Page 40 of What Goes Around

I flinched.

I was alive.

The thought didn’t make sense.

I pushed myself up too fast, and the room tilted violently. My stomach lurched. I grabbed the edge of the sink, fingers slipping against the smooth surface as the world struggled to settle into place.

Then I saw myself in the mirror.

My shirt clung to my skin, damp and reeking of beer, but that wasn’t the strangest part. The girl staring back at me wasn’t the one I remembered dying as.

“No…” The word slipped out, barely a whisper.

My hand lifted slowly, trembling as I reached for my face. My fingers brushed my cheek.

My face was smooth. No melted skin. No jagged ridges of scar tissue. Thick bangs. Shoulder-length hair.

Wasn’t I supposed to be dead?

I remembered it clearly. The knife. The pain. Her voice in my ear.

My stomach twisted, and I grabbed the sink to keep from collapsing.

The last time I had looked like this was senior year, right after Mom dragged me to that salon and insisted on chopping off my waist-length hair because it would make me look more responsible.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

But the muffled bass outside the bathroom was real enough. The laughter. The shifting voices. The clink of bottles.

I swallowed hard and forced myself to move.

My hand hovered on the doorknob for a second, hesitation locking my body in place. Opening it felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross.

Then I turned it.

The door swung open and the noise hit me all at once.

Music slammed into me, loud and chaotic. The hallway was bright, full of people, the air thick with cheap perfume, sweat, and alcohol. People brushed past me without a second glance, laughing, shouting, alive in a way that felt distant and unreal.

Young.

So young.

My heart started pounding, faster now, harder.

Someone bumped into my shoulder hard, muttering a slurred “sorry” before stumbling upstairs, half-dragging a girl who could barely walk.

I pressed my back to the wall, trying to breathe, trying to gather any detail that could explain this impossible reality.

I got this sharp déjà vu feeling, like I was replaying a scene.

Across the room, a group of guys crowded around a table displaying a brand-new basketball trophy, the one the team had won earlier today. Polished gold, the player frozen mid-jump, arm outstretched with a tiny ball molded into his hand.

Before it even happened, I knew exactly what was about to unfold.

A drunk guy in a letterman jacket stumbled backward, laughing hard, and I already knew where he’d fall.