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Prologue

“Leave me alone!” she said, trying to get around me and through the door. I grabbed her by the arms and forced her to look at me.

“You want to tell me what the hell’s going on with you?” I asked, furious.

She looked back, and I could see her eyes were hiding something dark, yet she smiled at me joylessly.

“This is your world, Nicholas,” she replied calmly. “I’m living your life, hanging out with your friends, and feeling like I don’t have a care in the world. That’s how you are, and that’s how I’m supposed to be, too,” she said and stepped back, pulling away from me.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“You’re out of control,” I hissed at her. I didn’t like who the girl I was in love with was turning into. But when I thought about it, what she was doing and how she was doing it were the same things I had done before I met her. I was the one who got her into all this. It was my fault. It was my fault she was destroying herself.

In a way, we’d switched roles. She had shown up and dragged me out of the black hole I’d fallen into, but in doing so, she’d wound up taking my place.