Page 34 of Overdose

They wanted me toknowthey knew.

I step back, slow, gut twisting. This wasn’t random. Wasn’t some junkie who snapped or a deal gone bad. This was a fucking message.

Because when you owe these people, you don’t get warnings. You don’t get chances.

You disappear.

They kill you slow, or fast, doesn’t matter. Either way, you’re gone. Erased.

And if someone loves you? Cares too loud? Tries to hold on?

They go too.

Collateral. A reminder. A message thatnothingis off limits.

I’ve seen what that looks like.

I still fucking see it.

I know exactly how this plays out.

They want me rattled. Paranoid. Next on the list.

But they miscalculated.

Because I don’t run, and I don’t scare easy.

I bury threats, and if they want to dig up the past, they better bring a shovel big enough to burythemselves.

Seven

Blair

It’s been three days.

Maybe four.

Time’s slippery here, like everything outside this crusty motel room exists in some other timeline where girls like me still had futures. I don’t remember how I got back after the party. I remember strobe lights, breathless kisses, someone’s hands on my thighs. Then nothing. Just darkness. Static. A hard mattress and the lingering taste of regret.

I’ve been holed up in this dump since.

The motel’s a budget beach rat paradise, if by paradise you mean mildew in the corners and paper-thin towels that smell like burnt dryer sheets. I haven’t left this bed except to piss and grab whatever sad excuse for food I could get delivered through DashDrop—the knockoff app with slower drivers and warmer soda. I’ve been living on fries, lukewarm tacos, and reruns of '90s sitcoms where everyone has their shit together and no one’s sister disappears off the face of the earth.

My phone lights up again from the nightstand.

Mom.

Third time today. Fifteenth this week. The notifications stack up like guilt.

I don’t answer.

I haven’t answered since the first call came in after the party. She keeps trying because for the longest time, I was the “good one.” Brynn was the chaos. I was the straight-A student. The girl with a full-ride scholarship and a five-year plan and a carefully curated future that fit into a PowerPoint slide.

Until it all went to hell.

Until I started chasing shadows and calling it hope. Tossed everything—college, friends, sense of self—into the fire the second Brynn went missing. Because I couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t accept that I might be the only one who made it out.

And now? I’m nothing but another ghost haunting motel beds with skin that smells like smoke and boys who don’t know how to stay.