He’s nodding, and he’s staring at me like he’s seen something horrible and wonderful all at once. “How did you know I was going to—”

“Doesn’t matter. I do know, and you better promise me that you won’t do it.” I squeeze his hand harder. “They’ll catch him, and I want you to promise that you’re going to be sitting in the courtroom with me. For me and for Amy. You have to be there at my side for her. I need you to be here. We’ll be friends again, but you can’t . . . you may not try to kill yourself.”

He swallows. “The detective asked questions that made it seem like she thinks that if it wasn’t me doing it maybe it was my fault. If you both got hurt because of—”

“They have to look at every possibility.” I wish there were reassuring things I knew to say, but there aren’t words that make this any better. I’m not even sure I can tell him that it’s fairly obvious that the killings are connected to me. All I can think to say is: “They’ll figure it out, though, and they’ll catch him. You promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”

“I promise,” he says.

For a moment, I stare at him, trying to see if he’s lying. I’m not comforted by the fact that he apparently lied to me successfully for almost a year, but I can’t do anything else right now. I add, “We’re friends, Robert. That’s what you asked me to be. I’m willing to do it, but friends are honest, okay?”

He nods, and we sit quietly for a few seconds. Then he says, “Thank you. I don’t know how you knew I was . . . but thank you.”

“You gave me your word,” I remind him. “Don’t break it this time. Swear it. You call me or come here or something if you need to, but if you kill yourself . . . I won’t forgive you.”

“I swear I won’t do it,” he says. He leans closer and kisses my cheek, and I don’t see his death. I wouldn’t this time though: I still have his hand held tightly in mine.

I let go, and he stands and walks away. Any doubts I still had about my ability are gone. Robert confirmed that he was suicidal after I saw him in my vision. I don’t know why or how I can do this; I don’t know if it’ll fade as I finish healing. All I know for sure is that I have a way to help save my friends. I just need to make sense of it.

I think I stopped Robert’s death. Now, though, I need to figure out how to save Piper. Even though I can’t see faces in the visions, I can see enough details to make a difference. I need to use them to figure out who the killer is—and I need to do it now.

DAY 14: “THE PROOF”

Eva

I LOOK AROUND THE room for Nate. Not surprisingly, he’s watching me. All it takes to beckon Nate over is a slight incline of my head. Once he’s at my side, I share my new idea: “I need you to stop hovering. It makes some of them nervous. Help me find excuses to have them touch me. Tell people to check on me to see if I need help or to come over and hold my hand to let me know that they’re not freaked out by my slasher-chic look.”

“Don’t say shit like that.” He brushes my hair back from where it had fallen on my cheek, exposing the worst of my scars in the process. “If any of them are making you feel like—”

“It’s not them,” I interrupt. “I know what I look like.”

Quietly, Nate says, “Obviously, you don’t. You’re the most beautiful girl in the room.”

Part of me wants to yell at him; the rest of me wants to kiss him until he admits that he’s an idiot for thinking we can’t date. I can’t do either right now, so I settle on telling him, “This is that boundary thing I was talking about. You can’t say things like that and then push me away.”

He stares at me, but instead of arguing, he nods. “Piper says she’ll stay until everyone else goes home. I tried to talk to her—not about that, but just talk. We were . . . civil.”

“Thank you.” I glance around the room, noticing more than a few gazes on us. I don’t want to say anything that can be overheard. “I saw her.”

“With him?”

I nod. Tears threaten to fill my eyes. The visions have been awful from the beginning, but now that I know without a doubt that they are real, they seem more horrific. The murderer will kill Piper. I don’t see any details I can ask her to change to try to prevent it—other than the fact that she was at home.

“We’ll figure it out,” Nate promises.

He waits until I give him a small smile and a nod, and then he calls out, “Hey, Madison, hold up a sec.”

Once he walks away, I fix a smile on my face and look around the room. Bailey sees me and comes to join me on the sofa. A few minutes later, I discover that she’ll die of breast cancer decades from now. It’s not a subject I can figure out how to mention casually. “Never too young for self-exams?” or “Did you know that one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer?” aren’t sentences that fit neatly into a conversation about whether lowlights would be too daring for her personal style. I like Bailey, but she’s determined to only talk about surface subjects right now. I think it’s her way of avoiding the things we don’t want to think about: classmates’ murders, my giant facial scars, and how terrifying it is that our friends are dying.

The next hour is a mix of conversations and deaths. I discover that Laurel dies of something heart related, and Grayson dies in a car. I’m not sure if that means he’s a potential victim or not. Micki died in a related car crash, but drunk driving is a definite possibility with Grayson. He moved away too quickly for me to see much. I try a second time to get back to his death, but just when I finally convince him to rub a knot in my shoulder, Piper swats him away. She’s watching me curiously. I’m tempted to point out that grief and TBIs both make people act out of character; instead my attention drifts to Nate, who is talking to Madison again. It reminds me of parties when I watched him flirt with girl after girl. This time, though, Piper isn’t gossiping at my side.