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“Remy.”
Her eyes snap open, but she keeps her head tilted back at an angle that’s wrong. All wrong. “WAKE UP.”
The scream jolts me out of bed, and it’s not her scream, it’s mine. It’s claws at the inside of my throat. I have to get out.
Bedroom floor comes up at a weird angle. I must’ve rolled out of bed, but I don’t know which bed this is. My palm hits wet fabric. I stumble into them, something stinging my eyes. Hurts to put them on but I’m going to need clothes at the hospital. I have to get Gabriel there. I have to get Mason—
I have to get all of them there.
No. It’s too late. They’re all dead, and Remy saw, she saw those pictures, she knows, she died knowing—
“No, no,no.” It becomes an incoherent howl. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how old I am. I don’t recognize any of this shit. Not the hallway, not this living room. I wrench open the first door I find and keep moving.
I didn’t want her to see those pictures.
I didn’t want her to see them.
Those pictures.
Thosepictures.
“Please, stop.Please.” Bile burns its way up into my throat, into my mouth, and I stop to throw up on the trunk of a tree. It hurts so much. My next breath is pure terror. I can’t get enough air in, and I’m afraid to open my eyes in case my dead siblings have gathered around again, in case Remy’s holding those pictures, in case she—
Did they look like they were sleeping? Jameson. Did Mom and Dad look like they were sleeping when they died? Do they look like they’re sleeping now?
I force my eyes open. Everything’s blurred, and I’m going to lose it, I can’t take it, I can’t tell if it’s real—
The waves sound real. I go toward them, my feet catching on wet grass until I hit sand. It’s miles to the water and the waves and I’m so scared, I’m so scared it’s not real.
My knees give out at the shore, and my hands land in the water.
It’s not an act of courage.
I’m a coward. If I hadn’t fallen in this spot, I wouldn’t have touched it at all.
The water’s real.
Cool ripples spread between my fingers. The knees of my jeans are colder now, too, from the wet sand. Soft rain falls on the back of my neck. Something’s happening to my chest, and my abs. Every part of my body is involved in it, but I couldn’t for the life of me say what it is. Droplets fall into the lake by my hands. More rain, I think.
It’s the lake. It’s my lake. It’s my cabin.
Mason’s not dead. Gabriel’s not dead. Remy’s not dead.
“Jameson?”
I don’t know I’m saying all of it out loud until the gentle touch on my shoulder scares the hell out of me. My heart rips in half. I jerk my head up to be sure it’s not seven-year-old Remy with those pictures.
It’s Lily.
It hits me in a catastrophic instant that I’m sobbing with my hands in a lake. I’m a goddamn wreck, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Worst ofall,she watched this happen. I’d bet anything it was her trying to wake me up.
“Go inside,” I bark at her in my finest display of being an unhinged asshole. “Don’t look at me.”
She doesn’t take her hand off my shoulder. “Jameson…”
“Don’tlookat me.”
Lily looks anyway. She holds a blanket around her shoulders with one hand and touches me with the other.
