eck as her legs started to twitch horribly.
“Mom!” Isobel screamed, again and again, but it was like a faraway sound—a tinny recording on one of those old tape players her dad used to keep around.
Why couldn’t she get back in her body? If she was human, she could cut her mom down.
She blinked and Mom was gone. But so was Isobel. Her body was gone. She was outside it. Separate from it. Separate from everything. Even time.
That meant she could go back and undo it all. She wouldn’t let Mom leave them. She’d wrap Mom in her Supergirl cape to keep the bad thoughts away. And she’d always be a good girl so Mom would love her enough to stay.
Noises buzzed like insects all around.
Pulling her back.
No. Mom.
“Iz!”
“Isobel. Can you hear me?”
“Izzy, talk to us.”
Hands.
Shaking her body.
“Isobel, talk to me. What’s wrong?” Mack. Mack’s voice. Mack’s hands.
She looked down and it was like watching puppets. She watched the Mack puppet grab the Isobel puppet by the shoulders. But the Isobel doll just stood frozen, looking over Mack’s shoulder like a frightened rabbit.
She was dying.
No.
She was dead.
All of this—the little town of Hawthorne. Liam, Mack, the twins, Mel.
Hunter.
None of it had ever happened.
She was still sixteen years old, wasn’t she? She’d just swallowed a bottle of pills. Her dad hadn’t come home and found her in time.
People said your life flashed before your eyes when you died, but they never told you it was the future you got to see and not just the past—the future life you could have had.
But Isobel wouldn’t get to live any of it.
There would never be a summer at the stable with Rick’s family. There wouldn’t be any of the years at Cornell or dating Jason or Dad dying of cancer. She wouldn’t mind missing out on some of that.
But it also meant there would be no Wyoming. No Mel’s Horse rescue.
No falling in love with the love of her life.
She’d miss it all.
And why?
Because she thought things were so miserable that she couldn’t stand another day of it? Of living in that house with that woman talking down to her and making her feel two inches small?