The stairs are narrow and steep, hidden behind a warped door. I climb until my legs shake, until the fog thins and light spills in from above.
I burst through the attic door and collapse on the floor. Too exhausted to move.
A cacophony of cheers and groans greets me.
“AnotherOmega!”
“Scout?”
“Caliphylla’s sake! Is she bleeding?”
“She looks hurt…”
“Someone call the judge! She’s cut!”
That’s about the last thing I hear as everything fades from black and white…to nothing.
“It’s not fine,”Mom says. Her hands are steady. Her mouth is not.
She cleans my cuts with clinical precision, then presses a bandage down harder than necessary. I don’t complain. Just sip in deeper through the oxygen mask to clean out the smoke from my lungs.
“We can’ttell youwhat happens in the games, and you know that.” I swallow. “But Ellis is dead.”
The words don’t feel real yet. They sit in my chest like a foreign object, sharp and unmoving.
Olivia Cardell,Omega’spresident, brought me to the hospital, but all I wanted was my mom. The emergency room doctor called her, and here I sit. In her clinic in the middle of the night—er, morning—getting treated for a deep laceration from the glass.
“Where’s Olivia? Did she leave already?” my mom asks.
Olivia’s family and ours are close. So close that Olivia is like my mom’s other daughter. We used to be closer when we were kids, but she was older. And not as nerdy as me. Always into popular stuff at school, while I enjoyed lone activities at home.
“Yeah, she went to break the news to Ellis’s parents.” Just the thought makes me sob.
Mom exhales brokenly and pulls me closer to her in a tight squeeze. Both of us tiny and shaking. And for the first time since the attic, I let myself grieve.
“I hate it to say this, but I’m so glad it wasn’t you.” Mom doesn’t cry. But when I look at her, she has a line of tears along her lower lids.
Fragments replay when I close my eyes. Fog. Screams. A blade rising and falling.
The man straddling Ellis. Ripping out part of her organs… Wait. Did he? Was that what happened, or am I making things up already?
That can happen with trauma. Especially in those who develop post-traumatic stress disorder.
I should try to remember every detail accurately. Or maybe not at all. I can’t remember what my freshman psychology professor said.
“Red Converse!”
Mom cleans up our mess, tosses her gloves into the can, and raises her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“The man who didn’t help. Who walked away… A man with red Converse saw Ellis getting murdered from a different angle. Maybe he could help identify who did it.”
Andwhy.
“Where have you seen red Converse?”
My stomach drops.
Every Sunday night.
