That made my hands curl into fists again. Heat rose in my chest.
“You want to talk about feelings?” I snapped, turning on her. “Out here? While we’re starving? You want me to sit down and unpack my trauma for you like we’re at a fucking therapy retreat?”
Her chin lifted. Stubborn. Defensive. The same damn posture she’d had in high school when she’d glare at me like I was dirt under her shoe.
“Yes,” she said. “Actually. I want you to admit you’re scared.”
I laughed, bitter. “I’m not scared.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a lie.”
I stepped closer until we were too close, our breaths tangling.
“I’m not scared,” I repeated, lower.
Her voice dropped too. “Then why do you keep looking over your shoulder like something’s coming?”
I froze.
Because something was coming.
Not a bear. Not a mountain lion. Not even some backwoods stranger with a cabin and a shotgun. Something worse.
My own head.
I forced my face into blankness. “I’m checking our surroundings.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re paranoid.”
I wanted to tell her to shut up. I wanted to tell her she didn’t know anything about me, didn’t get to name what lived inside my bones.
But my mouth didn’t move. Because she was right.
The forest had started doing things. Little things at first. A shadow shaped like a person that vanished when I blinked. A laugh I swore I heard in the wind. A voice that sounded like my father’s, low and taunting, calling me worthless from behind the trees.
At night I dreamed I was back in that house in Pathosbury, the walls sweating with old anger, my father’s boots heavy on the stairs. I’d wake up with my heart trying to break my ribs and my fists raised like I was ready to fight a ghost.
I told myself it was hunger. Lack of sleep. Dehydration.
But there was a darker part of me that wondered if thewilderness wasn’t creating the hallucinations, only revealing what I’d always been.
Amelia exhaled, shaky. “I saw her again.”
My stomach sank. “Who?”
“You know who.”
I stared at her, jaw tight.
Lillian.
Her sister. The one I’d tangled with in the ugliest chapter of my life. The one who’d died and left a crater behind that swallowed Amelia whole.
The one whose name still felt like a blade.
Something hot and violent tore through me. Not at her. At myself. Because I had done that. In a way. I had helped make her sister into a ghost that followed her.
I dragged a hand down my face, smearing dirt and sweat. “It’s hunger. That’s all.”
