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“Bingo,” I whispered and reached for the colorful cereal box of Chocos under my bed. It was the last one. That fact alone triggered a slight sense of despair in me.

The only thing that could distract me was the cell phone on my completely cluttered desk. I stared at it and laughed bitterly.

Three months ago, Mia's father had died. According to the news, it was murder.

So many times, I had tried to reach her, but she still wasn't answering her phone.

I had wanted to go to the funeral because Mr. Bardot had always been good to me, the father of my best friend, but I couldn't even make it to the supermarket. Besides, the Copelands had made the funeral private, for whatever reason.

“This damn town,” I cursed quietly, grabbed my phone, and trudged back to Ezra’s room.

I was glad I hadn’t gone to the winter ball, because it would have torn me apart inside, even if Mia might have been there.

My fingers tightened around my phone and I unlocked it to open the anonymous chat where I had been receiving hateful messages for weeks from someone who definitely didn't want to see me on campus anymore. These messages had started two weeks after my brother's death.

God, you look terrible, Madelin. Can you even look in the mirror anymore?

Stay away from campus. Not even your ex can stand to see you. You're an annoying ghost from the past to the people who finally want to be done with you.

Look where your fooling around with the Copelands got you. It was obvious that sooner or later they would get back at you. Ezra is dead because of your stupidity. What a shame... He was such a sweet man. One who knew his place.

This message had stayed with me the longest. Nothing about it made sense, except that this person accused the Copelands of having something to do with my brother's death.

At some point, I no longer had had the strength to deal with these messages. I still wondered where I had ever found that strength in the first place.

The chat continued, and by now I felt nothing when I read these texts. Only in those moments when I broke down did they intrude into my head, along with all the words of Vivienna, Grace, Nash, Amber, and those people from my past that I was trying to forget.

Just the sight of you stinks. Where did you get that awful gray hoodie? From one of the trash cans behind Lola's Diner?

It's pathetic to see you like this. How you drag yourself to Vanderwood every day, even though you know you don't belong here. Already failed a grade once? How do you think you'll ever make it through university?

Don't even think about showing up at the winter ball. No one will miss you there anyway.

For a long time, I had believed that Vivienna was behind it, but every time I knelt in front of the bathroom mirror, my gaze lingered on the small anatomical heart tattoo that we had both secretly had done at fifteen with fake IDs. Until the Halloween party, this memory had still been able to bring a smile to my lips.

It was sobering to realize that the medication I had long mistaken for a pacemaker for my inner light source was actually a filter of my reality. Rose-colored glasses through which even the little heart diagonally below my left breast had given me false hope.

I wondered if she had had hers removed.

Taking a deep breath, I closed the chat history, put my phone down, and, as I always did, toyed with the idea of throwing it out the window. What did I need it for anymore? There was no one left waiting for a message from me.

Bayla and Larissa did what they did out of pity, but at some point, they too would realize what a shambles they were trying to piece back together. That somewhere in the process, even the shards had been so badly damaged that there was no hope of putting the pieces back in their original place.

They would cut themselves on my shards. And enough people had already suffered or even lost their lives because of me.

And so, somehow, almost four months had passed.

Christmas and New Year's Eve had been the hardest. Cold, dark days when I hadn't noticed much of my surroundings thanks to Ezra's sleeping pills. At some point, I had thrown them out the window, and now they were rotting in the Adams' garden like I was rotting in this house.

I didn't want to become dependent, even though the temptation was great.

Ezra's room was the only tidy place, if you ignored the pinboard and the unwashed bedding. Here I could concentrate, at least a little.

I walked through the cool room to the laptop he had always taken with him to university.

With growing exhaustion, I stared at the seventy open tabs.

My printer cartridge was empty, but, as with shopping, I lacked the energy to get a new one. I didn't even know how much money was left in Ezra's bank account. Maybe I didn't want to know, didn't want another reality to come crashing down on me mercilessly.