All I heard over Mischa’s AirPods was static.

“Jennie? Are you there?”

No answer.

Once, in fourth grade, when I had been roughhousing on the playground during recess with Roy Needham, who’d been doing fake karate moves, he accidentally kicked me in the solar plexus. I’d doubled over, unable to breathe, incapable of piecing together how he had totally incapacitated me with one swift blow. The realization that Jennie might not have been able to protect me this time around, and that I might actually die in a way related to air within the next twelve days, made me feel just like I had on the playground that day.

I would be boarding another airplane on Tuesday morning. In four days.

Henry set the fire extinguisher down on the kitchen floor, crossed the room, and wrapped his hand around my wrist. “We’re leaving.”

CHAPTER 8

WE BARRELED DOWN THE LONG private drive and through the gates of the Simmonses’ property in stiff silence. Once we rounded the corner, however, Henry pulled over to the shoulder, yanked the parking brake, and pounded on the steering wheel with his fists.

“Why did you do that? Why did you have to offer yourself up like that?”

I’d never seen Henry so emotional before, not even at his own sister’s wake. His face was pink, and he angrily wiped his eye with the back of his wrist. When I opened my mouth to explain that I’d thought I had it under control, I found that I was at a complete loss for words.

I’d taken a huge misstep, and now it was too late to take it back. I’d been overly confident about Jennie’s ability to protect me—and herself—and now I was next in line to die. Henry had been in such a hurry to leave that I’d left Mischa’s AirPods and phone behind before trying to see if I could find Jennie’s voice on a different channel. She’d just told me that she was always with me, and now she was gone. Maybe forever. Mrs. Robinson had said Jennie was in a “dark place,” and I’d been so focused on trying to be a hero that I hadn’t paused to wonder if Jennie was endangering herself by helping me. Now, if Mischa’s prediction for me came true and I died within the next few days, I couldn’t assume I’d be reunited with my twin… which was just as detestable as the idea of death, itself.

That thought was devastating enough to make me gasp before I could reply to Henry. Eternity, all alone.

When Violet had been the storyteller conducting the game, there had never been a violent spectacle like what I’d just seen at her house… although I guess in retrospect I’d been suspicious the night of Olivia’s party that the flames in the fireplace were burning just a little too high.

But still… there’d been no windstorm. Nothing had burst into flames. Not like the hellish display I’d just witnessed.

“That was just so—so—stupid!” Henry exclaimed. “What am I going to do if you die?”