I didn’t want to show my face at Olivia’s after our argument. I didn’t even have the ritual of school to distract me from anything. It was crushing, all-encompassing, and I felt myself petrifying in my bed, like the first week, when all I could think about was dying.

Dead. Maybe I was better off dead. Maybe it would be better if none of this had ever happened at all.

Breathe. Breathe.

June.

You don’t have to think about dying if you’re dead.

June.

June keeping secrets. June not telling me anything. Who even was she? Who was this June, and who was the June I imagined her to be? June. June decomposing in the driver’s seat. There never was a driver’s seat at all. The driver’s seat had fallen into the Styx with the rest of it. Everything. I imagined a giant sinkhole opening up beneath me, dragging me down, and I didn’t think I’d even try to keep myself above the ground. Sure, survival instincts would kick in eventually, but that wouldn’t be me. That’d be my body. It’s designed to survive. I couldn’t fight that. But me? Sydney? She wouldn’t do a damn thing.

And then, ten o’clock at night, I got a text.

If all of this was to do with everything else, then this was actually wonderful news – if June wouldn’t tell me anything, then maybe this person might. This was the catalyst that could bring her back.

But … ‘surprise’? Did they know I’d discovered the folder was missing? Or that June and I had fought?

And then they sent a link.

A link which led, of all places, to the ToD.

The video had been uploaded that morning. Security camera footage. The timestamp on the bottom counted up steadily; it was forty past two in the afternoon.

Car crash. Pretty standard. Pretty boring, actually. It looked like the person had swerved to miss something just out of frame, drove across the lane of oncoming traffic and hit a pole head on. The car crumpled, easily as balling a napkin in your fist, like crushing sand, and there was zero movement afterwards. From anywhere. You couldn’t see anything inside the car, but based on how it folded, you probably wouldn’t want to.

The realization came in pieces.

First was the thought that the car looked familiar.

Second was the thought that the street did too.

Third was the date next to the timestamp. September the fourteenth.

And then I played it back slowly. Read the licence plate.

The world spun. Somewhere outside the galaxy a black hole devoured a supernova, and somewhere else a new star was born, and somewhere else, Sydney Whitaker watched her dad die over and over and over.

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I wasn’t myself. Not then.