Just as I kick against the pier, my left foot slips. My grip slides off the railing and I sense the wrongness of it all. I haven’t turned around. I don’t get the spring I need, and I begin falling too close to the wall, too close to the white foam and the blocks beneath the water’s surface.

My body is weightless, helpless, as I freefall.

Everything blurs.

As the world spins away, I swear I see him reach for me and call my name.

“Lia . . .”

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

I smack the water headfirst. Disoriented and confused, I spin and sink like dead weight. I can’t breathe. Can’t control my body. Can’t find the surface.

And I need to find the surface.

There are bubbles and murky gray water. Seaweed. Concrete. And then nothing.

There’s nothing after that.

When I was nine, I walked across the frozen lake at our friends’ house in the burbs and fell through the ice. As soon as I hit the water, thousands of frigid needles pierced my skin, causing a pain more intense than anything I’d ever known. I lost control of my body and breath until I was sure I would die. It was my dad who pulled me out. His grip was strong and desperate as he lifted me to the surface and ran me inside.

Doctors claimed it was a miracle my crap lungs didn’t shut down. They were all impressed by my “will to live”—something I clung to as proof that beneath my weak exterior, I had inner strength, that in a defining moment my subconscious chose to fight rather than sleep.

A distant bell toll pulls me back with each chime, filling in details of “here” and “now.” I’m wet. Cold. My clothes cling like shrink-wrap where I lay half passed out against the white slats of a dock, the lake rocking below me.

I blink and squint, adjusting my vision to the dull light, and find myself staring at the giant brass bell ringing at the dock’s end. The golden dome swings from its post like an upside-down tulip dangling against an ashen backdrop. As each arc grows smaller and each chime fainter, I can’t help but wonder what made it start ringing.

It stops.

I swear I see the very top of the Ferris wheel from Navy Pier. It looks so small. Far away. I struggle to lift my aching body for a better look and realize how badly my lungs burn. I can just make out a soft halo of red and blue emergency lights in the distance, near the tip of the pier, when suddenly a stampede of footsteps thunders toward me.

The Swarm. They’ve found me.

I shoot up, desperate to be on my feet. But I’m too quick. Clumsy. My head spins. My stomach heaves. I lean over the side of the dock and puke.