Page 72 of The Publicity Stunt

“Why not?”

Sighing, I hunch into my ice cream. “Nightmare.”

“Was it the same one?” she prods.

The whole point of not going back to sleep and venturing out on this bizarre ice cream mission was so I could take my mind off of it. My lips press together. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, getting what we want is obviously not the theme for tonight. Do you think you’re having them again because of Parker?”

And there’s that. During the initial few sessions with my therapist, she would tell me how nightmares often reappear when you experience something scary in real life. It could be unrelated, but the scary part saves itself somewhere in your subconscious, waiting for REM sleep to begin. So yes, of course, I’m having them again because of Parker. Which, in hindsight, isn’t a total surprise. With him back in my life, it wasn’t a question of if, but rather when. “How does it matter?” I say to Holly. “You’re gonna hate him regardless.”

She half-gapes. “I don’t hate him.”

I shoot her a look.

“Okay, fine, I’m not his biggest fan,” she concedes. “But that was when we were kids. I was just being a bitch for the sake of being a bitch.”

I take another bite of my ice cream. “So you don’t hate him?”

At this, Holly hesitates. “I mean, if I see him walking down the street tomorrow, I’m not gonna throw stones at him.”

“Why would you throw stones at him?”

“April,” she says, as ifduh, “I just said I wouldn’t throw stones at him.”

Right.

“And I never hated Parker,” Holly adds. “I was just jealous of him.”

The wheels inside my brain come to a screeching halt. “Jealous? Of what? His never-ending stash of mint comics?”

Her head stays down and she lets out a heavy sigh. “Do you remember Gracie Ha?” she asks.

My eyebrows squish together. “Gracie Ha? My eighth-grade lab partner?”

“Cute girl,” she says.

“Ahh,” I tease Holly in a singsong voice. “Cute girl, huh?”

“And that guy we met during summer camp? The one I used to tease you with? Bex?”

“Oh my God!” I clutch her arm. “He totally liked you more than me.”

Holly chuckles. “Do you remember any of my friends?”

Her question catches me off guard and I rack my brain, giving her ask a genuine thought. A few seconds pass, then a few more, before my brows draw closer and my lips part in an O. “Shit …”

Holly places a hand over my thigh, prompting my shocked face to angle toward her. “That’s because I only ever had one friend, April. And I lost her to a boy. Of course, I was jealous.”

My heart twinges. I don’t know what to say.

When I was four, my birth parents died in a car crash. I was in the front seat, sitting on my birth mother’s lap. Calling my survival a miracle has never felt right to me. I have no real memories from my time with them—well, except for a unicorn hat I absolutely refused to part with.

Six months later, I was adopted by the Moores. They were kind and never made me feel like an outsider. But more than anything, they’re the reason I have the most amazing sister in the world.

Two weeks after I moved into my new home, I had my first nightmare. I would wake up shaking, thrashing, and screaming. It got to a point where I became scared of my own bed—scared to fall asleep. I couldn’t figure out why I kept having the same nightmare over and over again. It was like one of thoseGroundhog Dayspin-offs, but inside my subconscious. And way scarier. Mom would tell me that kids’ brains are like tiny sponges, soaking in information, memories, and experiences, but only a few actually make it into adulthood. Which is when I realized that my nightmare wasn’t even a nightmare. It was a memory. I was reliving the night my birth parents died. The bridge. The flash of lights. The screaming. The fire.

I was reliving it, frame for frame.