Or something worse?
I reach for my phone, then stop.
The police?
Bennett?
Whitney would know what to do.
But Whitney isn’t here.
The silence stretches, thick and suffocating.
I look back at the photos.
They wanted me to be afraid.
Congratulations.
It’s working.
But beneath the fear, something else is rising.
Anger.
Sharp. Steady.
I’m not going to let them control me.
Not Phillip.
Not whoever did this.
I don’t know what game this is—but I’m not the one who’s going to lose.
Chapter Six
My new roommate is insane,one of Whitney’s journals begins,and I love her.
I crack a smile at the first entry, dated the first day of our sophomore year at Miami University.
She’s crazy and beautiful and outspoken, and I have a girl crush to end all girl crushes. How can someone be this gorgeous and this cool? In my experience, girls who look like that—with bone structure straight out of a modeling agency—are usually stuck-up and unbearable. But McCullough? She swears like a sailor and somehow manages to outdo even me. We’re going to be best friends. I can feel it. And even if she thinks she doesn’t want to be, I’ll change her mind.
My smile deepens despite everything.
Mom says I should keep my distance. Adopted kids—especially ones from the reservation—are nothing but trouble.
A pause in the ink.
But maybe McCullough is exactly the kind of trouble I want.
I flip to the next page, skimming. Classes. A professor she has a crush on. A frat party we went to that weekend.
Whitney only writes in this journal every few months, if the dates are any indication.
Still, it’s enough.
Reading her words pulls me back—over a decade—to a version of my life I’ve spent years trying to bury.
