When we stop outside my building, he doesn’t get out. He doesn’t even look at me.
“Stay out of trouble, Rowan,” he warns. “You got lucky tonight. My influence only reaches so far.”
“And if I don’t?” I ask.
He turns his head then. His expression is hard. His voice doesn’t soften.
“Then I’ll keep finding you. And one day, I won’t get there in time.”
I open the door.
“Thank you.”
I don’t know what else to say. He doesn’t answer as I walk away.
I dream in fragments.
It never starts at the beginning. It drops me in already moving, breathless, too late to change anything.
The sky is pink in that way that feels safe—cotton-candy soft, smeared with gold at the edges. Evening, not night. Missy says we can walk home because it isn’t far and because daylight hasn’t finished leaving yet. She laughs when I hesitate, points at the cornfields lining the road and tells me they look like they have hair. She says it like it’s ridiculous. I feel like I’m ridiculous for hanging on her every word.
I tell her I’m not scared.
In the dream, I believe it.
We’re holding hands. Her palm is warm, steady. She swings our arms as we walk, humming under her breath. Everything feels ordinary. That’s the cruelest part—how normal it all feels. Like this could be any day. Any moment. Any time or place.
Then the sound comes.
Footsteps.
Crunching. Too heavy. Too close.
Missy’s hand tightens around mine. She tells me not to look. Her voice is still calm, still trying to be big enough for the both of us, but something underneath it shifts. She tells me to keep walking. Faster. She keeps saying,It’s fine, it’s fine,but the words don’t land right. They wobble. They seem far away. They sound like she’s forcing herself to believe in her own lies.
Someone grabs her.
The dream always sharpens there, like the world snaps into focus just to make sure I don’t miss it.
I try to grab her back. I reach for her arm, her jacket, anything—but a hand shoves me hard. I fall. Rocks tear into my leg. Pain blooms bright and sudden, but I don’t cry. I don’t make a sound. I won’t let myself. Missy is screaming and I don’t want her to hear me cry. I don’t want to add to her pain.
I don’t think she hears me anyway.
I see them then. Three men. They’re wrong in that way monsters are—too real and solid. Too big to overcome. I don’t know their names. In the dream, I never do. One wears a hat. One has a jacket with a stripe down the sleeve. One has dirty shoes, mud caked into the seams, dry and flaky.
I don’t remember their faces, but I remember the sound of their laughter.
Missy turns her head just enough to look at me. Her face is pale, terrified—but fierce. She yells at me to run. She says it once. Then again. Then a third time, louder, sharper, in a voice I’ve never heard her use before. It sounds like a roar.
Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.
I don’t want to leave her. Every part of me is screaming to stay, to fight, to do something—anything. But that voice cuts through me. It leaves no room for argument.
So I run.
I run until my chest burns and my throat tears and the world blurs at the edges. I run until the cornfields disappear andhouses appear like mirages. I knock on a door. I think I screamhelpover and over, but I’m not sure. The woman who opens it keeps saying I’m bleeding. She keeps touching my leg, my shoulder, my face. Her voice sounds far away, like it’s underwater.
All I can think is that Missy will catch up. She always catches up.
