She falls silent, and I feel the car turn. I slide across the leather back seat, the fabric of my nightgown slick and sweaty. It rolls up, and I grab it, pushing it back down to cover my knees. I think I push down, but I might have pulled up. Directions are wrong, and time is thin, and I left Tress’s house ten years ago and I’m still there. I’m slipping. I’m slipping. I’m . . .
“Lee, remember that bridge is out—”
This time Annabelle cuts herself short, and Lee slams on the brakes. I roll off the seat, land in the footwell, unable to catch myself. Warmth rushes down the side of my head, and blood trickles into my mouth, my lip already swelling where I bit it, too hard. Too much. Too fast. It’s all here now, circling, getting ready to descend.
“Lee?” Now there’s something new in Annabelle’s voice—fear. And something new in the air, too. Lights. Bright lights, bouncing off the seats, into my eyes, into my head.
“Stay in the car,” Lee says, and I hear his door open.
But Annabelle Montor (Usher) is not the kind of woman who stays in the car. Her door opens, too.
Words. Flashing. Like the lights.
papers
thief
stole
mine
yours
sister
don’t
please
money
listen
But no one is listening, and I can’t, either, because everything is fading and the door is opening and someone has grabbed me and I smell grass and earth and green things growing and Annabelle UsherMontor and different now I’m falling and the smell is wet and fish and river and dead leaves and—
I’m falling.
I’m falling.
I’m gone.
Chapter 72
Cat
I am very quiet
and very still.
Stone and silence.
The door was closed
once
But has not always been.
It was open when—
the swinging boy hoped someone would stop him.
(no one did.)
the sobbing woman hoped someone would hear her
and come.
(he did / he did not.)
The screaming baby had no thoughts
only need
and Mother did come.
(not everything ends badly.)
It was open then—
so I go there,
through time and space
and doorways.
Loose now.
In the place where humans
make their noises.
Chapter 73
Tress
“Felicity?” I’m shaking her, reaching over the wall that I’ve built, my panic rising. “Felicity!”
She moans, dangling by her wrists. She’s unconscious, her legs like jelly. I let go of her to grab my backpack, and she falls forward completely, bells jingling, only held up by the manacles. She’s bleeding freely, red channels running down her arms. It’s a dark red in the light of my phone, her skin a horrid, sickly gray.
I drop my backpack on the ground, rifling through it with my good hand for the keys to release her. There’s another roll of duct tape and pliers and a pack of gum—Where the hell did that come from? I think wildly. There’s a bottle of Oxy and a baggie of weed and some cherry ChapStick, and I don’t see the key.
“It’s here,” I say, then turn the light back on Felicity. “It’s here, I’ll find it. I’ll get you out.”
Get her out of where I put her. What I did to her.
I dump the contents of my backpack on the floor and hear a metallic zing . . . somewhere. I flash my phone around, looking for the glint of light on metal. I spot it and grab, with the wrong hand, pain lighting up my entire arm as I close my fingers around the key. The cat got something deep in there, his claw caught on tendon, or muscle.
I am not okay.
But Felicity is worse, and that’s on me.
I can’t hold the phone and undo the manacles with only one hand. I bite down on my phone, pieces of screen cracking off onto my lips, my tongue, tiny splinters digging into my soft parts, trying to hold the light just right. The first one comes unlocked, and Felicity leans into me, cold and clammy, smelling of blood and vomit.
“Mom?” she asks.
I can’t answer, can’t correct her with the phone in my mouth, and now half her weight is on me. I turn my head, and the light moves with it, as I work the second lock, tears of frustration running down my face. Some of them follow the curve of my cheek, find their way to my mouth, salt stinging the tiny cuts there.
The second lock lets go, and Felicity falls forward, her head knocking into mine. My phone falls with a clatter at our feet, the light shining upward into my eyes as I lower her to the floor, my arm screaming with pain. I can’t hold her, and she falls the rest of the way, slumping into a seated position on the other side of the wall, her head resting against the bricks I laid, one leg folded awkwardly underneath her.
“I can’t carry you,” I tell her, like that information will suddenly make her stand. “I don’t think I can even get you over this wall. Not with my arm like this.”
Nothing. No answer. No indication she hears me at all.
I lean over the wall, reach down, try to shake her again, the light from my phone practically blinding me.
“Carry me,” Felicity says, her eyelids flickering. “Carry me.”
“Felicity! Stay with me,” I urge her. “Look at me!”
She opens her eyes, but her focus is not on me. It falls to the necklace that has slipped out of my hoodie, dangling now, flashing in the light.
“Oh . . . there it is,” she says.
And she reaches up, closing her hand around half a heart pendant.
Chapter 74
Felicity
Fifth Grade / The Night Of
“Did you know Gretchen named her new puppy William Wilson? What a stupid name,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Like, even her dog is kind of stuck-up.”
Tress laughs, runs her hand down Goldie-Dog’s nose. “You’re not stuck-up, are you Goldie?” she asks, and Goldie farts in return, sending us both into peals of laughter.
“Girls . . .” Annabelle’s voice comes from down the hall. “It’s past midnight. You need to be thinking about sleep.”
“Okay, Mom,” Tress calls back. “We’ll . . . think about it.”
Which sets us off again but makes me feel a little bad. Tress’s mom is cool.
“I don’t want to make your mom mad,” I whisper, my giggles making the whisper as loud as regular talking, which only makes Tress laugh more.
“Oh, wait . . . ,” she says, something occurring to her. “Mom gave this to me.” She gets up from the floor, going over to her dresser. She comes back with two necklaces, each of them with half a heart pendant hanging from them. One side reads Best. The other reads Friends. Tress holds them in front of me, swaying in the light from her bedside table.
“This used to be Mom’s,” she says. “I guess they were a thing once. Kinda cool, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, reaching out. They’re cheap, mostly brass, the chains corroded with age. My mom would die if she saw me wearing this. I’m okay with that. I close my hand around one, then pull back, questioning.
“Are you just showing me these, or . . . ?”