"You were what, Jenna?"

"I was listening."

"To what, darling? What?" Mother asks.

"To Kara and Locke. They're calling me. I heard their voices."

Father brushes my hair from my face and touches my cheek. "That's impossible, Angel. You were only dreaming. That's all."

I don't argue. There would be no point. But I didn't dream the voices. I heard them. Fresh and now. Somehow, someway, they found me. They need me.

But I need them, too.

In the flash between darkness and light, between dreamworld and reality, I cross a boundary. I remember the accident.

The Accident

Every detail. Sharp, like claws.

It wasn't the Bio Gel, the searching neurochips, or any of the shortcomings of my new self. It was me all along. The grieving me. The shocked me. The in-denial me. But now, Kara and Locke are forcing me to remember.

I sit in the dark, a sliver of light from the hallway slashed across my bed. I listen to the faint wheeze of air entering and leaving my chest. Breathing. A new kind of breathing. Because of that night.

Keys flying in the air.

My fingers outstretched.

My fingers were throwing the keys. Not catching them.

"I can't drive, Locke," I told him.

"You're the only one with a car," he complained.

"If you don't drive, Jenna, then we don't go," Kara added. "We need you!"

"I'm not driving without a license. Besides, my voice commands aren't even programmed into the car yet. I couldn't start it anyway."

"Kara could drive," Locke says. "And starting it's not a problem. There's an override. You must have a code or keys around here somewhere."

The kitchen drawer. Where Claire keeps all the extra keys.

I could have pretended I didn't know where they were.

I could have distracted them.

But I didn't.

I opened the drawer and pulled them out.

"Yes!" Locke says and snatches the keys from my hand. He throws them to Kara. They wait for my response. I hesitate. Wondering. Thinking. But not for too long. I nod.

So we went. Kara drove.

I gave her the keys.

I let her drive my car that even I wasn't supposed to drive yet.

Mother and Father were away for the night. Maybe I was eager for a fall, the thing I feared most. I had been easing toward it, testing the water, not sure what I wanted, except not to be everything I knew I wasn't.

It was a party. A stupid one. We were bored. Uninvited. No one knew us. We didn't know any of them. It was crowded. Tight circles of strangers were drinking and smoking, oblivious to us. Crashing the party was a thrill that lasted five minutes. We were about to leave. But then the unexpected happened. A fight broke out. We didn't know what might happen next. We were out of our neighborhood, out of our league. We were scared and we ran. I had the keys in my purse. Locke and I were on one side of the car. Kara on the other. "Hurry, Jenna! Hurry!" It was dark. I frantically searched the black cavern of my purse for the keys. When I found them, I threw them to Kara, my fingers outstretched, trying to be sure of my aim.

There was yelling. Shouts. We were out of our element. Panicked. We were only rule followers pretending to be renegades. Other cars screeched away.

"Go, Kara!" Locke yelled from the back seat.

She did.

When we made it to the highway, the adrenaline that streaked through us subsided and our fear was replaced with laughter. I hadn't noticed that Kara's foot was still firmly on the accelerator. None of us did. The curve came up so fast. She braked, but it was too late. The car spun, hit the graveled shoulder. There were last-minute shouts.

"Turn!"

"Kara!"

"Stop!"

Kara was crying and screaming, desperately turning the steering wheel. We were tossed about, none of us bothering with seat restraints in our rush to leave the party. The car skidded, then rolled when the shoulder turned to cliff, a blurred, chopped nightmare where sound and light cut through us. I was screaming, flying. Tumbling. Glass sprayed like a thousand knives, and the world had no up or down. The fear was so complete it webbed together our screams and motion. Blinding white heat and light. Flying free and the sickening thud of my skull on soil. Or was it Kara I heard, landing next to me? And then the sudden sharp contrast of quiet sounds, like tinkling crystal. Dripping. Hissing. A drawn-out crackle. And soft moans that seemed to hover in the air above me. And finally just blackness.

I never saw Kara and Locke again.

I heard them. For a few seconds I heard their breaths, their sighs, their screams. I heard them. Like I do now.

And for all those months, in the dark place where I waited to be reborn, not knowing if I would ever see light again, between my own voiceless cries and pleading, those were the sounds I heard over and over again, the hellish sounds of Kara and Locke dying.

Self-preservation

They are my witnesses. They alone know that I didn't drive.

Someday, sometime, someone will come for me. And I will have Kara and Locke to help me. Save me.

I can keep them.

The entitled Jenna.

How bad could it be to exist in a box forever?

The Last Disc

The cut-glass panes of the living room cabinet prism my reflection into a dozen distorted pieces. I search those pieces, the borrowed blues, reds, and violets, blended with glimmering flesh. I look for a shine, a difference. But I see nothing that says I am different from Dane.

Versions of me and my friends are trapped where I never want to go again. And I won't help them. Blues. Reds. Violets. Flesh. Fragments. Almost human. The same reflection Dane might have.