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I didn’t come here for that; I came here for this. I came to find Tress again and there’s a path and maybe that’s how I find her because she is also not human anymore she is an animal and she would be here, she would be with them and I will find her again. And I’m following and I’m walking where she has walked and I am running and our feet are the same and we are the same and we are together again and Goldie is tugging on my hand now pulling, because we don’t use words now we do this and—

A snap. A flash.

And pain.

Not a flash of David’s phone and not a snap of a picture being taken and not pain of words on a sign but real pain on my foot because it is not Tress’s foot and we are not the same and I forgot that and now I am in water and I am drowning.

It’s . . . familiar.

Why is that?

These are my thoughts and they are clear and cogent for the first time since forever, and I know that I have forgotten more than Tress. I have forgotten much more, but now there is Goldie and she is with me, and she has her mouth on my arm and she is gentle with not teeth and she is pulling me away from water and toward land but something else has teeth and it is coming and I try to tell her but how we talk now doesn’t work anymore and I don’t have words either and there is a crack.

And there is no more Goldie.

Chapter 68

Tress

“Yeah, that electric fence, it’ll get you,” I hear myself saying, an idiotic response to the story of how my dog died.

“Hurts, right?” I ask, digging into what Felicity just told me, doing the same thing she was, trying to find the scraps of what we still share.

Like being shocked by an electric fence.

Like knowing how something dies.

“I loved that dog,” I say, and it’s another dumb thing to say, but it’s true, and like a lot of true things it’s also incredibly sad.

I’m crying when I lay the next row.

Chapter 69

Felicity

Tress’s hands shake a little as she lays the ninth row of bricks, drops of her blood mixing with the mortar. She doesn’t speak as she does it, and I don’t argue. There’s nothing to say. I might have ranted and raved at her about the junior-class secretary thing, but I deserve the bricks she’s laying right now.

I try to calculate, measure the distance that’s left. But there’s an echo in my head still, Tress’s words not letting go of me.

Cheaters gonna cheat. . . .

Cheaters gonna cheat and I know how it feels to drown. These thoughts hold hands in my head, forming a chain leading back into the dark parts of my mind, the ones I threw shadows over, in order to forget.

But that’s inside of me, and I need to concentrate on what’s outside right now. The wall in front of me is past my thighs; the layer Tress is adding will bring it halfway up my body. There’s still space between it and the ceiling, but the gap is closing. We’re over halfway there. I exhale, the sharp smell of my own breath filtering up to my nose. What the fuck am I going to do?

My mom is an eternal optimist, always looking for the bright side of things, even if they do tend to verge on being incredibly shallow. When life hands you lemons, put them in your hair for highlights is one of her favorite sayings. Global warming means better tans. The flu that laid her low at the beginning of the week was doing her a favor by trimming off at least five pounds. Her immediate reaction to the doctor diagnosing my seizures had been to proclaim, “Well, at least it’s not something with your face.”

What would she have to say about this? I wonder.

You’re going to die, but Tress Montor will still be a brunette.

I laugh a little, but it quickly descends into a sob, thinking of my mom. She’s not going to be okay, if this ends the way I think it’s going to.

“Something funny?” Tress asks. She puts the pail down, and rests on the chair, her skin sallow and sagging after the effort that went into adding the layer of bricks.

The truth is that nothing is funny, not a damn thing. I’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness, my mind hopping from the night her parents disappeared to this musty, dank hole I’m going to die in. I don’t want to be in either place, and what I’ve remembered is not going to make Tress any happier. I’m chained to a wall, facing down a girl who wants to entomb me. And I have to tell her something that’s going to kill her.

Then she’ll kill me.