My heart races, a sick feeling in my stomach at what I’ve done. But what else is there to do? Slowly rot? At least this way, he can’t control it. He can’t decide it.

I let the empty bottle drop to the carpet and walk backward to the bed to lie down. When I roll over, I see my sister’s letters scattered beside me through the haze of tears that are so much a part of my life now. Every day. Every day too many tears. I am so tired of it. I’ve read the letters a hundred times. I can’t think about how she’ll feel when she hears what I did. I can’t bear how confused she'll be. How hurt.

I think of Hazel when she left. How I felt. How there was a time I hated her. I felt betrayed and left behind. It’s what I’ll do to Eva, and I hate myself for it. I don’t want to die, do I?

So I get up and go to the door. I try it, but I know it’s locked. I call out, but no one answers, and I don’t know what I want. I go to the desk, opening the drawers until I find a pen and some of that De La Rosa letterhead. I tear off their family crest, crushing that part and dropping it at my feet, then return to the bed where I lie down again and set the paper beside me.

When I start to write, the pen punctures the paper at the Dear. The aspirin can’t be working that fast, though. This is probably exhaustion. Starvation. I feel dizzy, a different sort of dizzy than usual, so I close my eyes for a minute. But when I open them again, I know it’s been longer than a minute.

I feel sweaty, disoriented, and heavy. I sit up, squinting against the double vision. I swing my legs off the bed, and a wave of nausea hits me so hard, I drop to my hands and knees and vomit before I can even think about trying to make it to the bathroom. Another wave comes, and I throw up some more. After dry heaving, I sit back, one hand on my belly, the other on my forehead, my breathing shallow and labored.

My ears are ringing, and I swear I can hear my own heart beat too fast.

A noise at the door has me turn my head, but when it opens, the room spins, the girl freezing when she sees me, her mouth falling open.