I’m not bones and bruises anymore. I’m silk. I’m air.
I’mfine.
This is what dying must feel like. So much easier than living.
Maybe I am dead already. That would explain the muffled, faraway quality of everything—like I’m watching someone else’s life through thick glass smeared with Vaseline. The girl in the pool might be anyone. Some other broken thing. Some other piece of trailer trash who got in over her head at a party full of people who see her as... nothing.
Poor thing, I think.
And then hands grab me. Big, intrusive, ruin-everything hands, hauling me up out of my perfect blue grave.
No. Why? I wasfine.
I try to fight, but it’s like wrestling with concrete.
Then, air hits my wet skin like needles. I scream—at least, I think I do—but it’s drowned under the flood of everything else: the music, the shouting, the splash of water, the smell of chlorine and beer and somebody’s too-sweet perfume.
“Easy there, sweetheart,” a voice says, warm against my ear in a way that makes my skin want to crawl right off my bones. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
The voice is wrong. Wobbly. Like it’s being played backward through an old cassette deck.
I try to focus so I can make the edges of the world follow the rules, but it still all just keeps shifting and stretching. Faces balloon and collapse like reflections in bad carnival mirrors. The patio stones under us heave like they’re alive.
Then I’m lifted and carried away from the pool. Away from the neon glow. Away from the noise.
Maybe this is okay?
Maybe someone finally gives a damn about me?Out of the womb and into my mother’s arms?
I let myself sink into the rhythm of footsteps. The steady bounce almost feels musical. Warm air replaces the night chill, thick and scented with something expensive—candles or soap or cologne.
We stop. I’m lowered onto something soft that molds around me.
A bed, I think.Can I just rest now, Mom? Please? I’m so tired.
“Where am I?” I try to ask. It comes out sounding like I’m chewing my own tongue.
“You’re safe,” the voice says again, closer now, as the mattress dips beside me.
Gravity tilts, rolling me toward the heat of whoever it is. My eyes, half-lidded and traitorous, take in broad shoulders and dark hair. Could be brown. Could be black.
Safe. The word sits wrong in my head. Like a picture hung crooked—fine at first glance, but the more you stare, the more it makes your teeth itch.
Then a hand lands on my knee.
Too hot. Too sure. Creeping upward through the wet denim of my jeans with the confidence of someone who clearly thinks they deserve access to whatever part of my body they want.
No.
The word screams in my skull, but my mouth is still useless.
I try to shove him away. Nothing happens. My muscles ignore me. My body doesn’t even twitch.
Wrong. This is all wrong, oh god!!
Panic hits, sharp and icy under the drug haze. My brain’s slamming the brakes, but the car’s still barreling toward the cliff.
Oh fuck?—