A soft knock on the door jarred me from my thoughts. Nana appeared, her white hair pulled into a low ponytail, and her eyes—so much like my mother’s eyes, and nothing like my own—were gentle behind her reading glasses. “Hey, sweetheart. Come down for dinner.”

I forced an apologetic smile. “I’m not hungry.”

She peered over her glasses at me and rested a hand on her hip. “That wasn’t a request. I want you downstairs in two minutes.”

Nana’s enormous dark gray cat, Bluebelle, waltzed through the door and rubbed his wide belly against my leg. Animals always seemed to love me, but Bluebelle couldn’t decide between purring and stretching his ugly, smushed face into a ferocious hiss. I reached down to pet him, but he clawed at me and tried to bite off my fingers. Bluebelle was an asshole.

“Bluebelle,” Nana called. “Come on, you old grouch. Two minutes, Ellie.” Then she disappeared. She was like my mother in so many ways that I wasn’t, because I wasn’t really related to either of them. When I looked into the mirror, I didn’t see anything of my mom.

My eyes fell to one of the boxes filled with stuff from my room. I dragged myself off the bed and opened the box to unpack a framed picture of me and my mom and my dad from our last vacation together.

Nana made pasta for dinner that night and promised all the carbs would give me energy for tomorrow, my first day back to school. I wasn’t interested in conversation, but she kept pushing.

“Would you like me to drive you to school tomorrow?” she asked. “I know it’s a long commute, and I don’t mind.”

I poked at the leeks and artichokes mixed in with the pasta. “I’ll be fine.”

She frowned. “Don’t be afraid to accept my help. I love you.”

“I know, Nana. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I want to feel normal. I want to go to school by myself like it’s a normal day.”

“That’s a very grown-up decision,” she said. “I’m proud of how well you’re handling this.”

My smile vanished. I had everyone fooled. I was angry, and everything was my fault. I should have known, should have done something, should have protected my parents. Will had been right, and I’d been in denial the whole time. I was too stubborn to stay away from the people I loved in order to protect them, and I had just stood there and let that monster kill my mother. Everything was my fault.

20

I HAD BEEN EXPECTING THE STARES. THE WHISPERS. The coldness. No one at school knew how to handle this any better than I did. I walked sluggishly through the hall, keeping my eyes up and ahead—no way would I stare at the floor like a coward—hugging my books to my chest. I knew what they all saw when they stared at me, because I’d had the misfortune of passing by the bathroom mirror despite my attempts to avoid it. They all saw the dark circles the concealer couldn’t hide under my eyes, that my hair was dull and flat and had lost most of its shine, that I was thinner because I hadn’t been eating.

In my literature class I stared at the blank page of my open notebook as my classmates scribbled furiously. I couldn’t concentrate when my mind kept revisiting the explosion of memories my amnesia no longer blocked. The assignment was to write a one-page essay on where we saw ourselves five years from now. No doubt everyone wrote down how they would be graduating college, starting careers, maybe getting engaged, and some would already have had a baby or two. Me—I saw myself dead in five years. Maybe five months. Maybe five days.

When the final bell rang, I stopped by Kate’s locker to say good-bye.

“Why don’t you come over to my place?” she offered with a concerned look. “We could not-study for the psych quiz tomorrow.”

I sighed and leaned my head against the locker next to hers. “Maybe tomorrow. I’m a little exhausted, and Nana wants me home for dinner.”

She smiled cautiously, and I was grateful that she didn’t argue with me. “How about we hit up the bowling alley for a couple hours after school tomorrow?”

“That’d be fun,” I said. I knew I needed to force myself to get out and do something besides go to school and hang out at Nana’s.

“Does that mean you’re coming?” she asked with a hopeful lilt to her voice, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll go.”

She played with a lock of my hair. “You’ll let me know if you’re not okay, right?”

I chewed on my bottom lip. “I’m as okay as I can be. Got to move on with my life, you know?”

“Yeah.” She studied me with her cool blue eyes.

I hoisted my backpack higher on my shoulder. “See you tomorrow morning?”

She smiled. “Of course. You know I’m here for you. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

A sickness flooded my heart. If only I could tell her everything. I wanted so badly to talk to her, to tell her everything, because I needed to talk to someone. I needed to talk to Kate. I needed her.

I turned my face away and rubbed my eye before she saw the tears that budded. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before she could respond, I was marching briskly down the hall, leaving her at her locker. When I burst through the doors to the student parking lot, I saw the last person I wanted to see in the entire world leaning against the grill of my car. I rubbed away the tears that threatened to give away my feelings as I approached, feeling the curious eyes of other people around the parking lot.