CONTENTS

Dedication

01 | Begin / End

02 | Return

03 | Fall

04 | Elicit

05 | Bend

06 | Submerge

07 | Ignite

08 | Uncover

09 | Intend

10 | Betray

11 | Allude

12 | Isolate

13 | Reveal

14 | Deny

15 | Wreck

16 | Deceive

17 | Gravitate

18 | Implode

19 | Plunge

20 | Prelude

21 | Detonate

22 | Reckoning

23 | Finale

24 | End / Begin

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Excerpt: What Happened That Night

Dedication

To those who have supported me from the beginning of my
journey and those who found me along the way.

01 | Begin / End

The last thing I remember is noise.

Images are hazy, and they only come in flashes. Most of them are dark, dripping with night and impossible to make sense of—a glimpse of a tree branch here, a wiry crack in the glass there. Bloodstained fingers. Fragmented pieces of my reflection gazing back at me.

But the noises are vivid, and when I squeeze my eyes shut, I can still hear them. It begins with tires squealing, struggling to gain traction on damp pavement, followed by the devastating crunch of metal connecting with metal. A car door clicks open, and the melodic chime of keys being left in the ignition resonates through the air layered with frantic voices melding together. One of them sounds similar to mine, only warped and laced with pain.

A desperate urge to flee the scene propels me forward, but my limbs fail, and I fall to the ground.

When I wake, I no longer know my own name.

The abrupt shaking of a pill bottle makes the present come back into focus.

Dr. Meyer sits across from me, holding up the bright orange container, and the room is quiet, all eyes trained in my direction. Outside, thick, menacing clouds on the verge of bursting hang low, peering over the canopy of evergreen trees in the distance. There’s a garden adjacent to Dr. Meyer’s office—a courtyard that must bloom with color later in the year but looks stark and barren against the backdrop of early spring.

After a month of staying here, I’ve learned that the neurology wing is the nicest place in Pender Falls General Hospital, significantly more inviting than the room I first woke up in—where I was called a name I didn’t remember and was surrounded by faces I’d never seen before—or the one in which I spent weeks learning how to use my body again. This meeting is the last checkpoint I have to complete before getting out of here for good.

“Sorry. I lost focus for a second.”

“That’s all right.” Dr. Meyer’s smile is gentle, practiced. “This is a lot of information to take in at once, that’s why we have your family here with you. The more ears, the better.”

Sofia—my mother, though it’s far too early to call her that—studiously scrawls notes on the lined paper of the notebook in her lap, while my sister, Audrey, sits on the other side of me, fingers resting on my leg gently in a show of support.