I shrugged and crossed my arms over my chest. “I snuck in.” I wasn’t about to rat on Emma or her sister. “Ground me if you want, but that won’t change anything. I was there, and I saw Heidi Anderson. And I knew she was going to die. Just like I knew about Meredith.”
Aunt Val’s eyes closed again, and she turned to stare out the window over the sink, gripping the countertop with white-knuckled hands. Then she exhaled deeply and turned back to me. “Okay, this other girl aside.” Though we both knew she’d readdress the clubbing issue later. “If you knew Meredith was going to die, why didn’t you tell someone?”
A fresh pang of guilt shuddered through me like a psychological aftershock, and I sank onto one of the cushioned bar stools facing her, my arms crossed on the countertop. “I tried.” Tears filled my eyes, blurring my aunt’s face, and I swiped at them with my sleeve before they could fall. “But when I opened my mouth, all I could do was scream. And it happened so fast! By the time I could talk again, she was dead.” I looked up, searching her face for some sign of understanding. Or belief. But there was nothing I recognized in her expression, and that scared me almost as badly as listening to Meredith die.
“I’m not even sure that saying something would have helped,” I said, feeling my courage flounder. “But I swear I tried.”
Aunt Val rubbed her forehead, then picked up her mug and started to take a drink—until she realized she hadn’t poured one. “Kaylee, surely you know how all this sounds.”
I nodded and dropped my gaze. “I sound crazy.” I knew that better than anyone.
She shook her head and leaned across the bar for my hand. “Not crazy, hon. Delusional. There’s a difference. You’re probably just really upset about what happened to Meredith, and your brain is dealing with that by making up stories to distract you from the truth. I understand. It’s scary to think that anyone anywhere can just drop dead with no warning. If it could happen to her, it could happen to any of us, right?”
I pulled my hand from hers, gaping at my aunt in disbelief. What would it take to make her believe me? Proof was pretty hard to come by when the premonitions only came a few minutes in advance.
I slid off the stool and backed up a step, eager to put a little space between us. “I barely knew Meredith. I’m not scared because I think it can happen to me. I’m scared because I knew it was going to happen to her, and I couldn’t stop it.” I sucked in a deep breath, trying to breathe beyond the guilt and grief threatening to suffocate me. “I almost wish I were going crazy. At least then I wouldn’t feel so guilty about letting someone die. But I’m not crazy. This is real.”
For several seconds, my aunt just stared at me, her expression a mixture of confusion, relief, and pity, like she wasn’t sure what she should feel.
I sighed, my shoulders fell. “You still don’t believe me.”
My aunt’s expression softened, and her posture wilted almost imperceptibly. “Oh, hon, I believe that you believe what you’re saying.” She hesitated, then shrugged, but the gesture looked more calculated than casual. “Maybe you should take a sedative too. It will help you sleep. I’m sure everything will make more sense when you wake up.”
“Sleep won’t help me.” I sounded acerbic, even to my own ears. “Neither will those stupid pills.” I grabbed the bottle from the bar where she’d left it and hurled it at the refrigerator as hard as I could. The plastic cracked and the lid fell off, scattering small white pills all over the floor.
Aunt Val jumped, then stared at me like I’d just broken her heart. When she knelt to clean up the mess, I jogged down the hall and into my room, then slammed the door and leaned against it. I’d done the best I could with my aunt; I’d try again with Uncle Brendon when he came home.
Or maybe not.
Maybe Nash knew what he was talking about when he said not to tell anyone.
FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, I stood still in my room, so angry, and scared, and confused, I didn’t know whether to scream, or cry, or hit something. I tried to read the novel on my nightstand to distract myself from the disaster my life had become, and when that didn’t work, I turned on the TV. But nothing on television held my attention and all the songs on my iPod only seemed to magnify my anger and frustration.
My mind was so full of chaos, my thoughts coming much too fast for me to grasp, that no matter what I did or where I stood, I couldn’t escape the miserable roar of half-formed thoughts my head spun with. I was starting to seriously reconsider that sedative—desperate to just be nowhere for a little while—when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Another text message from Nash. U OK?
Fine. I lied. U? I almost told him he’d been right. That I shouldn’t have told my aunt. But that was a lot of information to fit into a text.
Yeah. With Carter, he replied. Call U soon.
I thought about texting Emma, but she was still grounded. And knowing her mother, she stood no chance of a commuted sentence, even after practically seeing a classmate drop dead.
Frustrated and mentally exhausted, I finally fell asleep in the middle of the movie I wasn’t really watching in the first place. Less than an hour later, according to my alarm clock, I woke up and turned the TV off. And that’s when I realized I’d almost slept through something important.
Or at least something interesting.
In the sudden silence, I heard my aunt and uncle arguing fiercely, but too softly to understand from my room at the back of the house. I eased my bedroom door open several inches, holding my breath until I was sure the hinges wouldn’t squeal. Then I stuck my head through the gap and peered down the hall.
They were in the kitchen; my aunt’s slim shadow paced back and forth across the only visible wall. Then I heard her whisper my name—even lower in pitch than the rest of the argument—and I swallowed thickly. She was probably trying to convince Uncle Brendon to take me back to the hospital.
That was not going to happen.
Angry now, I eased the door open farther and slipped into the hall. If my uncle gave in, I’d simply step up and tell them I wasn’t going. Or maybe I’d just jump in my car and leave until they came to their senses. I could go to Emma’s. No, wait. She was grounded. So I’d go to Nash’s.
Where I wound up didn’t matter, so long as it wasn’t the mental-health ward.
I inched down the hall, grateful for my silent socks and the tile floor, which didn’t creak. But I froze several feet from the kitchen doorway when my uncle spoke, his words still low but now perfectly audible.
“You’re overreacting, Valerie. She got through it last time, and she’ll get through it this time. I see no reason to bother him while he’s working.”
While I appreciated my uncle standing up for me, even if he didn’t believe in my premonitions either, I seriously doubted Dr. Nelson would consider himself “bothered” by a phone call about a patient. Not considering what he was probably getting paid.
“I don’t know what else to do.” Aunt Val sighed, and a chair scraped the floor as my uncle’s shadow stood. “She’s really upset, and I think I made it worse. She knows something’s going on. I tried to get her to take a sedative, but she busted the bottle on the refrigerator.”
Uncle Brendon chuckled, from across the kitchen now. “She knows she doesn’t need those damn pills.”
Yeah! I was starting to wonder if my uncle wore chain mail beneath his clothes, because he sounded eager to slay the dragon Skepticism. And I was ready to ride into battle with him….
“Of course she doesn’t,” Aunt Val conceded wearily, and her shadow folded its arms across its chest. “The