Was she really supposed to just pretend she was the same person she’d been this morning?

Next to her, Lily shifted in her seat.

“Maybe she won’t wake up,” Lily muttered.

“Won’t wake up? What, ever?” Maria pictured Delilah staying in that coma forever. A vegetable, even when they were all old and wrinkled.

Lily sighed. “She’s already as good as gone.”

No. It couldn’t be true.

A sixty-year coma was the worst thing Maria could imagine. Surely Lily wasn’t saying . . .

“If Mateo hadn’t seen her out the window . . .” Lily muttered, her voice even softer than before. She stared out the window at the pounding rain. She looked like she’d forgotten Maria was there. “. . . it could’ve been morning before they found her.”

Maria shook her head. “You said you were going to tell someone. A dorm monitor. You were going to go tell someone when I went back to the room.”

Lily didn’t respond.

Maria shook her head again. “If they didn’t find her until morning, by then she’d have been . . .”

Maria grabbed Lily’s chin and pulled her around to face her.

She saw it there. The dark, empty look in Lily’s deep blue eyes.

Lily was saying exactly what Maria thought she was. And she was right.

Delilah wasn’t going to spend sixty years in a coma. She was either going to wake up—or she was going to die. But it would be better for them if she died.

And it would be best of all if she did it soon.

ACT 3

in rain

10

I FEAR YOU PLAYED MOST FOULLY FOR IT

Brandon was dreaming.

He knew it was a dream. He’d been having this dream for three years. But knowing it was a dream didn’t stop it from scaring him to tears every time.

Tonight, though, was the worst the dream had ever been. Tonight, he couldn’t wake up.

“Stop it!” Brandon shouted. He didn’t know if he was shouting out loud or only in his dream. He hoped it was out loud. Maybe then he’d wake up. “Leave me alone!”

The man in his dream—his name was Rafael Martinez. Brandon hadn’t known his name when it happened in real life, but in the dream he always did. It was the only thing that kept Brandon sane. I know who he is—so this can’t be real.

Rafael lifted the knife. Brandon couldn’t remember if the real knife had gleamed as brightly as the dream knife always did. Surely men like Rafael didn’t go home and polish their knives every night. He’d probably just carried a cheap pocketknife. Nothing that had any right to be so scary. Except that anything’s scary when someone’s holding it in front of your stomach like they’re about to slice out your entrails.