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Walk? I can't talk.

"I've got her," Silas says. "We'll go out through the garage again. We should hurry, though. We'll be lucky if no one heard that gunshot, and we're fucked if they did."

Silas leans down, picking me up, and carries me through the living room, stepping over my mom's body on the way to the door, the weapon she shot me with lying just to her side.

I shouldn't have looked.

She's wearing Christmas pajamas—the ones I bought for her last year—the white and red shredded flannel material drenched in blood and clinging to what's left of her torso. Her lifeless, glossy green eyes follow me until we're out of sight.

Silas sets me down in Tate's lap in the passenger seat and then gets in on the driver's side and starts the car.

We pull away from the house, and I know it's the last time I'll ever see it. It's the last time I'll ever see this neighborhood, this town. It's the last time I'll see anything.

And inside each of the cookie cutter houses—with their matching exterior lights all set to turn on at the same time every night—everyone else is just sleeping. Tomorrow, maybe they'll send thoughts and prayers like they did when Mia died, and then they'll sleep just fine again.

"You ruined everything."

I surprise myself when I hear the words aloud instead of just inside my head.

Tate threads his fingers through my hair, still damp from my shower, his thumb tracing circles against that spot behind my ear again.

"I didn't mean to," he says. "I never wanted to hurtyou. And I get it. I know you think I don't, but I do, because Idounderstand you."

"No, you don't."

"I do. You needed someone to love you out loud so that you'd believe it. I can't really explain why I couldn't do it. It wasn't anything you did wrong."

I'm far too tired, far too broken at a visceral, soul-shredding level to listen to any of this. The fabric of my existence has been mangled, splintered into something I don't even want to look at anymore. I can't take anymore.

"I just want it to be over. I want to be clean, too."

"Hey, it's your song." Tate leans forward, turning up the volume. "Hey There Delilah" by Plain White T's plays on thestereo. "The world will never be the same, and you're to blame, sweetheart."

But it's not my song. I'm not sure it's my fault, but the world won't ever be the same. That version of me—of the three of us—it doesn't exist; it hasn't existed for a long time. And now, we'll always be this. We'll always be the runaways—the cannibals from my childhood bedtime story.

The murderers and their victim who mistook this all for love.

"Hey, what's worse than death?"

What? What is this? A riddle? A threat? "Tate, I can't…I don't have the energy."

"In the house, you said there were things worse than death. What's worse?"

This,I think. All of this is worse. Being tricked into a sexual relationship with two of your friends and falling in love with them, only to find out they weren't capable of loving someone like you out loud—and he's right. It is what I needed. Now, I'll never know what that feels like.

Your best friend taking her own life when you're on bad terms and knowing you'll never get the chance to fix it.

Watching your mother's husband abuse her. Your own mother pointing a gun at you and pulling the trigger. Stepping over her dead body.

This is all worse.

"The hole," I tell him.

He can't possibly know what I'm talking about, but he never asks for clarification, nodding before kissing my forehead. I close my eyes, letting fresh tears roll down my cheeks.

nine

Hair Dye and Cigarette Guy