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The pins slip into place, the lock gives way, and it’s open.

I throw the door wide and barely catch myself on the hardwood floor, rolling onto my aching back and laughing hysterically at the plain white ceiling.

“Fuck you, Mom,” I manage between giggles, savoring the glow of the moon through the back window. My forehead hurts. I’ll have a bruise there. My throat is dry and raw, and my face is numb from all the crying. “Go to hell.”

I want to lie here and never get up. I should. I might.

But I can’t.

Because Mom stole my shoes and Felicity’s knife.

So I force myself up, pulling the slog of my body and all my struggling muscles into some semblance of order. If I could get away from Dad that day in the penthouse, I can get through anything. In the mirror, my hair is a ragged mess. I massage my hands, measure my breathing, figure out where to start.

Mom has a knife. That’s what I tell myself. I can get through anything, and Mom has a knife.

The first thing I see is my phone, lying on the counter where I left it. As good a place to start as any. I grab it and thumb through the unread messages, stomach falling as I see they’re all from Felicity. Shit. Either they’re telling me they sent everything to Mom, just like I knew they would, or they’re—

Felicity

morgan

what the fuck did you do

why is the documentary trending right now

Then, timestamped a few minutes later:

Felicity

holy shit your mom is live

what the fuck

what did you DO??

Mom is livestreaming?

I glance across the room to her tablet, which is sitting on the couch. I might be able to view it from one of her own devices, but …

When I told Felicity I don’t have an Instagram account, I was lying. I have one account on almost every social media platform, for catalog purposes. For keeping an eye on Mom, and the way people talk about us. They all have default profile pictures, first-name-bunch-of-numbers usernames. I follow nobody and only porn bots follow me.

I open the app where Mom has the most followers, and there she is.

With shaking fingers, I join the stream.

Bellamy Slaughter is live now+Follow

I AM IN DANGER!! #truecrime #serialkillers #real

[Video: A white woman in a coat, strands of red hair sticking out from her knit hat, huddles in front of her phone camera from the driver’s seat of her car. It’s dark out. She is crying.]

—and I don’t want to say that I didn’t see it coming because, you know, that absolves me of all responsibility, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t deserve to. This is the most horrible way this could’ve gone, and oh my god. I’m scared for my life. I’m so scared.

God. [Sniffling.] Okay. Hi, for—for those of you just joining us, my name is Bellamy Slaughter, I was married to the serial killer Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, and my daughter—Morgan, my daughter Morgan—I was always worried about her, she’s really had a lot of struggles, but she killed the cameraman that was working on our documentary, and—and—

I’m so scared. We just had a fight, too, and she pulled a knife on me and I managed to get away and now the cameraman is dead and I think—if she finds me again—I don’t know. Oh god, she finally did it. It’s happening. I need to go somewhere safe.

I tear across the living room and open Mom’s tablet. The passcode is 1111 because she’s lazy.