I can’t breathe.
She tries to groan. Her eyes open, widen—only white cotton. Her hands fly up to claw at the pressure. When that does nothing to relieve it, she thinks about giving up. It’s easier.Something stops her—fear, adrenaline, anger.
Kon.
She reaches behind her head and pulls out the unicorn. Slashes the air with it. Uses everything she has.
She is too little. Too weak.
“Hurry up.” The same voice.
She swings anyway, gasping, groaning, blinking puddles into the fabric over her eyes. She hits something, and it grunts. The pressure builds, firmer, harder, shaking, unyielding. Her arms grow heavy, then weightless.
Then there is no air.
DEAKON
“What do you mean?” the boy asks. The man is hovering over his bed, looking at him with pity and concern.
The boy doesn’t want any of it.
“What do you mean?” the boy repeats. His hand moves without his knowing it, finding the soft sheets below him. He blinks at the lights. Too bright. The man pats his shoulder—a long, firm pat that feels like it could leave a bruise.
The boy can’t remember the last time someone touched him there. Maybe no one ever has. He forces his eyes up to the older man. “Say it again.”
The boy doesn’t understand the words the man has been repeating to him. Or perhaps he refuses to, because that would mean believing them, and believing them would mean they are true. And they cannot be true.
“I’m sorry. She’s gone.”
They said they would find her.
Keep her safe.
They used the word protect.
We will find her.
The boy turns the words over, the ones he heard in the woods. He prefers them. “Liz fell. We did everything we could,” the man says.
What does that mean?
What did they do?
Why didn’t they ask me?
I could have told them.
She gets scared in the dark.
She sometimes falls on steps.
She is allergic to bee stings.
She is very bad at math.
She thinks there is a girl in her class who doesn’t like her. Have they asked that girl?
Why didn’t they ask me?
