Her eyes grow wild. I can tell it’s taking everything for her to keep this calm facade. I wonder if she’s seething inside, given what she knows about me and Bradley.
“Come!”
It’s another fantasy, another story she’s writing, and she really believes it. What if the story changes, and I’m the villain again? What if she decides that everything is my fault?
“Bradley’s not the one who locked me away. He didn’t poison me. He didn’t use my photo for target practice.”
We’re on the bridge. There’s a wild look in her eyes. The smoke burns in my chest and makes my eyes water. The fire must be coming this way. Bradley, where are you? I can barely hear her above the roar of the wind and the river. I step backwards and cry out as I lose my footing on a loose plank. I land on my side.
When I look up, Grace is looming over me. She’s holding out her hand, but I don’t take it. I have to be ready to fight back.
Behind us, the waterwall. Below, the rocks.
“You need to trust me.”
Above, the sky itself is on fire.
“Get away from me!”
“You have to understand. It’s not real, Brie!”
I scramble backwards, frantically unzipping my pack.
“What do you think was going to happen?” she yells. I search desperately for Mom’s knife. Where is it? “Do you think he’ll marry you? Do you think he’ll ever be faithful? Don’t be such a stupid little girl!”
I wrap my fingers around the knife and take it from the pack. Her eyes widen when she sees it, but she doesn’t move away. She’s looming over me. As I stand, she lunges towards me, faster than I expected. I lash out and slice her across the shoulder, before my grip loosens, and the knife falls over the edge.
I cry out in anguish—but then I see Bradley on the other side of the bridge. He’s holding a bright white rock, a little smaller than a basketball.
“Don’t be naive, Brie!” she yells out, still holding me.
I pull free. Bradley is closer now, only a few feet away. I want to say something, but I feel like I’m watching a movie and there’s nothing I can do to change what’s about to happen. What has to happen. What always had to happen.
“He’s a monster! He’s a?—”
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Because while she speaks, Bradley raises the rock and slams it against the side of her head, and she falls over the fence, down onto the rocks below.
And I can hear nothing, not the roar of the water or the wind or the words coming from Bradley, nothing but screaming.
But it’s not her. She’s quiet now.
It’s me.
PART 2
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
BRIE
I’m screaming and crying as I scramble to my feet and walk backwards, away from Bradley and away from the body of Grace, who is either lying on the rocks or has been swept out into the river?—
“Brie!”
—Grace, who is dead now, and Bradley is coming towards me, and I stumble and fall over again, and now he’s beside me, Bradley, the man I love, Bradley, the murderer?—
“Brie!”
—his hands are on my shoulders, and I shake him off because I think they must be covered in blood, but he won’t let me push him away, he hugs me, even as I sob, even as I resist?—
