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Briefly, I consider trying to sleep. But I am way too hyped up for that to come close to being an option. It isn’t as late as it feels like it is, even though the sun set hours ago. One glance at the clock confirms that it’s barely past nine o’clock.
The longest part of the night is still yet to come.
I glance at my phone again, hating the way I feel when there aren’t any notifications on the screen.
How did I end up acting like the girl who sits around waiting for a guy to call her?
I’ve always hated winter nights. The darkness lasts for way longer than it should. It doesn’t make sense that it’s already dark out by dinnertime.
Humans have always been afraid of the dark and cold. Before central heating and sturdy walls, the darkness cost people their lives. Predators hunt in the dark and the freezing cold of winter can be deadly when you don’t have any protection from it. That’s why everything about this season involves fire and light as we try to chase a bit of that darkness away.
I turn on the bathroom light. My face looks too gaunt in the crappy florescent lighting. Shadows rim my eyes and darken the hollows of my cheeks.
I look like shit.
The bathroom is a chaotic mess, which is just as much Anya’s fault than mine. Bottles and containers of various sizes litter the countertop. I pick up an eyeshadow palette made up of sparkly gemstone colors and consider it under the light before setting it back down.
All the products that I took from my sister’s belongings before I came are haphazardly organized on my side of the sink.
Olivia had always been the neater twin, but I doubt Anya has noticed the difference. If she has, hopefully she chalked it up to what happened last year. The kind of thing that Olivia went through would change anyone in some fundamental ways.
But it’s starting to bug me just how few questions Anya has asked, just how few of the obvious differences she has noticed. Nobody seems to really know anything about my sister, even though she was here for almost a year. It’s hard not to want to blame them all for that.
From what I can tell, Olivia made no real friends. No one followed up to find out what happened after she mysteriously disappeared from campus weeks before the semester ended. No one was particularly happy to see her come back.
Vaughn only liked Olivia enough to date her on the sly, as long as none of his friends found out about it.
Drake didn’t even know her name until he found her half-dead in the woods.
On some level, Anya might have been happy to be done with the weird, quiet girl who was more of a social liability as a roommate than she was anything else. I get the feeling that they didn’t share more than a few words over the months they lived together.
She couldn’t have known that Olivia used to organize our toys by size and color. Or that she would throw a fit if the nanny didn’t put something back in its proper place. Olivia would have taken one look at this mess of a bathroom and stay up all night with a scrub brush until every inch of it shone.
Olivia also got herself involved with Havoc House.
Apparently, no one really knew my sister. Including me.
Washing my face with the stuff that Olivia must have bought the last time she went to Paris makes me feel a bit more human. Her night moisturizer smells like a ninety-year-old woman who lives in a penthouse on fifth avenue with her twin chihuahuas, but it’s effective. At least, I look less like a desiccated corpse.
The building creaks and moans around me as I wander around the apartment, trying and failing to find something to divert my attention.
When I go to the window to close the blinds, I see movement out of the corner of my eye.
I look again, but there isn’t anything there.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I force myself not to look until it vibrates again, rattling the wood. Two text messages have come in, one right after another.
Unknown: …5
Unknown: …4
My heart freezes in my chest. I pick up the phone and go back to the window. The single street lamp outside isn’t enough to illuminate more than a few feet in each direction. Nothing moves in the darkness outside.
The phone vibrates again in my hand.
Unknown: …3
It’s a countdown. But I don’t want to know what will happen when it runs out.
