Mom set down the bottle of water she’d been holding on my nightstand, gentler than the protruding veins in her neck might have suggested she wanted to. I wasn’t really looking, though; I was busy pressing my fingertips into my eyelids until the darkness flexed underneath. This was the tunnel, the one back to normal, and if I could just let go, let it take me, then maybe, maybe …

‘I understand it probably feels early. I do. But you can’t afford to fall behind. Not this year.’ She put a hand on my head – it made me jump – and smoothed back my hair. ‘You still have a whole life to lead. We both do.’

‘I don’t.’ Saying the words gave me goosebumps. I guess I’d been thinking it this whole time but hadn’t actually said it: that I wouldn’t do anything substantial for the rest of my life except feel this way. I was buried too and there was no point pretending otherwise.

Mom sighed, then did that mom thing where she kissed my head and inhaled at the same time. ‘Go take a shower.’

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Olivia and I sat in the commons, waiting for the morning bell to ring, as we always did, and I swore people were staring at me.

They tiptoed round me as if I were a dandelion that had gone white-tipped and any misjudged breath could blow me to smithereens. They were scared of me, I assumed: a bad omen with legs, contagious bereavement. And the staring. God. I’d worked to cultivate the image I’d had since freshman year. All I wanted to be was a girl who kept her head down, but nothing I did would be enough to conceal the body chained to my ankle.

Maybe I was being paranoid, which meant I was also being egotistical. Anyone who’s paranoid has to be, a little bit, to think that you matter enough for anyone to care about you, or gossip about you, or sneak looks at you. But even though I’d recently felt crushed by the weight of my own unimportance, I couldn’t help but think that, after two long weeks without me, the leeches of Pleasant Hills High couldn’t get enough of my blood.

I leaned in across the table to Olivia, speaking quietly but loud enough to be heard over the low roar of conversation. ‘You’re noticing, right?’

A crumb of muffin tumbled from her lip to the ground. Something about it grossed me out. ‘Noticing what?’

‘People keep looking at me.’ I spoke with my teeth squeezed together like a vice, the way a ventriloquist makes their dummy talk.