Page 69 of Plain Sight

But now there’s a door.

I open it.

On the other side, my feet land on kitchen tiles. My mom is leaning on the kitchen island, my teacup in her hands. Light from the window shines on her face. Three more steps and I can see what she’s watching—us, in the backyard. Me and Mason, playing with two-year-old Remy, rolling a big, soft ball so she can toddle after it.

“Jamie,” my mom says, a happy, summer-vacation smile stretching across her face. “You’re dead.”

“No—”

The teacup shatters in her hands, stabbing into the meat of her palms. She frowns down at the broken china, and then a streak of molten ash tears down the center of her face and keeps tearing until she’s burning up on the floor, burning a hole through the floor. It can’t be too late. She was just alive. My legs give out underneath me and I reach for her to pull her out of the flames, but they’re coming from inside her, and my fingers don’t touch anything but cold ash.

“No. No.” I rake through the ashes, searching for any piece of her I can find. My fingers break on the concrete floor. We didn’t have a concrete floor. It’s a sidewalk, not the floor, and I make the mistake of looking up.

I’m such a fucking disaster.

I look up, and there’s Gabriel, falling. He hits the sidewalk with a terrible wet sound, screaming, screaming, and I don’t know what to do so I crawl over to him on busted kneecaps and when I get there he turns his head and he’s Mason.

“Jesus, no,” I manage. “Mason, please. Mason please.”

He blinks, his eyes focusing, and then he sits up, a crease in his forehead. “Jamie, stop screaming.”

“I’m not screaming.” My throat is completely raw. Hurts so fucking bad. “Please.”

He puts his arms out, but they come from the wrong direction. My foot curves over a ledge, my toes wiggling into nothing. Whoever it is pulls. I don’t want to go back there. I can’t go back there. But they pull harder, and then my foot is on cool, solid tiles.

The tiles come up.

Or I go down.

And then there’s a T-shirt?

A person.

Whoever it is, they’re not screaming or broken or bleeding out. They’re just holding.

Me. Holding me.

“You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay, Jamie. You didn’t fall in the pool.”

My lungs don’t want to expand to fit any air, but they do. “Mase?”

“It’s me. It’s fine. You’re okay.”

He can’t be down here. He can’t even get out of bed. He might die from the pain, not to mention the fall.

“But what about—what about⁠—”

“I’m okay, too.”

“I don’t think—” The apartment is starting to fade in. I can only see it in my peripheral vision. “I don’t think I can wake up.”

“That’s okay,” he says. “I’ll wait. We’ll wait here.”

Small footsteps wake me up.

“I can’t sleep,” Remy says. She wears a pink nightgown with a sequined heart on the front, and her hair’s wild, a blonde halo around her head.

“Why not?”