Suddenly the sky is on fire. Bits of colored glass streak toward the water like fragile rain.

Look at the stars!

I hear the echo of that voice in my head. And I know now it’s Cole’s. It has to be. Because that’s his magic trick. The stars all belong to him.

But someone else is there. Someone who isn’t Cole. This person is bigger. Taller.

A grown-up. Not my mother, though. Someone who scares me.

A cold hand tight around my wrist. I’m being jerked. And dragged. I grab for something to hold on to. But it’s too late.

I’m flying.

Flying. Flying. Flying.

Then falling like the stars. Rain on fire.

I’m a toy boat flung into the sea.

I hit the water hard. It hurts. I feel the crack of bones. Like hitting cement. I hold my breath as the water washes over the top of my head. My mind is calm, but my body fights involuntarily. My legs kick and my arms claw.

I’m sinking.

I look up toward the surface. Toward what’s left of the stars. They’re melting together and blurring with the movement of the water. They haven’t all fallen. Some of them still hang in the sky.

Then, one by one, I watch them blink out and go dark.

Like the light cue at the end of a scene.

Then there’s nothing.

Just dark. Just cold.

Until I feel hands on me. I’m being lifted up and carried. And I’m so frozen. Everything hurts.

I try to scream. To call out for my mother. But I can’t make any noise.

I can’t see.

But I do hear sounds.

Someone shouts.

And someone else is sobbing.

So many voices.

Sirens. Far away.

More shouting.

Snatches of conversation.

What happened . . .

. . . already gone.

. . . so little.

Where’s Nicole? Somebody find Nicole!

. . . pulse . . .

Shit.

. . . losing her.

Fuck.

Hang on.

. . . too late.

Then the high-pitched whine of a siren. So close that it feels like it’s inside my head somehow. It hurts my ears, and that’s the moment I know for sure that I’m alive.

Someone is touching my hand. Calling my name.

“Avril.”

Warm, gentle hands on my face.

“Avril, it’s Cole. Open your eyes.”

Suddenly I’m sucking huge breaths of air deep into my lungs. Gasping and gulping and choking.

“Easy,” he says. “Just breathe.” He wraps me up tight, but I pull myself free from Cole’s arms. Untangle myself. Because he was there that night.

Cole Culver was there the night my mother died. The night I drowned. He told me to look at the stars.

He was there.

He was there.

He was there.

But someone else was there, too. Someone who took me by the wrist and tossed me in the water to die.

My mother didn’t kill herself.

She didn’t try to kill me.