The Other Girl

But I continue to feel my way across the ridge, inch by inch, and I can hear Addison breathing hard up ahead of me. The wind howls as if it’s determined to defend the mountain from trespassers.

The air is ice up here, cold and solid and unforgiving as I push forward.

Perception of time is lost. After what feels like hours instead of minutes, I start to close in on Addison. We must be somewhere in the middle of the ridge. She’s stopped moving.

“I can’t do this,” Addison says, her voice nearly lost in the abyss. She panics and attempts to turn around, her arms flailing in the open air.

It happens so fast.

Addison is on the ridge—and then she’s gone. She goes over the edge, disappearing from sight.

My whole body prickles with alarm. It’s over. One moment of clarity, where the chaos in the universe ceases, time slows down, and I take a breath. Then:

“Help!”

Addison’s screams rise up from the basin. I hear her clawing at the rocks. Over and over, she wails into the dark, her cries battering the air until my brain is pulsing with the sound of her shrill voice.

Her pleas layer memories, splicing two points in time together.

The screams tear into the night, an echo of the past ripping space and time.

The scars on my palms throb, and I look down at my hands.

It’s said that if you can look at your hand during a dream, you’ll realize you’re dreaming…and that you can force yourself to awake.

I understand, with a sudden jolt of horror, that theory doesn’t work on nightmares.

20

Fault in the Mind

Lanie: Before

I’m not supposed to be here.

The panicked thought strikes me the moment his hands go around my neck.

I had followed Jeremy to the beach. I knew he’d be meeting Irina. In our spot. I was desperate to see him, to try to be with him once more…even if it caused me pain to see them together.

I just needed to understand why he had treated me so cruelly—why I was such a joke to be mocked by him and his friends. All I had done was love him, and he had made his rejection of that love so painfully public, the whole school knew about us.

I only wanted the torment to end. One last attempt to repair the damage.

But I had made a mistake. I know that now, as Mr. Whitmore’s hands crush my throat.

“Dirty little sluts like you fuck everything up.” His words are unleashed on me with venom and spittle as he bears down on top of me.

I gasp through the constriction of my throat, eyes wide and lungs desperate for air. “Help—”

The loose sand beneath me shifts, and I feel as if I’m sinking.

I pray the sand swallows me.

I ruined everything. Somehow, I had gotten in the way…that was becoming soberingly clear, even as the light of the world around me was starting to dim.

“She’s mine,” he growls, his hands tightening into a vise around my neck. “And your dramatic antics sent her right back to him.”

His knees press down on my arms, preventing me from moving, from reaching up. I grip my hands into tight balls and the feel of my nails slicing into my skin helps ease the agony.