KAT
LAST YEAR
JUNE 23
I woke to golden light spilling through the blinds of the lake house master bedroom. I sat up straight, propelled by my sense of disorientation. Something was different. Aside from not being in my own bed, in my own home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had forgotten something.
Beside me, Jesse stirred. He propped himself up on his hand, his elbow sinking into the mattress. “Is everything okay?”
I sank back down into the pillows, heart racing. The dream. That’s what was different—I hadn’t had the dream last night.
I’d been having the same dream for years, ever since we moved home from Italy. I’m watching the plane take off, and I know they’re on it. My mother and father and Emma are always on the plane, and I’m not.
I don’t know where I’m watching from, but when the plane explodes into a ball of fire and smoke I know they’re on it and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Last night, though, there was only darkness, peace. Jesse’s arms.
Is everything okay?
“Yes,” I said, curling back into Jesse.
Everything was more than okay. Everything was perfect.
Because by the end of the weekend, I would be dead.
Everyone will want to know why. How could this happen—why would this happen—to Kat Marcotte, the girl who had everything?
I know that’s what people thought of me secretly, bitterly. First chair in the clarinet section in band, volleyball captain, National Merit Scholarship, lead role in the fifth-grade play. My entire life, one long scorecard of wins.
In the locker room after volleyball practice in the fall, I overheard Shannon DiClemente and Anna Markey discussing the battle for valedictorian. Jamie Liu and me, fighting over it like a wishbone. It would come down to less than a point.
“I hope it’s Jamie,” Shannon said, toweling off her face, her neck. She didn’t have to say more; it was obvious what she was thinking. Shannon, who was technically better than me on the court, but always arguing with Coach, too hotheaded to be appointed captain.
Kat gets everything.
Anna and Shannon hadn’t seen me leaving Coach’s office while they were talking, massaging the tendons in my wrist. It had been acting up, and I couldn’t hide my discomfort anymore, not during serving drills, at least. Coach was worried, made me promise to see a doctor. Anna and Shannon didn’t realize I could hear them talking about valedictorian, their wish that it would go to someone other than me for no other reason than I had everything.
I slipped into the showers, pressing two fingers down on the spasming in my wrist.
She had everything, they’ll say when I’m gone. Everything, just thrown away.
How could this happen? they’ll ask, and the only thing that matters to me now is that that question is never answered.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.