I squeezed my eyes shut, that old feeling of panic and despair blowing up inside me, eating away at what was real and rational.

The old bullet wound in my chest burned, and I saw the flicker of a gun pointed at me in the darkness behind my closed eyelids.

The last night of the six months I’d been kidnapped had ended in a forest just like this.

A choked sound escaped my closing throat. Tears blurred my vision.

The scar running along my left side pulsed, and I acutely remembered the pain that had taken hold when the knife had cut my flesh.

Terror squeezed my windpipe.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

What if they were here again? What if they were here to finish the job?

Hands reached for me, fingers digging into my shoulders, and I screamed.

I screamed and screamed and screamed.

“Lissy!”

I was sobbing now, sobbing and shaking, and every part of my body ached.

I wanted to go home. I wanted my mom.

“Elizabeth!” Chloe shook me.

On an inhale, I looked up. Everyone from the bonfire had gathered around. Evan was crouched in front of me, his hands gripping my wrists. Chloe was to my left.

“What happened?” Evan asked.

I tried so hard to stop the tears running down my face, but couldn’t.

“Take me home,” I said, my voice racked with sobs. “Please.”

He nodded and helped me to my feet. As he led me away, I felt their eyes on me, watching. When I was gone, they’d whisper, and theorize, and joke about the crazy girl.

Because I was the crazy girl.

9

ELIZABETH

I CALLED IN SICK THE NEXT DAY. Merv sounded so unsurprised, so quiet and sympathetic, that I wondered if Evan or Chloe had told him what happened. Merv even told me to take the next day off, and the next if I needed it.

Retreating to my bedroom, the place that had become my safe spot since moving in with Aggie, sounded like the best idea ever. But hiding wouldn’t change anything, and my therapist had told me the more I was alone with my thoughts, the worse they’d become.

So I assured Merv I’d return the next day, and hoped no one even mentioned what had happened. Most of all Evan.

A knock sounded on my bedroom door. I called out, “Come in,” but didn’t bother moving from the spot I’d been glued to since waking.

There was probably a permanent indentation where I’d been lying in my bed, staring at the cobalt bottles lined up on my shelf, wanting Gabriel’s bottle so badly it hurt. It wasn’t that I found comfort in him. Rather, that night in the woods had haunted me so much in the past twenty-four hours that I wanted to relive it, acutely, so I could get it all over at once. Experience the flashback and be done with it.

Aggie pushed my door open and shuffled in, a tray in her hands. “Hey, sweetie,” she said. She came over to the bed and eased down onto the edge. “I brought you some nourishment.”

I propped myself on an elbow and surveyed the tray. Steam rose from a bowl of potato soup. Crackers lay in a ramekin next to it. There was also a package of chocolates and a bottle of water.

“Did you just make the soup?” I asked. As far as I knew, we were out of frozen portions of her homemade soup. She made the best potato soup I’d ever tasted, and she always made it for me when I was sick or feeling low.

“I had a bag of potatoes I was saving for pot roast,” she explained, “but I figured they were better used for today.” She smiled, and the deep wrinkles around her eyes grew deeper still.

I sat upright and Aggie set the tray over my lap. “Thanks for this.”

She patted my leg. “Don’t mention it. How are you feeling?”

I’d told her briefly what had happened last night, since I’d come home earlier than she’d expected, and not only that, but I’d arrived shaken and pale. She knew right away something had gone wrong.

“I’m… embarrassed.”

“If they are your real friends, they’ll understand.”

“Not everyone wants to deal with a crazy person.”

She tilted her head to give me a look over the frames of her glasses. “You’re not crazy, dear.”

Though I hadn’t felt much like eating at all today, now that the soup was in front of me, my stomach growled. I dug right in.

“I’ll let you enjoy that in peace,” Aggie said as she slowly rose from the bed, her knees cracking when she finally made it upright. “Let me know if you need anything else, hmm?”

“I will.”

She nodded and ambled off, closing the door behind her.

I ate the soup in record time and got out of bed only to set the tray aside. I stared at the bottles again, the glass glowing in the sunlight that poured through my parted curtains.

GABRIEL.

I read his label over and over until his name was nothing but a string of consonants and vowels, until it didn’t even sound like a name anymore.

He hadn’t looked like a Gabriel. In fact, when I’d asked him what his name was, when he was rushing me to the ER, he’d paused before answering, as if he wasn’t sure. Or maybe he didn’t want to tell me.

GABRIEL.

I hadn’t seen him at all while I was held captive. The first time I saw him was the day I escaped, the day some girl opened my cell door and ushered me out, her face hidden in the shadows cast by a black hood.

“Go,” the girl had said, so I went. Though I’d been released from my room countless times before then, I knew instantly that this time was different. Usually I was flanked by two men. Usually I was led, stumbling, to a lab. Usually the place where I was held was silent save for the distant humming and thrumming of machines and vents.