Wren opened her eyes.
She was sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s old Jeep Wrangler, looking down at her hands. The world around her tilted momentarily, blurring and refocusing as she came back to her senses.
“Mom is gonna kill us.”
Wren blinked, dazed. She turned to her left and spotted her sister in the driver’s seat, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. Maeve’s strawberry-blond hair fell over her shoulders in tousled waves, her recently cut bangs fluffed right above her brows. Freckles dotted her sun-kissed skin, tan lines etched into the curve of hershoulders. They’d spent the entire summer lying by the lake. Wishing. Dreaming.
“What did you say?” Wren heard herself ask. She had the sense that she was missing something…that there was something she was meant to do. But no matter how hard she racked her brain, how carefully she tried to think back and recall what it was that was nagging at her subconscious, she couldn’t remember.
“Mom,” Maeve repeated over the sound of the rain hitting the roof. “She’s gonna have our heads for this. There’s no way she didn’t wake up.”
Right…the party. They had snuck out once their mom had fallen asleep, slipping out of Wren’s bedroom window, giggling under their breaths as they tiptoed across the lawn and scurried into the car.
Thunder rumbled in the distance now, streaks of lightning zigzagging across the black storm clouds dotting the sky. Humid air trickled in from the window closest to Wren, the smell of damp earth and brine filling her lungs.
“Maybe we should pull over.” Wren lowered the radio. A nagging worry was burrowing into her chest, an unmistakable sense of panic she couldn’t shake off. She was forgetting something…what was she forgetting?
Maeve chuckled, brushing Wren’s words off with a wave. “What for? I told you I didn’t drink. I’m fine. I promise.”
Something in Wren snapped like a blaring alarm.
There was something about the car. Something about the slate-black road stretching out before them…the headlights illuminating the yellow lines…the dense forest flanking them, whipping by in a blur.
“Maeve…” Wren’s voice trailed off as her heart pounded against her chest, her pulse racing, thrumming in her throat. Somethingabout it was wrong. Unnatural. She lifted her trembling hand to her throat, her heartbeat thrashing against her fingertips. Her heartbeat…her heartbeat…
Her heart.
I shouldn’t have a heart.
The thought sliced through her mind, sharp and sudden.
“Stop the car,” Wren blurted out, panicked. Time seemed to bend at the edges, warping and fragmenting. Around her, the forest began to disintegrate. Faces emerged in the darkness, staring at her, glowing sapphire eyes watching her between the crooked branches. She tried to look through the swirling haze, to find who those eyes belonged to, but everything was moving too fast.
“What are you talking about?” Maeve asked, but her voice had grown distorted, twisted and wrong.
Wren wanted to scream.
They weren’t meant to be here. This night. This car. This moment.
It was all wrong, it was all wrong, it was all—
Maeve gasped as something materialized on the road in front of them. Beady dark eyes stared back at them—a deer. Wren didn’t even see it jump onto the road. One second it wasn’t there, and the next…
The car swerved left.
Maeve screamed.
Wren reached for her sister.
Metal screeched, bent, twisted, ruptured.
Wren’s neck snapped forward, head slamming against the dashboard, blood filling her mouth. Gravity shifted. The car tilted and flipped and—
…
…
Wren woke up screaming.
