FIVE DAYS AFTER Walter died, my aunt Penelope walked into the forest behind the house and never returned.

I was in the library the afternoon she walked out, saw her go into the woods from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the second floor of the house. My aunt wasn’t wearing a sweater despite how chilly it was outside, which I thought was strange but stupidly brushed off. I was doing an art project from my homeschool curriculum and told myself that I’d continue to work on it only for as long as Penelope was out for her walk. When she came back, I would finish my history essay before stopping for the day.

So I watched and watched for her as I waited for the glue to dry on the cuts of cardboard my fingers were pinching together, red glitter still gathered in clumps in the sides of my nails. I didn’t think I’d get any further than the gluing, but before I knew it, the project was complete, and the moon was rising, and my aunt had never come back inside.

That’s how I know she didn’t return to the house unnoticed, only to catch a ride with some mysterious stranger who would take her someplace far away from here, leaving her keys and wallet and life behind. That’s how I know that right now, at this very moment, my aunt is outside in the dark, surrounded by trees and pine needles and wolves. I don’t know if she’s hurt, or dying, or dead.

It has to be one or the other by this point. Days have passed.

It forces me to think about too many things. Some of us die afraid, my mind whispers, shaky at the knowledge, desperate for release from it. Some of us die in awful, unexpected ways.

The thoughts spiral in and out of each other, unlocking other thoughts, each more upsetting and heavy than the last. First my mother, then Walter and now Penelope. I’m going to die one day. Everybody will.

How is it going to happen? Will I be afraid, in pain, crying out for mercy? Will I be trapped in a small space, my mind racing helplessly as water rises around me, or will my head be crushed under the weight of stone from a collapsing building? Will I be raped and murdered? Will a bear strip the flesh from my bones and force me to listen as he eats me alive? Will it take an instant or a minute or an hour or...

“Stop,” I whisper out loud from where I sit in front of the window in the cold shadows of the library, all the lights off, the sun finally setting. I’ve been sitting here since lunch, staring out at the woods, waiting, hoping, spiraling. “Please stop.”

But it doesn’t. It never does, and before long the thoughts drive me out of the dark silence of the room, to the other side of the second floor, where my bedroom sits one down from Margaret’s.

“Marg?” I say, knocking on her closed wooden door with my knuckles. I try desperately to sound calm, together, sane, shove the hysterical questions so far down inside myself that I no longer know where they are. “We should eat dinner in my room tonight. We can watch sitcoms to take our minds off everything. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty desperate for some—”

“I don’t want to,” comes Margaret’s reply from the other side. “I want to be alone.”

It’s the same thing she said last night. The first few days after Penelope disappeared, we didn’t leave each other’s sides. We didn’t cling to one another and cry like we used to when we were much younger and too little to understand why it was important to control our weaknesses, but we stayed together, hour after hour, as if to prove to each other that neither of us was alone in the chaos of Walter’s death and Penelope’s disappearance.

But now she’s pulling back, away from me. Why? I need her. We need each other.

“Are you sure?” I try again, clenching my teeth together as I anticipate what I know is coming.

“I’m sure,” Margaret says. “I’m just going to go to sleep early again.”

Then, silence. I bite at my lip impulsively as I make my way down the hallway, to the stairs that lead to my father’s study. Will I die from a sudden illness, like cancer? I think wildly, my breath quickening uncomfortably. Will I accidentally fall down the stairs and break my neck?

“Dad,” I say from the doorway of his study once I’ve reached it, a little more urgently than I intend. He’s sitting with his head bowed over a big paper spread out over the desk and simply grunts in answer.

I take a step closer and see that the paper is a map of the grounds and surrounding area. Over the forest, there are six white pins spread over the end closest to the house.

“What’s this?” I say, turning my neck to get a closer look.

My father lights his pipe and stretches his back, his eyes never leaving the paper. “This is all the ground we’ve covered looking for Penelope,” he mumbles, smoke sneaking out between his lips as his fingers move over one pin to the other. “How can I help you?”

“I was just wondering if you were going out to look for her again tomorrow,” I say, a lump rising in my throat. I push it down without showing any evidence of its presence. “I wanted to make sure everything is being done. Why haven’t the police brought dogs or something? Why are you and your friends putting more effort in than they are? Don’t they understand that she’s out there?”

Come to think of it, I realize, I haven’t seen a single officer yet.

“We’re doing what we can,” my father promises, avoiding eye contact as he usually does with me. It’s like looking at me for too long hurts him in some way. “And we don’t have any plans to stop the search until we find an answer. As hard as it is, we need to be patient, Lucy.”

“Right,” I say, hearing the truth but not wanting to accept it. It’s all becoming so unbearable, especially with Margaret starting to pull away. “I’m glad that you’re still at it. That’s all I wanted to know.”

Last night I had dreams that Walter was following me around the house, dead, looking just as he did when I found him hanging from the ceiling. He wasn’t saying anything in the dream, just staring at me with a confused expression as I tried to go about my schoolwork and chores as if he wasn’t there. But after a while he started tapping on my shoulder with one lumpy, swollen finger, urgently, demanding for me to look up.

When I did, he stared into my eyes without blinking, tilting his head to the side. Where is Penelope? he mouthed, soundless, his throat too ruined to speak. When I told him that she was gone, his expression turned from confusion to rage. Just as he looked like he was going to lean forward and tear my face apart with his bare hands, I woke with a start.

“We are definitely still at it,” my father confirms, bringing me back to the map and the pins and the heavy smell of pipe tobacco. “Go on with the rest of your night now. You and Margaret get some rest.”

For all my life, it’s always been you and Margaret get some rest, or you and Margaret entertain yourselves for now, can’t you see I’m busy? or you and Margaret are making too much noise upstairs. But now it’s just me. I tell myself that I’ll have an answer soon, that someone will find something in the next few days for sure, and one way or the other, we can bring some degree of closure to this situation.

As I’m walking to my own bedroom, I hear a strange sound coming from Margaret’s: laughing. Instead of opening my door, I go to hers and listen. She’s giggling all right, high-pitched and shrill and ringing with joy. The laughs are muffled, as if she’s covering her mouth with her hands or a pillow to hide the sound. “I could kill her,” I think I hear her say.

“Margaret?” I say, knocking sharply. The laughter stops abruptly. “What are you doing?”

Silence for a few moments. I look down to the bottom of the door—her light is still on. For a minute I think she isn’t going to answer, but then I hear her footsteps coming across the room for the door. She opens it. Her black hair is mussed as if she came straight from bed. Her eyes are shiny and wide.

“What do you want?” she demands. “Why are you here again?”

I try not to show how much her questions sting.

“What were you laughing at just now?” I ask, desperately wishing she’d invite me in. “I thought you were going to bed.”

“I was in bed, Lucy.” My cousin sounds irritated. “And I wasn’t laughing. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

What? “I heard you,” I say slowly, my eyebrows furrowing at her lie. “I know I did. And your light was on. You said, ‘I could kill her.’”

“Look, I’ve been sleeping with the light on lately, all right?” She is frowning. “Stop looking for reasons to come bother me. You’re being annoying.”

In my head, I know that Penelope’s disappearance should be something that brings Margaret and me closer together. We should still be sticking together, lying around in our rooms while we swap theories on what exactly happened to my aunt.

“Are you mad at me or something?” I blurt. “How come you want to be by yourself so much all of a sudden?”

Can’t you see I’m barely holding on? I want to yell, but a true Acosta would never admit such a thing.

“Because I need some time to think,” Margaret says. She crosses her arms over her stomach and narrows her eyes in just the slightest. “How is that not understandable to you?”

My cheeks flush in embarrassment. I suddenly see myself as she sees me: unable to handle my own shit. Pathetic. Weak.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I’ll just...see you around.”

She closes the door in my face. I walk to my bedroom, forcing myself to take slow, easy steps. I’m fine, I think as my eyes begin to burn and sting. I close the door behind me and look over my room, perfectly neat, everything in its place. The sight of it brings just a touch of relief. Then I see the bejeweled box on the vanity shelf, the magic box of razor blades. Not today, I think with a sniff, defiantly turning my head away from it. I can handle myself today just fine, thank you.

I put on my pajamas and turn off the light and crawl beneath the thick down comforter on my bed, the satin sheets heaven on my exposed skin. I spend a good while trying to mute out the sound of my own brain, begging it not to send me another dream with Walter in it, pleading for it to think about anything but Penelope or Margaret for just one moment...

But it doesn’t. Instead, it washes over me with questions, and thoughts and violent visions that will never come to be but feel like they’re happening, anyway. I think about Margaret laughing giddily in her room alone. I think about Penelope walking into the woods with her back turned to me. I think about Walter; I think about dying.

But more than anything, I think about the ever-growing suspicion that something is very wrong in this house.