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KIERSTEN WHITE
PERFECT LIES
For Noah
My past, present, and future
Table of Contents
Annie: Three and a Half Months Before
Annie: Two and a Half Months Before
Annie: Two and a Half Months Before
Fia: Twenty-eight Hours Before
Annie: Twenty-eight Days Before
ANNIE.
Annie.
Annie.
Annie.
I can’t think about her, not ever. It isn’t safe.
But when I’m asleep, no one can listen to my thoughts. I’m still afraid to sleep—too many ghosts peering creeping condemning. Sometimes though, the good times, I get Annie.
It’s always the same.
Phillip Keane is gone, his webs destroyed, everything smoking and charred in beautiful ruins around me. We’re safe. It’s over.
But my hands are red, they’re still so red I can’t look at them, can’t see them, can’t breathe.
And then Annie is there. She’s too young. I know she doesn’t look like that anymore, but her face is open and innocent and clean. She wraps her hands around mine, so that I can’t see the red anymore. We’re together, and when we’re together, all these things I’ve done, they don’t matter anymore because they were worth it.
If I were Annie, I’d know whether this was a real future. All I know is it’s the only one I want, the thing that keeps me going.
I will make that future happen.
SHE DIDN’T KILL ME.
I was ready for the knife. I’d made my peace with whatever Fia needed to do to be okay. But … she didn’t kill me. I try to keep my breathing shallow and hidden, try not to flex my fingers over the phone, though I want to.
Fia didn’t kill me!
She must have come up with something else, some way out of this. I knew she would. I knew she would fix everything, I knew