Her lips move: “Tara?”
I flinch back, panic lurching through me.
She bolts for the door, green apron flapping, pushing past a pair of trendy moms with matching strollers. She bursts onto the sidewalk, hair wild in the wind, and yells it out, loud enough for the whole city to hear: “Tara? Oh my god, Tara! Why did you quit without saying anything?”
I’m rooted for half a heartbeat. Then, I turn and run.
I run like my life depends on it. Down the block, past the bakery, around a construction site, ducking low to avoid being seen. I hear her chasing, sneakers slapping the wet concrete, but I lose her after two turns. My lungs are on fire. My heart is a wild animal, clawing to get out of my chest.
I stop in the shelter of a bus stop, hands on my knees, and gasp for air.
The city is a blur. My mind is worse.
Fragments smash through me: Me, screaming into a phone. A car swerving. My hands on the wheel. The phone flying from my grip, the screen shattering in slow-motion. Then darkness, cold and endless, an oblivion so deep I can’t feel my own body.
I gag, double over, and dry-heave into the gutter. Nothing comes out but desperate gasps.
When I stand, I see my reflection in the bus shelter’s glass. I look like a scarecrow, hair plastered to my face, eyes swollen from crying. I don’t look like Tara. I don’t look like Daisy. I look like both, and neither.
I press my palm to the glass, and in that instant, I know what I have to do.
The lake.
I don’t know why, but the answer is so clear it makes me shiver. The water is calling me, has been calling me for days. Maybe if I go there, I’ll find the missing pieces. Maybe I’ll even find myself.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, check the bus schedule taped to the inside of the shelter, and see there’s one headed for Lake Harriet in ten minutes. Fate, or just dumb luck, but I don’t care.
I dig in my pocket for coins, find enough for the ride, and sit on the metal bench, hugging my knees to my chest.
The city keeps spinning. Cars whoosh by, people hurry past, and somewhere back at The Daisy Cafe, the pink-haired girl is probably telling her coworkers about the ghost she just saw.
I wish I could tell her I’m sorry. I wish I could tell her anything.
But I can’t.
Not until I know who I really am.
The bus pulls up, brakes hissing, doors folding open like a pair of wings.
I get on, nod at the driver, and take a window seat at the back. The bus lurches forward, and the city peels away behind me.
I rest my forehead on the cold glass and watch the world slide by.
Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll come back for answers.
But tonight, I’m going to the water.
And I’m not coming out until I find every piece of myself, no matter how ugly or broken they are.
The bus emptiesout at a field of half-melted snow and gravel, and I’m the only passenger left by the time the doors hiss shut. The sky is cloudy but the sun’s trying its best to burn through, making the mist rising off Lake Harriet glow with a kind of weird, holy light. It’s so quiet here, I can hear my own breath scraping in and out, and the crunch of my boots on the frozen ground.
I walk down to the shore, shivering in a thin coat and jeans, and take it all in. The lake is huge and flat, the water black exceptwhere the light hits it, making the surface look like a sheet of aluminum foil. The air smells like wet leaves and rotting wood and something sharp, almost metallic. I can see the dock ahead, the same one from my memory, stretching out like a bony finger.
But that’s not what stops me cold.
It’s the figure at the end of the dock.
Hunter.
