it led right to her. Her heart stuttered in her chest. She looked down and saw a coil of rope hanging off a cleat on the edge of the boat, right where she was standing. She pointed at the rope, looked from the kid to the man from the shore. William, she reminded herself. “Is it this?”
“That’s the one I need,” he answered.
“I’ve got it.” She wasn’t sure who she was telling. Celia grabbed the coil. It was heavier than she’d expected, the wet rope scratchy in her palms. She tossed it clumsily to William, who caught it with ease. He gave an experimental tug and then pointed again. “There should be another one on the other side.” Someone she couldn’t see got that one too, and then William and Caleb were pulling the shuttle toward the shore, a rope over each of their shoulders, their torsos canted forward as they sloshed through the water.
Celia was uncannily reminded of pulling her car forward onto the track of a carwash, then putting it into neutral—drifting into the hellish pummeling of the mitter curtains with no control over her own movement. Still, she liked the way it had felt to throw William the rope. The practicality of it, the way she’d gotten to be helpful.
Things were moving forward because of her. That had to be good.
The boat was heavy, and their progress was slow enough for her to scan the crowd on the shore a few more times. Everyone watched the boat. She would have expected the people waiting for them to get bored, split into smaller groups, talk amongst themselves. The few children she could see should have been restless by now. A crowd of that size, in Celia’s experience, couldn’t be silent—they necessarily rustled, coughed, breathed, fidgeted. But all she could hear was the splash of the men’s legs in the water, the restless shifting of the people on the boat with her, and her own heartbeat.
“Cleansing,” the woman next to Celia muttered under her breath. “I’m so fucking sure.”
Celia glanced down at her. “What did you say?”
“Hm?” The woman blinked up at her placidly. Her face was seamed with creases, her eyes enormous behind thick-lensed glasses. She spoke in a high, querulous voice that sounded nothing like the voice she’d used when she was muttering to herself. “What’s that, dear?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” Celia pressed her lips together and looked away. Wasn’t her business. She just needed to get to the island. She just needed this week to work.
This place would fix her. It would pull that hardness out of her. It had to.
William was moving parallel to the shore, his movements growing clumsier as he waded toward a slim black gum tree a couple of feet above the waterline. There was another boat—threadbare compared to the shuttle—in the shadow of the trees. Once they got close to it, he started to tie a series of knots in the rope she’d thrown him. She watched the deft movements of his hands as though she might learn to tie knots the way he tied them. As though she’d ever be the one doing it.
This would, she decided, be the beginning. She would take everything in while she was here. Everything. She would do the work.
She would get better.
“You’re going to have to get a little wet,” William said, stepping away from his knots, nearly losing his footing in the slippery silt. He sloshed his way closer to the shuttle, grabbed the low side of it. The water slapped against the side of the boat like a hundred tiny hands trying to find their way in. “You’ll have an easier time wading from here than trying to feel your way along the dock. It’s been tricky to navigate since it got submerged, and I don’t want any of you falling off the side.”
“Is it safe to touch the water?” That was the older woman next to Celia again. She asked the question in that trembling voice again, the one that made her sound ancient and fragile.
William looked down at his own feet, then back up at the group on the shuttle. “You’re asking now?”
“I just thought—with the mine collapse, and all that—”
“Of course it’s safe,” Celia said. She tried to keep her voice light. “We’ve come this far. Might as well go the rest of the way, right?”
She reached down and rolled up her yoga pants—the lightning motif ones from last December, which she hadn’t been able to sell and ended up buying from herself to keep her numbers up—then slipped off her shoes. She felt more than saw the shuffle of the other visitors as they copied her, taking off their shoes and preparing to enter the water.
“You can bring your shoes to shore with you,” William said, reaching up to unlatch the gate in the rail on the sides of the boat. “You’ll see where to drop them.” He offered his hand to each passenger that stepped off the boat, half-lifted the old woman down into the water. When it was Celia’s turn, he kept her hand for a few seconds, holding her in place. She couldn’t step down into the water unless he either bent his arm or let go of her, and he wasn’t doing either. He just studied her face. “I’m glad you came,” he said at last.
She pulled her hand back sharply. “What?”
“I’m glad you came,” he repeated. “I can tell just by looking at you—you need it. You’ll benefit so much from what we do here.”
“Oh. Well.” She felt a flush rising up over her neck. How had he seen inside her? Was it that obvious to everyone? “Yes, I do. Need it, I mean. I need to be here. Thank you.”
She took his hand and legged her way carefully over the side of the boat. The water, when she stepped down into it, was colder than she expected it to be. It sank immediately into her flesh and yanked the warmth out of her.
Normally, such a shock of cold would make her recoil—but now, she was gripped by a powerful urge to dive in. To follow the path of her own body heat and find out where it had gone. Celia shivered, shaking off the sudden impulse. Reminded herself of what was in the lake, and how little she wanted to encounter it.
William saw her shiver. He winked. “The water’s only cold compared to how hot you were from the trip here. I promise it’s warmer when you’re walking in from the land side of things.”
She followed William and the rest of the visitor group followed her. The silt was spongy beneath her feet, the saltwater of Lake Vetiver splashing with every step she took. Caleb worked at the knots on the rope that tethered the shuttle to the island. By the time they were on dry land, Celia’s rolled-up yoga pants were soaked to the knee, and the boat was ready to depart.
The shuttle engine stuttered to life. It was loud and then it was gone.
“No way back,” someone whispered, eliciting a giggle from whoever heard them. “Do you think we’ll get to see the miracle tide?”
Celia didn’t turn to see who’d spoken. She didn’t want a way back.
She only wanted a way forward.
The visitors stopped in front of the crowd of people on the shoreline. There were two tarps laid out, one with a pair of shoes in the middle and one that was held down by a duffel bag. A man in wire-rimmed glasses dropped his shoes and backpack next to the ones on the tarps. Celia followed suit. She stayed near the back of her group, watching the other visitors. A few couples, a few people older than her, a knot of very young women wearing matching crystal necklaces, a lost-looking pair of men with identical noses who she guessed were brothers. The old woman who’d been next to her on the boat.
Celia wondered why the others were here. She wondered if all of them were broken, too—if all of them had the same ache in their chests as she did. It felt as though someone had used a corkscrew to drill a slow hole in her breastbone. The hole never went away. The temptation to jam her finger into it and touch her own beating heart was with her every second of every day.
This will work, she reminded herself. This will fix it. This will fix me.
William clapped his hands once, sharply, looking over the visitors with an appraising eye. “So,” he said. “You’re here as our guests. What you might not realize is that you’re the only new faces we’ll see for the entire year. This festival—the Salt Festival,” he added with a gesture toward the drooping banner, “is the one time each year that we welcome visitors. The other eleven months, nobody comes or goes without special permission.”
Celia took a deep breath in through her nose, let it out through her mouth. She focused on gratitude for the opportunity this festival represented.
“While you’re here,” he continued, “you’ll be living by the guidelines of our intentional community.” One of the women in the crystal necklaces raised her hand. He ignored her. “I know you don’t know the rules yet, don’t worry about that. We’ll help you. Each of you will be assigned a buddy to help you learn the ropes. Your buddy will also answer any questions you might have.” With this, he aimed a pointed look at the woman who had her arm in the air, staring her down until she lowered it.
Then he held a hand out, and a woman from the island stepped forward to hand him a clipboard. She was half a head taller than William. A threadbare linen shirt, unbuttoned to the middle of her sternum, hung loose across her tentpole frame. She was pale, as if she didn’t spend much time in the sun, but her nose and chest bore a stark scattering of dark freckles. Soft, bruise like shadows drifted under her eyes and kissed the tops of her cheekbones. As Celia watched, the woman pushed her wild thicket of dark hair away from her face with one sweep of her long, slender fingers. She scanned the crowd and she must have seen something that amused her, because her wide, full mouth twitched like she was holding in a laugh.
William was still talking. Celia tore her eyes away from the woman, who she figured must be some kind of assistant to him. She told herself that she wouldn’t get distracted while she was here. She reminded herself that she needed to focus.
“These assignments are not negotiable. You and your buddy will stick together at all times. Is that understood?”
The visitors all nodded their agreement. Celia curled her toes in the dust. She had expected something of a charm offensive, but William was charmless, bordering on rude. It was nice, in a way—he wasn’t meeting her pain with too much enthusiasm, too much kindness.
He started reading names aloud from the clipboard. Celia wondered if he’d split the couples or let them stay together, but she didn’t get a chance to see, because while he was still assigning the crystal girls to their chaperones, a hand landed on her shoulder. She turned to see the tall woman who had handed William his clipboard.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Sorry to distract you from this part, I know it’s sooo interesting. I just need to grab a couple of things from you real quick.”
She glanced down into the fraying basket in the woman’s hands. It had several cell phones and wallets in it. She spotted a few wedding rings, too, and an expensive-looking compact with a faded monogram on the lid. There were several purses slung over the woman’s shoulder, too. “Um. That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll hang on to mine.”
“Nah, you don’t want to do that,” the woman said agreeably. Up close, Celia could see that the freckles extended onto her arms, too. “It’s no big deal, we’ll just keep your stuff in the office during the festival. William has a safe in there. It’s all normal, just your phone, wallet, keys, and any mirrors or photographs you might’ve brought with you.” She gave the basket a little shake. “You can also just give me your whole bag if it’s easier.”
“What if I say no?”
The woman gestured to the scuffed-up boat in the shadowy patch where the tree line crept down close to the water. “You can go back if you want. It’ll be a pain in the ass, but I’ll take you. But I don’t think you want that, do you? There’s something… here,” she said, lifting a hand and reaching out to touch Celia lightly on the temple. “Right around your eyes. I can see it. You belong here.”
Something inside Celia surged forward at those words. Yes, it cried from inside her, yes, you can see it, please take it away. She shoved the feeling aside. “Fine,” she said, “but if I don’t get my things back at the end of the festival, I’ll—”
“Oh, you should sue us,” the woman finished for Celia, easing the purse strap off her shoulder. “For every penny we’re worth.”
“Celia?” William called. She looked up and realized she was the only person without a partner. William glanced at the woman with the basket and gave a nod. “I see you’ve already met your buddy for the week. You’ll be spending your days with Easy.”
“Nice to meet you, buddy,” Easy said with a wink. “Want to come with me to drop this stuff off at the office?”
“Don’t I need to stay and hear the rest of the orientation?”
“What orientation? Here.” Easy handed Celia the basket. “Let’s make like eggs and scramble.”
Celia was on the verge of objecting until she realized that the other visitors were dispersing, following their assigned chaperones into the narrow gap in the tree line under the banner. The rest of the crowd dissolved like a spoonful of sugar in water, gone before she could think to look more closely at them. She hadn’t seen any faces she recognized. “Wait, where is everyone going?”
“They’re going where they go,” Easy said. “Let’s—”
William strode up to them. “Waiting for something? I doubt you two have time to spend standing here staring at each other. We’ve got an hour or so of daylight left. I suggest you use it well.”
“Of course,” Easy said. “I was just about to take her to the office to drop some things off.”
“The office is off-limits to visitors.” William looked Celia up and down. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“What a question.” The temperature of Easy’s voice dropped by a few degrees.
“I’m just asking,” William replied. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, and Celia wondered if she’d misunderstood who was in charge here at Kindred Cove.
Easy flashed William a grin. “Ah, William. You’re such a worrywart. She gave me her word that she won’t tell anyone else what she sees in there. Isn’t that right, Celia?”
Celia looked at Easy, startled, only to catch a fleeting wink. “Um. Yes,” she said. “Yes, you have my word.”
Easy dropped a hand onto William’s shoulder. “You see? I’ve got a good feeling about this one. We can trust her.”
Celia glanced at William before she could catch herself. She wanted to see if he had a good feeling about her too. If he had any feeling about her at all.
When she glanced at William, she felt panic flip inside her stomach. It was the same panic she’d felt back when her pregnancy loss support group read The Lonely City together. During the second to last meeting she attended—the meeting where she said goodbye to Adelaide—they’d discussed a passage:
I felt like I was in danger of vanishing, though at the same time the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often wished I could find a way of losing myself altogether, perhaps for a few months, until the intensity diminished. If I could have put what I was feeling into words, the words would have been an infant’s wail: I don’t want to be alone. I want someone to want me. I’m lonely. I’m scared. I need to be loved, to be touched, to be held.
Celia had read those final words to herself over and over again.
I’m lonely. I’m scared. I need to be loved, to be touched, to be held.
She’d felt rising terror at the words, but she’d been unable to look away from them.
Unable to look away, because for as long as she could remember, Celia had felt there was a voice inside her screaming help me, and that her duty to the world was to hold her hand hard over the small screaming mouth so no one would ever have to hear it. And rising terror, because reading that passage made her feel certain that she’d failed to smother the scream tightly enough.
The knowing tilt of William’s head made it seem as if he could hear it. It also made Celia think William might know how to silence that scream for good.
“You can trust me,” Celia said. William nodded. Celia took the nod and tucked it into the hole in her breastbone. The scream was still there, but it was muffled just a little.
She could already feel herself getting better.
Celia followed Easy into the shadow of the trees that covered the tiny island of Kindred Cove. She could feel William’s eyes on the small of her back as they walked. It took all her willpower to keep from looking back.
“What about our bags? Do we go back for those?”
“You won’t need them, we have everything ready for you. But they’ll get delivered just in case.”
“Delivered? To where?”
Easy didn’t answer. She was already well-ahead on the path. She moved with a slow, loping grace, her long legs devouring the road, and Celia couldn’t keep up without jogging. Easy didn’t look back to see if Celia was following her, just kept striding up the curving dirt road, her arms swinging loose at her sides, the collection of purses slapping rhythmically against her hip.
“Hey, can you wait a second?” Celia called, walking as fast as she could without breaking into a jog. “I need to—ow, fuck.” She grimaced as the ball of her foot landed on a small sharp stone. “I need to go back and grab my shoes.”
“Nope,” Easy answered, not slowing down. “We don’t do that here.”
“Don’t do what?” Celia slowed once they were side-by-side, although not by much.
“Shoes.” She reached out a steadying hand as Celia stumbled over another rock.
Celia glanced down at Easy’s feet. No shoes. She thought back to the crowd, trying to remember if any of the residents of the island had been wearing shoes—but she’d mostly been staring at their faces, trying to spot Adelaide. She remembered William and Caleb walking confidently into the water, not pausing, not slipping off sandals or sneakers.
“Wearing those things separates you from the ground beneath you,” Easy continued. “They’re an artificial means of preventing yourself from having a real experience. How many times have you really let your skin come into contact with the earth?”
“Lots of times,” Celia answered immediately. “I garden. I touch dirt all the time.”
Easy’s laugh was surprisingly loud. A few birds startled out of a nearby hickory at the sudden sound. “That doesn’t count. You control your garden, right? You’re the one who put all the dirt there, all the plants.” She snapped a stalk off of a tall fennel plant by the side of the road, stuck it between her molars and talked around it like she was chewing on a cigar. “I bet you have a little stone path that cuts through it. I bet you treat your garden like a big potted plant that just happens to go outside. Look out,” she added suddenly, pointing into the shadows of the trees ahead. “Tom is going to try to get your ankles. He’s just playing, but his claws don’t always know that.”
Celia gave the patch of shadows a wide berth. A pair of wide yellow eyes glinted out at her as she passed. “Where are all the kids?” she asked, squinting to try to see more of what she hopes is just a cat. The light was shining low through the trees, sending a cascade of dappled golden light across the path, and squinting didn’t do her much good.
“What?”
“The children. I saw them down at the shore, but then they just—”
“Right.” Easy sounded somewhere between confused and annoyed. “We don’t invite them to spend a lot of time with visitors. It would disrupt their routine. Structure is important for a child’s growth and development. Don’t you agree? Well—I suppose you might not understand that,” she added lightly, “since you’re not a parent.”
Celia reminded herself that Easy wouldn’t know how much it hurt—wouldn’t know about the wound she’d poked a questing finger into with her thoughtless words. It’s not her fault, Celia chastised herself. It’s no one’s fault but your own. “Of course. Structure, routine. You grew up here, right? You’re not one of the Salt Festival visitors that stayed?”
“What do you mean? Salt Festival visitors don’t stay.”
Celia paused. “I heard that at sometimes the visitors end up deciding to live here.”
“Maybe you heard wrong.”
Easy’s tone was cool enough to make Celia drop it. “Well, anyway. You grew up here, so you must have experienced the same structure the kids get now. Continuity is—”
“It was different back then. We’ve developed a stronger rhythm for the children in the past few years.”
Celia could feel Easy closing off. It made her feel a hot flash of panic. “Were you here when the mines collapsed?”
“Course I was here. Worst day of my life,” Easy said.
“Oh? Did anyone—I mean, did you lose someone?” Celia bit her lip. She could hear the hunger in her own voice. She wanted Easy to talk about death. To talk about how much she still ached, how open and weeping the old wound might be. Then maybe she could introduce her pain to Easy’s pain, like forcing two snappish dogs to socialize, and Easy would feel understood, and then she’d stay open and welcoming. It was wrong to want someone else’s pain this much, Celia knew it was wrong, but that didn’t mean she could stop herself.
“Oh, Celia. You have so much to learn here,” Easy said, her voice loose with disappointment. “No one is ever lost.”
Excerpted from Make Me Better, copyright © 2026 by Sarah Gailey.
The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Make Me Better</i> by Sarah Gailey appeared first on Reactor.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
