When we turn onto Samantha’s street, we’re confronted with a wall of cars.
Rollins grunts in frustration, looking for enough space to park. I squirm, clutching the door handle.
“Just let me out in front. You can meet me inside.”
“You sure?” Rollins asks doubtfully, but instead of a response I throw the door open wide and leap out. I steady myself and then run toward Samantha’s house. Even if I’d never been here before—which I have, a million times in a past life—it would be easy to tell which house is hers. Every single light is blazing, and music pumps into the night air. There are a couple of senior boys standing on the front porch, slurping lazily from bottles.
“Hey, pinky,” the one wearing a football jersey slurs. “Want a beer?”
“Have you seen my sister?” I demand.
He grins. “Your sister? She as cute as you?” He reaches toward me and grabs my shoulder. I snarl at him, and he snatches his hand away. “Okay, okay. Jeez.”
I push past them and let myself into Samantha’s house. Music reverberates through the walls, more a feeling than a sound. I smell cigarettes and weed and stale beer and body odor.
The foyer is packed wall to wall with drunk kids. I keep my eyes peeled for Mattie, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Anxiously, I push past the cheerleaders and jocks doing body shots off each other, into the kitchen, where a couple of idiots are wrestling with a beer bong.
Through the glass door that opens onto the deck, I see a snatch of white T-shirt steal behind a tree. Straining my eyes, I peer through the darkness. A figure dashes out, passing through a pool of light shining from a room upstairs, and in that split second, I recognize him.
Zane.
And he’s carrying something.
I pull the door open and step into the chill of the night. The wind rustles the trees and bushes. Zane has disappeared from sight. Slowly, I cross the deck and peer over the side.
“Zane?” I call out uncertainly. “Come out where I can see you.”
A figure emerges from behind a tree. It’s Zane, his face illuminated by the light coming from behind me. He looks stricken. “Vee? What are you doing here? I thought you were going to my house.”
“What are you doing, Zane?” My eyes fall to the red plastic container he’s holding.
“You have to get out of here,” he says, throwing a nervous look to the bushes behind him. “Vee. You have to run.”
“I know what you did, Zane. I was there when you killed Sophie.”
A look of confusion crosses Zane’s face. Just then, someone else bursts out of the shadows.
It’s the white-haired woman.
Evelyn.
I look from Zane to Evelyn and back again. What is my father’s mistress doing here? Her face twists in rage, and she begins shouting. “What do you mean, she was going to our house? They were both supposed to be here.”
My mind lingers on the words our house, and I’m trying to figure out what they mean when a smell, unmistakable and terrifying, rises from below.
Gasoline.
“No matter,” Evelyn says. “They’re both here now.” She waves her arm over her head, and I realize she’s holding a book of matches.
An alarm goes off inside me.
For some reason, this crazy woman is going to start a fire. And Mattie’s somewhere inside.
Who are these people?
And why are they doing this to us?
I spin around, knowing I have only moments before the woman throws a match on the death trap she and Zane have created. It’s not enough time.
I throw open the door and start screaming. It’s like I’m in a dream, yelling so loudly, but no one can hear me. They all keep smiling, nodding, dancing, talking, grinding. I push into the crowd, still yelling.
“Get out!” My voice gets sucked up in the sea of bad techno and laughter. “Get out of the house! Fire! Fire! FIRE!”
Finally, people turn toward me, their faces changing, delight melting into fear, their mouths forming Os as they realize what I’m saying. One person after another starts to echo my cry.
“Fire!”
“Get out!”
“Fire!”
One person misinterprets the situation and yells, “Cops!” but it doesn’t matter. The effect is the same. Bodies scattering, pushing to get out.
Where is Mattie? Where is she?
I run down the hallway, continuing to scream. It takes all my strength to push past the people coming the other way. In the back room, slumped on a bed, is my sister. She loosely holds a plastic cup, the last dregs of a beer sloshing around inside. How did she get drunk so fast? She’s only been here for an hour.
“Mattie! Mattie! Get up! There’s a fire!”
Her head lolls to the side. “Vee? Whass goin on? I feel funny.”
Smoke tickles my nostrils, threateningly thick.
I muster all my strength and pull her to her feet, adrenaline pumping through me. I practically carry her down the hall to the living room. Thick smoke has filled the room, but I can make out a girl lying on a plaid couch, her legs splayed. It’s Samantha.
I can’t just leave her here to die, but I can’t carry her and my sister at the same time.
I look toward the front door, where the foyer has cleared out. I carry my sister out to the yard. Small groups of people stand around, looking at the house.
Someone is calling my name. I turn around to find Rollins rushing toward me, looking scared out of his skull.
“Christ, Vee. I thought you were still inside.”
“Here. Take Mattie. I have to go back.” I push Mattie into his arms and turn toward the house, which is being overtaken by flames.
Rollins grabs my arm. “What? No!”
I would be lying if I said there isn’t a moment I think about just standing there on the front lawn. The night of the homecoming dance replays in my head, and I think about how Samantha just stood there as Scotch dragged me into the boys’ locker room. She didn’t do anything. The moment is brief, but it is undeniably there. But I know I would never be able to live with myself if I let Samantha burn.
“Samantha’s still inside,” I yell, and then bolt back into the house. The air has become so toxic, I start to cough almost immediately. I cover my mouth and nose with my hand to try to filter out some of the smoke.
Samantha is still on the couch. I shake her hard. “Samantha! Wake up!”
But she won’t wake up, no matter how hard I shake her. I grab her arms and drag her off the couch. I can barely see my way to the door. Gasping, I take in a mouthful of blackness. The smoke invades my lungs, and I feel myself choking.
Everything goes black.
I’m standing on a dock, at the edge of a lake at the camp I went to when I was little. My dad sent my sister and me here each summer after my mother died. It was cheaper than day care. This place, on the dock, was where I’d come when I got homesick—not for our house, but for Mom.
The only noise now is the lapping of little waves. A peacefulness washes over me. I lower myself until my belly is pressed against the hard wood and I’m able to hang my arm down and tickle the surface of the water with my finger. The lake is so cool, while the rest of my body is hot. So, so hot.
A terrible cough seizes my body, and I crumple into it. My lungs are on fire. My elbows, my toes are on fire. When the cough ceases, I spread out my body, looking at the cloudy sky. I pray for rain to soothe my burning flesh.
Fat drops start falling all around me, bouncing off my skin and streaming onto the dock. I open my mouth, welcoming the moisture with my tongue. The rain soaks my clothes and hair.
“Sylvia.” A voice sweet as honey echoes over the water.
It’s my mother.
I sit up and look for her. She rows toward me in a red canoe. She guides the oar steadily through the water, first on one side of the boat and then the other. I blink, and she’s here, aligning the boat with the side of the dock.
I look into the bottom of t
he boat and see a nest of blankets and a dark-eyed baby. My mother reaches down and snatches up the child, and then she’s suddenly standing beside me on the dock.
“Would you like to hold your sister?” My mother offers the bundle to me, a gentle smile on her face.
“That’s not Mattie,” I say, unsure of myself. “No. Your other sister. The one you never got to know.” My other sister? What is she talking about?
I take the child into my arms, and it weighs no more than a small sack of apples.
My mother is staring at me like she’s trying to memorize my face. “You could stay here with us if you want.” She sweeps her arm, gesturing to the lake, the woods, the never-ending sky.
“What is this place? Heaven?”
She shrugs.
“No offense, Mom, but I didn’t like this place much as a kid, and I sure as hell don’t want to spend the rest of eternity here.”
She smiles. “I understand.”
“I have to go back.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “You still have so much to do.”
I start to cry.
My mother comes closer, wraps one arm around me, and rubs my back. I don’t move, just soak up the feeling of my mother’s hand. The baby coos in my arms.
“You’ve done well,” she says softly.
She pulls her hand away. Even though I want to beg her not to go, I don’t. How can I? She’s already gone. She eases the baby back into the nest of blankets in the canoe and climbs in, one foot and then the other, carefully balancing her weight so the canoe doesn’t tip.
She turns to me and blows me a kiss.
And then, she’s gone.
Sirens blare in the distance, growing ever closer. The grass is cold beneath me. I roll to the side and cough until my throat is raw. Someone is stroking my hair the whole time. Foolishly, I believe for a moment that it could be my mother.
I open an eye and see Samantha’s body lying nearby on the lawn. A few cheerleaders are leaning over her, holding her hand and crying.
“Vee. Say something.”
I roll over and look up to see Rollins, upside down, staring at me with wild eyes.
“Is Samantha dead?”
He shakes his head. “No. Just unconscious. The paramedics are on their way.”
“How did we get out?”
Rollins looks down. “I—I went in after you.”
I suck in a deep breath and push myself into a sitting position so my words have full impact. “Do you know how stupid that was?”
Rollins smirks. “Isn’t that a little like the pot calling the kettle black?” His face becomes serious. “Vee, don’t you ever do anything like that again. I thought . . . I thought . . . Jesus, Vee, don’t you know how I feel about you?”
I look away. I think I do know how he feels about me. I think it’s something we’ve been dancing around, ever since homecoming last year. Maybe I’ve been hiding from it, unwilling to explore a connection that was forged under such disturbing circumstances, but there’s no denying there’s something there. Still, these are feelings I can’t deal with at this moment, not while I’m lying on the cold grass after my so-called boyfriend just tried to kill my sister and a houseful of other people as an afterthought.
Speaking of which—where the hell did Zane go? And Evelyn?
What did Evelyn say before she lit the match?
Our house. Our house. Our house.
The words march through my head.
When it dawns on me, I feel like I’m going to be sick. Evelyn, my father’s old lover, is Zane’s mother. Allison Morrow must have been Zane’s younger sister, the one who died when he was so little.
She was sick. She needed my father to save her, but he wasn’t able to. And so Allison died, and Evelyn went crazy.
She yelled at Zane for trying to protect me. She was trying to kill us.
Me and Mattie.
To get back at my father.
I feel the bile rise in my throat.
Where is Mattie? I scan the lawn quickly but don’t see her anywhere.
“Rollins, where’s Mattie?”
He looks shaken. “I left her right here to go in after you. I’m sure she didn’t go far.”
Rollins helps me to stand, and we walk the perimeter of the yard. A few people remain, but it seems most of the partygoers took off when they heard the sirens. A fire truck races down the street and stops in front of Samantha’s house. A couple of men wearing thick yellow coats jump down and start unloading equipment.
I grab one of the weepy cheerleaders and ask her if she’s seen Mattie. She shakes her head and turns back to Samantha.
I turn to Rollins and speak quickly. “Rollins, you have to take me back to Zane’s house. There’s no time. Just trust me. We have to go back.”
Rollins looks at me, confused, but nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”
On the way to Zane’s house, I clutch the sides of my seat. Could Evelyn and Zane have snatched Mattie in her wasted state? Mattie would probably just go with Zane if he said I’d asked him to give her a ride home.
I have no way of knowing where they took her, but I do have the power to find them. If I can find something at their house, something significant to Zane, I can slide into him—hopefully before anything happens to Mattie. Wrapping my arms around myself, I try not to imagine what she could be going through this very second.
After what seems like an eternity, Rollins pulls into Zane’s driveway and slams on the brakes. The house looks just as I left it, the front door standing open and light from the kitchen pouring onto the front lawn.
“Come on,” I say, climbing out of the car and running to the house. Rollins is close behind me. Once inside, I point out the shattered vase to Rollins. “Watch out.”
I climb the staircase, two steps at a time, and pause at the top. There’s a short hallway, with two doors on the left and two on the right. I try the first one on the right, but it’s only a bathroom.
I try the next door. Jackpot. A narrow bed with black sheets is pushed up against a wall lined with Nirvana posters. Zane’s clothes are strewn about, along with some comic books. On his bedside table is his copy of Tender Is the Night. Bingo. It has to lead me to him. It has to.
“Okay,” I say, turning to Rollins. “This is it. You just have to trust me on this. I’m going to make myself pass out. You just stay here with me, okay? If anyone comes home, shake me until I wake up. Will you do that?”
Rollins shrugs. “What choice are you giving me?”
“None,” I reply. I grab the novel, the pages soft and worn from constant handling, and I lie back on Zane’s bed. “Remember, if anyone comes, wake me up.” With that, I clutch the book and squeeze my eyes closed. For a long, terrifying moment, I’m afraid it’s not going to work.
I realize I’m too amped-up to slide. My pulse is racing, and I can’t stop picturing what might be happening to Mattie this very second. Forcing myself to breathe deeply and slowly, I try to relax all my muscles. Rollins runs his hand through my hair, and that makes all the difference. I feel myself get drowsy.
And then the dizziness sets in, and the pain.
Black road stretches out before me. Broken bits of a yellow line disappear under the dashboard, racing under the car. Zane is on the passenger side, clutching the plastic container. The reek of gasoline makes me feel sick.
Evelyn is driving. Mattie is nowhere to be seen, I realize with relief.
Zane opens his mouth to speak. His voice is all wobbly and broken. I realize he’s crying. “You didn’t have to hurt her,” he says. “Mattie would have been enough to get back at him.”
“Dammit, Zane,” the woman spits out, throwing a glare at him. “Don’t you care about your little sister at all? First you try to warn them by pulling that ridiculous prank at the high school, and then you try to save that miserable Sylvia. I can’t believe you. These are the people who destroyed Allison. If those girls didn’t exist, your sister would still be alive. But no. Jared had to protect his
precious little family, even if it meant shattering ours.”
“But that girl, Sophie, had nothing to do with what happened to Allison.” Zane is shaking. His grip on the jug of gasoline loosens, and I realize how stupid it is to be carrying such a thing inside a moving vehicle.
Evelyn sharpens her words, flings them at him like knives. “Nothing to do with her? You’ve got to be kidding me. She was born the very same day Allison died. I remember that day so well. I was sitting in the waiting room when the nurse came out to tell me my baby was dead. And Sophie’s family was whooping it up with balloons and champagne. Can you tell me that’s fair?”
Zane shifts the jug of gas from one knee to the other. “But the other girl, Amber. She did nothing to you.”
His mother sneers. “I didn’t kill her. She must have killed herself. There’s something contagious about suicide, isn’t there? One person goes, and it’s like a domino effect.”
Zane stares at his mother. “You’re crazy. I should have gone to the police when I had the chance.”
She slaps him in the back of the head. “How dare you call your own mother insane? Do you think I wouldn’t do the same thing if someone hurt you? That’s what being a mother is about. Protecting your children.”
“You haven’t protected me,” Zane says. “You ruined me. You made my whole life about revenge. You filled my head with lies about a killer surgeon and his spoiled daughters. But you were wrong, Mother. You were wrong.”
Evelyn stares at her son as if he’s speaking another language. Zane turns his head toward the dashboard, and I feel his eyes widen in panic. Evelyn doesn’t see the way the road twists suddenly to the left. Zane grabs for the wheel, but it’s too late. The car shoots off the road, straight toward a tree.
The last thing I hear is Zane’s scream.
And I realize it’s coming from me.
Someone is shaking me.
“Vee? Vee!”
Rollins.
“I’m here. I’m okay,” I reassure him, blinking in the sudden light of Zane’s room. My head is on Rollins’s lap, and his hands are cupping my face. He looks scared. I push away from him unsteadily.
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