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My lungs are on fire as Serena and I crash on to the scene playing out in front of the Riovan.

The hotel’s circle drive is a chaos of activity, people and vehicles and flashing lights, but all I can see is the stretcher bearing Skylar, carried by two paramedics. They have an oxygen mask over her face. I run up to them. I have to make sure she’s alive—

A forearm shoots up like a guard rail, blocking me at chest level from getting any closer.

‘ Mademoiselle ,’ says a man in a navy blue uniform with reflective strips on his jacket. ‘I’m going to ask that you stay where you are.’

‘You don’t understand.’ I clutch his arm. Tears fist in my throat. ‘I’m her—’

He waits with a look of beleaguered patience.

Her what?

I shake my head as a hot fog fills my vision. I remove my hand from his arm. Stumble back.

‘Sorry.’

I have no legal standing here. No legal standing with Jessica either.

The medics load the stretcher bearing Skylar into the back of the ambulance.

She’s so small under the blanket. I know without asking that it was the stuff Serena gave her that did this– the CleanSlim.

What else could cause a perfectly healthy teen to go into a spontaneous health crisis?

In her eagerness to drop weight and please her mother, Skylar could easily have taken way too much—

The ambulance lights are flashing silently, in bursts of red like a pulsing heart, just like the lights flashed that night.

It was after midnight. It was cold. I was still in my suit from the conference, and my nice eggshell silk blouse.

They let me ride with Jessica. She had an oxygen mask on, too.

I worried the hem of my blouse. The silk was splattered with blood.

I’ll have to get it dry cleaned , I remember thinking, incongruously.

‘Is she going to be OK?’ I kept asking, in the ambulance and then when we arrived at the hospital, but no one would tell me. Her eyelids looked so delicate. Open , I wished at them. Open .

I feel a hand on my arm, and my entire body jolts.

‘Lily, why don’t you head back inside—’

‘Vic,’ I say, spinning around, seizing his upper arm and shaking him. ‘It’s that brand... CleanSlim– Skylar took it.’

‘Sorry– what?’ He seems genuinely confused.

‘She was crying in the bathroom… they didn’t see me– I mean, Serena or Skylar– I was in a stall, I think Serena thought she was alone.

Skylar’s mom was on her about losing– losing—’ I gesture towards the ambulance, aware I’m not telling Vic the story right, but my head is a hot scramble.

I make an erasing gesture with both hands and shake my head.

‘Sorry– what I’m trying to say is, Serena—’

‘Shhh,’ he says, grabbing my shoulder and giving it a few firm pulses. ‘I can see you’re upset, Lily, and understandably so. You’ve been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Let the medical professionals do their job, and you and I can talk later about… whatever you’re trying to tell me.’

‘You don’t understand—’

‘Sorry, I can’t talk now,’ he says firmly, his attention tearing away from me as he waves at someone across the drive. ‘Eric! Thank God. Over here—’ And he’s off.

I crouch down, suddenly lightheaded.

‘What’s wrong with my daughter?’ Beth Ann is shouting.

No, it’s Skylar’s mom shouting.

What’s wrong is that you’ve infected her with the idea that she has to be thin to please you. She wanted to make you happy. And now look what you’ve done.

I hear Serena’s voice and register that she’s standing next to Skylar’s mom by the open back of the ambulance. ‘All our thoughts and prayers are with you,’ she’s saying, loud and saccharine above the running engine. Does Serena know what she’s done? Does she know this is her fault?

The ambulance doors slam shut.

My chest is seizing up, my breathing short. I crash my head into my hands.

I failed. Again. I should have found Skylar, after what Serena told her in the bathroom… should have made sure to take away those powders… or talk to her mom, or Vic… instead, all I could think of was my target list. When I could have done so much more.

Have I done anything at all of value, these past five years? I always had it in my mind that I was saving the victims. What if the people I sought to protect are still ruined?

I haven’t looked them up. Not Jade, whose mother I injected with steroids.

Not Carli Elle, whose career apparently took a freefall.

I’ve always told myself it’s because I understood where my scope of control ended.

I removed the bad guy; the rest had to be up to them.

But what if I didn’t really help any of them?

That’s why I haven’t looked.

That’s the truth.

Not because of some bullshit about scope of control.

Because I’m scared.

Scared that what I’ve done here, the things that can’t be taken back, were all…

… for nothing.

‘Hey.’ A hand rests on my back, its pressure solid. Daniel.

‘I fucked up,’ I gasp out with a shallow laugh. I don’t even care what Daniel thinks. ‘I– fucked– up—’ I can barely fit the words in between my frantic spurts of breath.

‘Hey. Hey. It’s OK, Lily. Just breathe.’

The ambulance bleats out a siren and tyres screech as it peels out of the circle drive. Vic’s voice comes from somewhere above me.

‘Is she OK?’

‘I think she’s having a panic attack,’ says Daniel. His hand doesn’t move from my back.

‘I’m fine—’ I say. ‘I know I have to be at the pool.’

‘She’s in no condition to lifeguard right now,’ says Daniel.

Vic crouches down. I still don’t look at him. He smells like magnolia.

‘Lily? I know it’s been a lot between Herb Tulaine and this little girl.

’ His voice is appeasing, but I know I’m losing standing in his eyes.

Businesslike Vic has never appreciated meltdowns.

For five years now I’ve given him strong, capable Lily.

I shouldn’t care that my image is crumbling in his eyes; fuck that. I’m not welcome back next year anyway.

‘You just take it easy, OK?’ Vic is saying. ‘Don’t worry about your shift. We’ll cover for you. You take care of yourself.’

The problem is, I’ve forgotten how to take care of myself.

It’s about taking care of Jessica– trying to rebalance the scales– trying to force something good out of a nightmare and set her free somehow. Trying to save the victims that can still be saved…

But maybe I haven’t done that at all.

Maybe I’ve just pretended to.

Maybe this hasn’t been for them, but for me.

Daniel is helping me stand, wrapping his arm around me. The world is tipping under me, but his grip is steady. ‘C’mon. I got you.’

*

The comforter is a cocoon around me, holding me and my grief wrapped tightly together as I lie curled on Daniel’s bed. Loud, painful sobs peel out of me, as though someone is yanking them out, stripping me down.

I want it to stop, but I’m past the point of no return. If my grief is the predator I’ve been running from all these years, it’s finally caught up.

Pain is all there is. It feels like I’ll never move again.

Then, strong arms wrap around me.

Daniel; he’s lying next to me, holding me.

He doesn’t flinch as I spasm and cough and choke on my tears.

He doesn’t say anything, either. Just stays, solid and unmoving and warm and real.

An eternity later, my body begins to ease, each breath slower and deeper than the last. Finally, after a ragged exhale that feels like it expels the last of the poison, I feel myself return from wherever I just went.

It still hurts. But the violence is over, for now.

We lie quietly as my body remembers how to breathe, how to be. Daniel’s arms are braced around my torso, one of my hands wrapped around his wrist, and little by little, our breathing syncs, as if we’ve found the same frequency of existence.

I don’t know how long we lie here.

Or why I start speaking.

‘She slit her wrists in the bath.’

Daniel doesn’t flinch. The curtains are semi-drawn, and a fierce blade of light lies across our bodies, jagged and brilliant.

Daniel’s notes: What happened to Jessica? I’m not surprised he couldn’t find out, between HIPAA laws and Jess’s family’s private-mode social media. I’m going to tell him. I need him to know. I need someone to know my side of the story. What it felt like to live through that horrific night.

‘But we think she actually… changed her mind. Part way through.’ My throat squeezes.

I hate this part. Hate it. Just because I’ve never spoken of it out loud since then, doesn’t mean I haven’t relived it over and over in my head.

‘She got out of the bath and tried to get to her phone to call for help, but she was dripping wet and weak from blood loss, and she slipped and hit her head on the kitchen counter.’ I suck in my lips and breathe out through my nostrils.

Even though I wasn’t there, I’m seeing it play through my mind as if I was. Like I’ve done ever since it happened.

That night, I was at a networking event for young entrepreneurs in Cincinnati while my girlfriend was attempting to take her own life.

I was hobnobbing while she decided she didn’t want to exist any more.

I was talking about loans and grants and marketing software and customer ‘touch points’ while she was walking through unimaginable pain, because she was that desperate for an exit.

Fuck.