Page 120 of Eternal

The only car is gone.

My chanceis gone.

“I don’t start at Briar until the fall.” He catches me when I stumble.

“Fall…?” I lift my hands, and they feel like they’re floating. “It’s still summer?”

It’s not cold at all, so why does my skin feel like ice, and why am I shivering?

“What are you on right now, Teal?” Declan grabs my hand, turning me to face him. “Yes, it’s summer. School just got out last week.”

“For you.” I feel myself smiling, but I’m not happy. Everything hurts, from my toes to my cheeks. “I still have summer school. And then another year.”

“You know what I’m talking about. What’s going on with you? You almost got yourself killed just now. Have you been drinking?”

“No.” I smile, but it burns my cheeks, and I’m not happy, so I can’t figure out why that keeps happening. “I don’t drink, remember?”

He jokes about it whenever he sees me at a party. He’ll hand me a water bottle and poke fun at the fact that I’m a pathetic sophomore who doesn’t drink or date.

I blink, and Declan splits in two before melting back into one.

“Are you floating?” I ask him. “I think I might be floating. The air is so…”

Waving my arms out, I spin. Or maybe I’m standing still, and it just feels like I’m spinning. Air tickles my legs.

My legs?

I’m not wearing any pants, just a long T-shirt that barely covers my ass. Reaching down, I touch my thighs, and memories flood back to me.

Waking up in the middle of the night.

Wandering downstairs for a glass of water.

Seeinghim.

I ran.

“Teal, what happened?” Declan steps closer in the darkness. “What are you doing out here?”

I look to the road for light, but without the headlights, the stars and moon are all I have left. Darkness isn’t enough for a sunflower to bloom, and it’s all I have.

“Nothing happened,” I lie, searching the road for another car.

There are cleaner ways to do this, but now this is my only option. I keep telling them I don’t want to be here anymore, but they never listen. They make me stay. Pump me full of pills and lock me away.

Declan grabs my arms, and my vision blurs as I try to make out his face. “What did you take?”

“I—” My eyebrows pinch, and I drop my gaze to the dirt, where the little white bottle sits like a blinking beacon on the side of the road.

Declan follows my gaze and walks over to it. “Lithium? I thought the doctors said you weren’t bipolar. That was a misdiagnosis.”

“What?” A laugh bursts out of me, but I don’t know where it came from. “How do you even know that?”

He doesn’t answer, tucking the empty bottle in his pocket and walking back over to me.

“How many?”

“One.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Two… three… I don’t know. Enough to take the pain away.”