Page 115

I’m alone, dressed as I was before, my appearance the same as it ever was.

I reach up and touch the tips of my hair just as a cold breeze blows at my back, snuffing out the candles in the room.

Plunging me into darkness.

I shriek and turn around, checking to see if I left the window open a crack.

But instead, I see a figure in my room.

Standing in the corner.

Wearing white.

Oh my god, no.

Not her, not again.

The girl’s face is dark in the shadows of her long black hair that hangs to the side like a sheet.

Her neck is broken, at an angle.

It’s Farida.

White eyes glow from the darkness, staring at me.

“What do you want?” I whisper. My body starts to tremble all over, my mouth tasting like pennies. Dread seizes my bones, paralyzing me with a sense of helplessness so acute that I might just pass out.

The girl doesn’t say anything.

She just stares.

The air in the room thickens, feeling oppressive, filling with smoke from the snuffed candles. I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m suffocating.

Then she takes a step toward me.

A gasp chokes in my throat, and I drop the candle, wax spilling onto the floor.

She takes another step.

She’s going to kill me, I think.She’s jealous I’m alive, and she’s going to kill me.

“Please,” I plead. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m not your enemy.”

She pauses at that.

Then slowly tilts her head to the other side.

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, goes the vertebrae in her neck, the awful sound filling the room.

I pinch my eyes shut, hoping that maybe she’s not real, maybe it’s in my head, maybe I can convince my brain to get rid of her. Make her disappear, poof.

I open my eyes.

Her face is inches away, eyes bugging out, mouth stretched impossibly wide in a silent scream.

Fuck!

My own scream chokes me, rattling in my throat.