“What? Why? What’s happening?”
“Try not to panic. Stay calm and answer the question.”
Notpanic? How? Dad looks fucking see-through. His chin wobbles and hands shake as he digs his fists into his eyes.
How am I supposed to stay calm? This doesn’t seem like a standard question. Especially not when coupled with my father’s reaction and the concern lining the doctor’s forehead.
“December,” I clip, anxiety coloring my voice. “Christmas is just around the corner.”
He clears his throat, his heavy gaze idling between Dad and me. “I’m afraid that’s not correct, Hailey. It’s late August, not December.”
The room tilts dangerously, shifting like I’m on a swaying ship deck. My heart plummets, something cold and wet floodingmy lungs. I clutch the sheets to anchor myself, but it’s not working.
Silence eats into my brain, even though I know the monitors must be going crazy given the hard throb of my pulse.
August? How’s that—
“I... I don’t get it,” I stammer, finding a voice. “August?”
He nods and I blink, incapable of anything else.
My brain’s slow, but I find my balance while staring at his round glasses.
“But... you said I was out for nine days not eight months!”
“I believe you’re experiencing significant memory loss due to the head trauma,” he explains. “It seems you’ve lost almost two years. You’re not eighteen, Hailey. You’re twenty. You’re supposed to start your junior year this week.”
5
Carter
Cleveland is a five-hour drive from Chicago. With two coffee breaks, I arrive at the safe house close to four in the morning.
From the buzzing club to thunderous music blaring inside my car, then the dead stillness and silence of the early morning.
The sky’s black, the stars few and far between, but it won’t stay like this long.
I wrench my car door open, my muscles protesting the long drive that seized me in the driver’s position. Whipping myself left and right, I groan at the tension quickly ebbing away, accompanied by a satisfying pop in my lower back.
Robbed of the sensory distractions my alternative rock playlist offered, anxiety once again rears its ugly head, bringing my dark thoughts back. My heart kicks up, drumming a jittery rhythm against my ribs, an airless, mounting sense of impending doom filling my lungs.
Shaking the last of the stiffness off my limbs, I crack my neck for good measure, staring at the run-of-the-mill suburban home my father calls a safe house.
The rickety nineteen-sixties structure bears enough wear and tear to blend into the background. Perfectly unremarkable, like the others lining both sides of the scarcely lit street. Most lamps are bent, broken, or missing. The remaining few cast a dim glow over the littered streets.
I don’t take a single step forward, staring at the dark, newspaper-covered windows. Rhett must be inside already, waiting to break the news. Probably growing impatient since he surely heard my car pull up.
He knows I’m here and he knows I’m stalling.
Let him wait. I need this moment because once I enter that fucking house, everything will change. It’s inevitable.
I was summoned here when my grandmother died five years ago. Again, when Rhett’s sick, abusive brother was stabbed to death by his wife. And then when my aunt took her own life last summer, severing the last connection I had to my mother.
I’m standing my ground, pretending that nothing’s wrong for as long as possible. Unfortunately, it’s not long enough.
The front door cracks open after less than half a minute. Apollo, Rhett’s most trusted man, exits the house, offering me a tight nod, his face unreadable.
He’s avoiding eye contact.
