I nod. “The last thing I saw before the roof collapsed was him, running toward me. He pushed me, and I fell. Right here.”

Dr. Layne stands and folds her arms, her hip jutted out slightly as she considers the grassy spot where my neighbor found me that night.

“Ava. I’ve seen the police reports. Your dad’s body was found in the hallway outside your room. You’re right—they think he was trying to get to you. But the ceiling collapse blocked him.”

“He pushed me,” I say. “How else did I get out that window?

Dirt spirals between us, but Dr. Layne doesn’t blink.

“Ava, your dad didn’t push you. You jumped.”

43

That can’t be true.

I crumble to the grass, replaying that night in my mind. The heat crashing down from the ceiling. Snippets of a movie reel—flashes of panic and smoke and burning in my throat. I opened the window to breathe.

Dad’s face through the flames. His mouth moved at me. And that’s it—the next thing I knew, I was on the ground clinging to the stars and my neighbor’s face above me, telling me to hang on.

I lay my head among the cool blades, right where I landed that night. This time, puffy clouds glide above me rather than twinkling stars. Dr. Layne tells me to take as long as I need.

Even if I did jump, I didn’t know what I was leaping toward. I didn’t know how I’d look, or that when I woke up, I’d be alone.

Even if I chose life in a moment of panic, how do I keep choosing it now?

A silhouette enters my view, backlit by the sun. I think I’m having some majorly realistic déjà vu until the memory speaks.

“As I live and breathe,” a woman’s voice says.

I shield the sunlight until the shape comes into focus as Mrs. Sullivan, the neighbor who found me that night, burning on the grass. She puts her hand over her heart as I stand. As soon as I’m on my feet, she hugs me tight to her, then holds me at arm’s length.

“Let me look at you. You look”—she scans my face, smiling—“wonderful.”

I let her hug me again.

She clings to me for a long time, and when she finally lets go, she holds me by the shoulders, searching my eyes. “I can’t tell you the good it does my heart to see you standing here. Alive and well.”

A tear slides down her wrinkled skin, and she laughs and lets go of me to pull a yellowed hanky with an embroidered pink flower from her shirt pocket. She dabs at her eyes.