Page 1 of Atone

PROLOGUE

ALEX

Fifteen Months Earlier

With every flickerof the lightbulb, my fingers twitch. My pulse speeds like a building drumbeat. It doesn’t matter how many months pass; I still feel the hum of electricity like a current running through my veins.

Crawling.

Eating away.

After a year of physical therapy, it still doesn’t take much for the dull ache to radiate through my arm, reminding me of everything I lost.

Of everything that put me in Montgomery Psychiatric Ward.

With a flex of my fingers, I work the joints. They're stiff from the resistance of my taut, scarred skin. It still hurts too much to write more than a sentence, much less grip a basketball, but it’s getting easier to move them every day. The mobility is slowly returning, even if my grip will never quite be the same.

Inever thought much about moving my fingers before. They worked like my lungs drink air. Effortlessly.

Now they barely curl without fire shooting through every nerve. Raging so hot I swear I can smell my flesh begin to burn.

I clench my fingers and let the pain soothe me now. I let it act as my reminder.

I hold my aching fist until my entire arm shakes.

My teeth chatter.

Exposure.

My doctors are set on medication and physical therapy, but I’m not trying to get better. I’d rather be numb. I’d rather hurt so deeply that I stop feeling anything at all.

I clench my fist and embrace it. I hold it as tightly as possible until pain radiates all the way to my shoulder. Until I physically can’t hold my fist any longer.

My fingers ache when I stretch them back out. My knuckles are brighter as blood returns to my hand.

It doesn’t even look like my hand anymore.

Did it ever?

Or have I always been this phantom existing within bone and skin? A careful design to hide the monster clawing at a flesh prison in my chest?

A beast they didn’t realize they were letting out that night.

One there's no putting back.

The lightbulb overhead flickers, and I climb off my bed, moving to the window seat. After my Sigma House initiation went sideways and I was brought to Montgomery, my parents paid to have the prior patient inhabiting this room moved elsewhere.

Only the best for their sadistic golden child, I suppose. The nicest room in the most expensive wing in thepsychiatric ward. Like it matters when there’s no amount of money that can hide what I’ve been turned into.

Nothing that silences the rumors spread around town. I’m a warning. A monster. One more reason to fear Sigma House. My father can throw every penny—every hint of influence—at this problem, and the fact remains: this is what they’ve turned me into.

Voices raise in the hallway. My sister is arguing with a nurse as she heads to my room. Her tone is flat and cold, and I try to remember the last time there was life in her heart. She hasn’t been happy in years, but with every passing month I’ve been locked in Montgomery, the light in her pale, golden-brown eyes dims.

At least now she’s living in a dorm at Briar Academy and no longer at our parents’ house. An act of rebellion as much as a statement to our mother that someday she intends to be more than her puppet. Her marionette on strings while she tugs on the cross.

Patience still has fight.

Hope.