“I’m not tired.” Even as I said it, my eyes were becoming heavy.
“I’ll tell my mom you’re in here and she’ll make you go home—”
I plopped down on the ground, head on the pillow and legs stretched out underneath the blanket. “I’m asleep.”
“Okay,” he whispered, lying down on the edge of the bed so I could still see his face.
But I didn’t want to close my eyes because I was afraid if I did, I’d see his swollen face again. That scared me.
“Myles?”
“What?”
“Can I hold your hand?”
He didn’t argue or ask me why I needed it, he just lowered his hand.
That was us. It’s how we were.
He’d follow me around, doing everything I asked him to. He didn’t care that I was weird. It didn’t matter how silly my ideas were. He was at my side.
Until he wasn’t.
My mom left when I was thirteen, and that was the same year Myles stopped talking to me because I was the reason Duke died.
We melted into strangers who didn’t speak, but that’s what I wanted. It’s what I deserved after what I did to him. His teary eyes burned their way permanently into my mind. I knew there was nothing I could do to make up for it so I let him hate me.
When I started high school, our paths never crossed because he avoided me at every turn, and I didn’t seek him out. Yet, somehow I’d always hear his voice or laugh in the distance, and each time it stabbed my heart. I knew Myles would never be mine again.
That’s what hurt the most.
But after three years he changed. I didn’t know him anymore. He had been kind and gentle. He was the type ofboy who cried the first time he watchedBambiand held my hands in winter in case they were cold.
He was not a killer.
If someone had told me what he’d done, I wouldn’t have believed them. The only reason I believe it happened is because I saw him do it.
I saw him push my sister off the bridge.
2
EMMA
Present Day
April 2nd, 2025
The sun doesn’t shine anymore, or if it does, I’ve missed it somehow. It’s almost been an entire year since Mallory died and every morning is the same. I wake up to my alarm, drag myself out of bed and put on my uniform. I slip on a navy plaid skirt, a white button-down shirt, the iconic Cardale red tie, and my blazer. Then I saunter down the hallway to the stairs.
I pause, staring up at the faded spot on the wall where my mother’s picture used to hang.
It hung right next to the window, letting sunlight kiss my mom’s gorgeous face. In that picture, her smile stretched from one side to the other, so big anyone could see how authentic it was. She had just won her first beauty pageant, and she was so young and happy. So full of life. She had no money or family, but no one would know it from theexpression on her face. As far as anyone knew, with the winning sash across her chest, she had the world.
I’d often wondered what made her so happy because I thought if I could find that secret ingredient, I could make her smile like that again.
“I could’ve been famous,” she’d say, looking up at her portrait. Her longing eyes glazed over as if the thought physically hurt her.
Whenever she stalled above the staircase, Mallory would pull me back, hiding us away in another room as if watching was wrong. Like the moment was a secret we shouldn’t know about.
