She froze, almost afraid to move. Afraid her last decent hope would be quashed. Boxes of tampons had been her go-to hiding place for years. But Nisha couldn’t possibly have had the same secret spot . . . could she?

Slowly, she pulled out the box. Her heart felt still in her chest. She groped inside the carton, past the rows of individual boxes, and at the bottom her fingers closed on something that felt like a tube.

It was a plain manila folder, rolled into a tight spiral and rubber-banded several times. Emma’s head spun as she peeled away the rubber bands and smoothed the folder flat on the ground. Paper-clipped to the outside of the folder was a piece of pink Hello Kitty notepaper. She recognized Nisha’s neat handwriting right away.

Sutton, I’m so sorry. I had a bad feeling about this after we talked, and I had to check. You need to know the truth.

Holding her breath, she flipped the folder open.

On the top page, the words UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA MEDICAL CENTER RECORDS were typed in a large bold font. Under “department” someone had scrawled the word psychiatric in black pen.

When I saw the name written on the form next to PATIENT, it didn’t register at first. The letters were like hieroglyphics, strange and illegible. But then the world snapped into a painful, horrifying clarity.

The name sparked something in my memory, and with a deafening roar began pulling me back to that night in the canyon. And I knew with sickening certainty that finally, finally, I was going to relive the last moments of my life.

29 - The Last Memory

29

THE LAST MEMORY

I can’t breathe. The shirt collar digs into my throat, crushing my windpipe. I kick my legs furiously, but already I’m seeing spots, and Garrett is much too strong for me. Far below my feet the wind rushes through the ravine with a lost, lonely howl. Garrett’s face is inches from mine, twisted into a mask of fury that’s almost unrecognizable in the moonlight. I dimly register that my shirt is tearing as he shakes me back and forth. I’m going to die here, in this canyon where I used to go camping with my dad, where Thayer and I stole some of our first kisses, where Laurel and I used to tell ghost stories.

Finally Garrett lets go, and a scream erupts from the depths of my ragged lungs, echoing off the walls of the canyon.

But I don’t fall far.

I land in a heap on the ground, crumpled at Garrett’s feet. Inches behind me I can feel the ravine yawning wide. My heart roars in my ears, adrenaline singing in my blood. I’m alive. My fingers curl through the dirt, raw and stinging. My face feels wet, and I realize that I’m crying.