Chapter Thirty-Five

Now

FEBRUARY 14

THOUGH MORNING HAD BROKEN—birds darting in and out of the trees—the outline of the woods still looked charcoal and quiet. These woods are lovely, dark and deep. A poem Kit had read aloud to her before. Or a poem inside her head, because she was Kit, and Kit was her.

Kit, the reconciler of family fights. Kit, the lighthouse in storms, the calm at the center of everything. Kit, the homework helper, the pancake perfecter. Kit, the one with a voice as pretty as their mom’s; Kit of the Christmas carols. Kit, the schoolyard defender. Kit, the patient, the beautiful, the wise. Kit always knew something Tessa didn’t know. It was like the future didn’t exist unless Kit had lived it first, had left enough of an impression in the snow to give Tessa a path to follow. Not that Tessa needed to be like her, just that the world was shapeless until someone had given it form and meaning, had made space for Tessa to enter into it, had left enough of a trail of bread crumbs to keep Tessa going. That’s what their chimerism really was, wasn’t it? A little bit of information, a set of coded clues, alluding to the sense of Kit—information that had become part of Tessa’s very cells.

It was hard to explain how this felt.

Without her sister, Tessa was nothing. Potential with no form. Energy with no direction.

She thought tears would come, but still, they hadn’t.

There were only a few cars on the road. Tessa hovered on the shoulder of Route 28—the site where it all had happened. The place where her sister’s body had been found, half undressed in the back of Boyd’s truck, like something from a cautionary tale. Little Red Riding Hood ravaged by the wolf.

Blunt head trauma.

She stared at the stand of trees, the way the branches looked like arms, thin and reaching.

She couldn’t believe it had only been ten days since that night, since everything had changed. She wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten out here so fast—it felt as if the night had stretched longer to keep her in it. It felt as if she’d been transported here in a dream, though she must have simply walked.

After she had put Lilly’s diary away, something had slipped out of its pages. A note. A note in familiar handwriting.

hey you, still up for sleeping over tomorrow night?

Excited to hang w u. love u.—Mel.

It wasn’t the sentiment of the note that had startled Tessa, but the loopy scrawl. She’d stared at it for a long time, and finally understood what it reminded her of. The note she’d found in her own pocket the other day. This is your last warning. You’re making a mistake.

It was still a while before the truth of it had sunk in.

Mel had been the one who’d threatened her.

Mel. Why would she care what Tessa did? Unless . . . unless she knew something.

Tessa thought back to Mel’s frantic eyes when they spoke under the bleachers last week. And then again, the dismissive way she’d tried to get Tessa to back down at Kolbry’s Valentine’s Day party on Saturday.

What do you know, Mel?

She stepped off the shoulder, into the shelter of the trees.

Tessa wasn’t sure anymore what she was looking for. Kit wasn’t here. She was never going to be here. She wasn’t going to materialize. Was she?

It was just like Lilly had said. Tessa wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

So what was she thinking, coming here?

Tessa got down on her knees.

The snow was cold, soaking through her pants, but it didn’t matter, she didn’t feel it. The dawn had come.

Her fingers shook. She dug through snow. Near the base of this tree, then that. Pushing, crawling, twigs snapping beneath her. Was she crying?

Kit, she said aloud, or in her mind. Kit, please. Please tell me what I am missing.

There, in the snow. The engagement ring—or a vision of it, anyway. And that’s when she knew she wasn’t in her own body anymore, wasn’t in time, but had fallen away somehow. She was so cold she could hardly feel the boundaries of her body anymore.

She was so tired. Hadn’t slept at all tonight. Hadn’t slept in—when had she last slept? She recalled not sleeping, only dreaming, dreaming of three sisters singing, of three sisters arguing. And nightmares—of wolves. Blunt patches of dark unconsciousness, mixed with bursts of light and waking.

She was so tired—too tired. Maybe Lilly had been right. She’d been relentless, trapped in an inability to see the whole picture, to accept the truth.

Tessa lay down in the snow.

Kit lay down in the snow.

She was herself and not, at the same time.

Kit, she called out silently.

She just wanted to help.

She just wanted for Kit not to have died.

She didn’t want Kit to die.

She didn’t want her big sister to be hurt.

Didn’t want her to be angry, to be hurt, to be heartbroken, to be alone.

Tessa had followed her. She had followed Kit.

Hadn’t she? Just now? Wasn’t that why she was here? Following the inexplicable path of clues Kit had laid out for her?

The snow was a cold blanket beneath her. She shuddered against it, hot breath against the frost of broken twigs and congealed leaves.

Her eyelids were so heavy. Thoughts of Sleeping Beauty swam through her mind. She thought of old Liam Donovan and his mutterings. Princesses asleep. What had he seen?

The dream took shape, but it was not Tessa’s dream, it was Kit’s. Somehow Tessa knew it as she dreamed it. She was screaming at a man in the woods, the words raw in her throat, the word please hovering between them, pathetic and ashamed. His eyes were shadowed by the hunting hat, but she knew those eyes so well, had thought she was falling in love, but now she knew she’d just been a dumb girl, had just been one of the good ones waiting for something to come along and make her go crazy, just waiting for life to happen to her. For love to happen to her. And now it had, and she regretted it. Couldn’t take it back. Had crossed an invisible line. She’d never be the Kit she’d been before. And she thought to tell him so, but his hands were on her again, and he was whispering shhh, and she wanted, more than anything, to not feel this broken or this hurt. She wanted, more than anything, to feel like she’d once felt before—whole. And that was why she let him kiss her one last time. It was just a kiss goodbye.

But before she could tell him that, someone else was bursting out from between the trees by the side of the road.

“Get off of her, I swear to God, leave her the fuck alone,” said a girl’s voice.

Kit turned and saw—Mel. Holding a rifle that looked too clunky for her frame. Her hands were shaking, and the whole gun wobbled in the snowy air, or maybe that was just a trick of the light. “Once is enough, but never again,” she said, her voice low and steady. “Get off of her,” she said.

Drew had already lifted his hands, but it wasn’t enough. Mel was crying and shaking, and even in the swoosh and noise of the storm and the running of the truck’s engine not too far away, she could still hear it when Mel cocked the gun, hand on the trigger. In that moment, Kit understood two things.

One: she hadn’t been Drew Green’s first mistake.

Two: whatever had happened between her and Drew, it hadn’t been the same with Mel. Something very, very bad had happened to her.

And yet, she realized a third thing in that moment, even if it wasn’t conscious—she wasn’t going to let him die for it. Not like this. Not when some part of her still loved him.

She leaped at Mel, and Mel swung away, the butt of the rifle striking Kit in the temple.

Kit fell.