But then there was a noise behind me. A cough? Someone clearing their throat. There was someone else in Dr. Shepard’s office with us? But how could that be? That’s when I notice the room has turned orange, and Dr. Shepard’s red chair is blue. I go to tell Dr. Shepard, but she has disappeared.

“Are you going to do it?” A voice from behind me.

I try to turn, but I can’t move my feet. The floor has turned to tar. Instead, I twist to look over my shoulder.

My mother is sitting in Dr. Shepard’s big, red-again chair. She is wearing the outfit she had on the night she died. Her left foot is bare. On her right is a single blue clog. Her skin is smudged and black like it is covered in ash.

“Mom?” I whisper.

“So are you going to?” she demands.

“Am I going to do what?” I ask.

“Come on, Wylie. First me, then Cassie—are you going to kill Dr. Shepard, too?”

I GASP AWAKE like I’m breaking through the surface of water. I squint my swollen eyes open. A bright, white room. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Like an office building.

I try to take a breath but can hardly suck in any air.

It comes back then. Like the bangs of a hammer. The bridge. Jasper. The police. I tried to get away.

A mistake.

Oh, Jasper. My chest clenches.

I try to push myself up, but I cannot. My head is too large and weighed down like it’s encased in plaster. I try again and this time, my head lifts. But I am still stuck. It’s not my head that’s pinned down. It’s my arms.

Strapped down. To a hospital bed.

8

STAY CALM. KEEP IT TOGETHER. FOCUS. BUT THAT IS SO MUCH EASIER SAID THAN done. My head is so foggy, too. It must be from whatever they used to knock me out. That was always part of the nightmare: being kept so doped up on the wrong drugs that I never got better. And then I died sad and alone in a mental hospital—exactly like my grandmother. I pull again against the straps around my arms, but it is no use.

And Jasper? Did they find him? Did he actually go off that bridge? Oh God, I did everything wrong. I was supposed to save him, and instead I got myself locked up here. I start to cry. Hard. I can’t help it. Soon my sobbing has made my stomach hurt and my face is covered in tears and goo.