2
JOON

BLINDING WHITENESS, A FLASH of lightning, silent and bright, like platinum fire; the roar of heavy rain and the freezing sting of cold water on her face. Mary blinked at the pain of the bright light, the afterimages fading as she shook the water from her eyes.

Oh my God, it hurts—

She had been lying on the sidewalk, nursing the pain of her—Scott’s—bruised backside and thighs, and then, with all the smoothness of a particularly good DJ mix, she was somewhere else, with incredible pain running through her arms.

It was difficult to breathe; something was covering her face. She didn’t know what it was.

What the hell—? Where am I?

Her eyes finally cleared and she looked around, gritting her teeth at the incredible agony in her arms. She was suspended, she finally realized; her arms were pulled straight upward, with the entire weight of her body hanging straight down. She struggled, wriggling in place, and felt herself swinging like a pendulum, which made the pain in her arms even worse.

Lightning flared again, a silent fire like a photographer’s flashgun, and Mary saw where she was.

She was outdoors, at night, in the middle of a rainstorm, surrounded by primeval forest, suspended from high above by ropes that cut into her wrists like barbed wire. Straining to tilt her head upward, black hair falling in her eyes, Mary saw the thick ropes stretching far overhead, converging in the blackness above.

Tipping her head downward, she felt a horrifying wave of vertigo and nausea come over her. She was high up in the air, suspended over a vast drop.

Far below, a wide, rushing stream was raging like a river, casting foaming spray around jagged rocks, running down a steep incline toward a tremendous black culvert beneath a spillway of moss-covered boulders. She got all that in one flash of lightning—just the bare outlines, lit up like an X-ray—but it was enough. The vertigo was overpowering; it reminded her of the feeling she’d gotten once, years ago, when she made the mistake of leaning as far as she could over the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge guardrail.

Straight ahead, she could just discern a pale haze of yellow light, and in front of it, a wide black mass.

Mary tried to scream—and couldn’t. Her mouth was sealed shut.

She heard herself making a desperate, high-pitched wail, like the crying of a wounded, trapped animal.

And suddenly, Mary realized where she was.

It’s changed, she realized. I’m somewhere else—I’m someone else.

She had spent an hour—if that—as Scott Sanders at the beginning of that same Friday, the day she died. Just long enough to get to Chadwick and try to warn herself to run from all the horrible events to come.

But it hadn’t worked.

And, just as she’d discovered what Scott had in his book bag—something that barely began to explain the mystery of what had happened to her—she’d gone somewhere else. She’d become someone else.

And she knew where she was, of course. The slipping headband and the glitter of the sequined dress she was wearing only confirmed it.

I’m Joon, she thought, incredulously. I’m Joon, hanging from the tree. I’m about to die—I’m about to fall to my death.

The black mass in front of her—the enormous shape looming like the evil witch’s gingerbread house in the fairy tale—was the deserted house; the farmhouse she’d driven to, with Amy, after panicking that Joon had been abducted at her surprise birthday party.

The glow behind the house was coming from the headlights of Patrick’s Mercedes. Amy never turned the lights off, Mary remembered.

She barely managed to avoid vomiting, realizing it would be fatal—there was nowhere for the vomit to go, with the wide piece of gaffer’s tape that was plastered over her mouth—as she felt the ropes vibrate and shake, and, a few feet above her, begin to fray and snap.

No, no, no—

Mary remembered vividly what had happened to Joon.

The raging stream far below was bubbling and roaring, miniature white-water rapids splashing the jagged, mossy rocks that were scattered between its banks.

I don’t understand, Mary thought miserably. Her suffering seemed to go on endlessly, without any rhyme or reason. She moaned again and struggled with the ropes, and her movement made her begin to pivot in place, to twirl like a yo-yo on a string, to spin in circles—

(spinning in circles)

And, again, something jogged her memory; a sudden wave of déjà vu tickled against the extreme edge of her perception, maddeningly out of sight.

(spinning in circles)

JOON WAS SPINNING IN circles—slow, dizzying and painful. She was twisting in the wind like a creaky weather vane, pirouetting clumsily on her ice skates in the middle of the Rockefeller Center ice rink. This was what it had come to: dangling herself out there for him like a shiny red ornament hanging off the eighty-foot Christmas tree.

It was her last resort, really: the scratch spin—the only skating move she’d ever done halfway decently despite six years of lessons forced on her by her father in the hopes that she’d become Korea’s answer to Kristi Yamaguchi. Her form was an absolute wreck, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care if all the spinning made her puke, just as long as it got Trick’s attention away from Mary.

Her old, neglected skates were cutting off the circulation in her ankles. Sleet was pricking her nose and eyelids and soaking her red Prada coat, which she’d only worn to look Christmas-perfect for him. Her shivers were coming in thick, crashing waves now, but her skating coach had taught her to put on a stiff, sparkling smile no matter how cold, no matter how much it hurt. She could ignore it all—the ice on her eyelashes and the sharp pains in her feet. None of it mattered if Trick was watching her twirl like he’d promised.

But as she fell awkwardly out of the spin, she couldn’t find his face anywhere in the crowd. He had disappeared from the railing.

“Patrick?” she called out, sliding involuntarily forward. The next thing she knew, she’d fallen flat on her ass like a slapstick tramp in a choppy silent movie.

Hundreds of tourists watched her splatter on the ice in a pool of Prada, and they laughed with Christmas glee. It wasn’t even derisive laughter; watching people’s pratfalls was one of the joys of Rockefeller Center. Joon knew they were all laughing with her, but she couldn’t find the humor in anything right now. There was nothing funny about the massive group of guffawing middle-schoolers pointing at her as they waited for their turn to skate, or the pairs of giggling lovers in flowing white scarves and wool hats, gliding past her in the silver shimmer of the rink’s bright spotlights. Even the gilded statue of Prometheus that watched over the rink seemed to be laughing at her with his fiery Grecian eyes. You’re humiliating yourself, Joon, he seemed to be saying. Just let the guy go. You’ve already lost him.

But a deeper instinct took over: some strange little piece of Joon’s heart that apparently had no shame. She climbed back onto her skates, dusted the ice shavings off her black tights, sped off the ice and clomped her way onto the hard rubber of the waiting area, making a beeline for the locker room, every wobbly step on her three-inch stilts stinging her ankles. She knocked a tall hot chocolate onto a beefy frat boy’s yellow ski jacket as she elbowed her way through.

“Patrick? Trick? Are you in here?”

She stumbled past rows of benches and lockers, and scads of barefoot Chadwickites who’d just arrived for the traditional Christmas skate. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, so there was no way Trick had already abandoned her for another party (something he’d been doing more and more in the past few weeks). She peered over as many heads as she could manage, searching for his golden curls, and she finally spotted him, sitting on one of the benches, putting on his pristine Timberland work boots.

“Hey,” she called.

Trick flinched ever so slightly when he heard her voice. No one else would have noticed it, but Joon knew every one of his gestures almost as well as she knew her own. She knew what his tiny half-smile meant (he wants to fool around), and what his devastating grin meant (he hates your guts), and what that slight flinch in his shoulders meant. She’d seen it when she found him using in the bathroom of Chez Bernard after he’d promised to stay straight for their six-month anniversary dinner. He only flinched when he’d been caught.

“Hey,” he said, standing up and brushing the specks of snow off his tailored coat and hoodie.

“Where are you going?” Joon asked, trying not to sound like a lost, orphaned child.

“I feel like crap,” he said. “All that going around in circles—it’s just not something you do with a hangover.” He quickly pulled his BlackBerry and TAG Heuer out of the locker and snapped the watch on—the BlackBerry gave a notification beep, and he glanced at it before dropping it in his coat pocket. “I think I’m going to head home and sleep it off.”

Joon’s eyes followed the BlackBerry into his pocket, and then she watched him avoid her eyes as he slammed the locker shut.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“What?” He laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re lying,” she repeated. “Where are you really going?”

“Oh, Joonie, not again. Please.” He gave her that pitiful Girl, Interrupted look, like she belonged in a mental ward with Angelina and Winona. “I thought we were past this shit.”

“What shit?”

“The paranoia shit. You promised you’d stop.”

“I’m not being paranoid,” she snapped. She knew it only made her sound crazier, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t.

Patrick threw up his hands like he was being mugged by a raving psychopath. “O-kay. Jesus. You’re not being paranoid. Cool. I just need to get home and get some sleep, okay? I’ve got a car outside, so I’m going to run, all right?”

“Let me see your phone.”

Trick raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“Your phone. You just got a text. Who texted you?”

“My driver. I just told you, he’s waiting for me outside. Jesus, Joonie, just call your shrink, all right? Seriously, I’m begging you.” He squeezed her shoulders and gave her a peck on the forehead. “Bye.”

“Where’s Mary, Trick?”

His shoulders flinched again. She was absolutely sure of it. “Mary who?” he said. “Mary Shayne?”

Joon shook her head, disgusted by his ridiculous answer. “Yes.” She laughed bitterly. “Mary Shayne. My good friend Mary Shayne. The one you’ve been tending to every fifteen minutes tonight to make sure she doesn’t die of the adorable sniffles! That Mary Shayne!”

“Stop.” Trick brought his voice down to a whisper as tourists began to stare. “What the hell is the matter with you? I was trying to be nice to your friend. She’s got a cold, and I was trying to be nice.”

“Nice is one time, Trick! ‘Hey, you look a little under the weather, Mary. You feeling okay?’ That’s nice. You were waiting on her hand and foot! Every time you were supposed to be skating with me, you were buying her another freaking hot chocolate!”

“I gave her the rest of my hot chocolate. Half of one already-purchased hot chocolate. She looked like she was dying from the freaking cold.”

“Well, what if I was dying from the cold, Trick? What if I was dying out there too? Which one of us would you save? Who would you rescue with your precious half a hot chocolate?”

“God, will you stop with that ridiculous game already? I’d save you, Joon, okay? You get the hot chocolate, one hundred percent.”

“You’re such a goddamned liar! You’re a liar and you know it!”

The locker room went silent. Trick looked altogether mortified, and Joon didn’t care in the least.

“Joonie,” he said quietly. “You just need to take your meds, all right? Just take your meds.”

He gave her one last kiss on the cheek and then rushed toward the exit. She called out to him again.

“Patrick—!”

“What?” He stopped briefly at the doorway.

“Did you even see my scratch spin?”

“Your what?”

“My spin … on the ice … you said you’d watch. Did you even see it?”

“Of course I did,” he said. “It was perfect, Joonie. Really. Nine point five from the German judges.”

He raised his hand for a pathetic wave goodbye, and then he disappeared into the crowd like he was running from a ticking time bomb. Joon fell back against the lockers, staring down helplessly at the gray sludge on the floor. She suddenly felt exhausted. Her head was throbbing and so were her ankles.

Only a few seconds passed before Amy came clomping into the locker room, towering awkwardly on her rented white skates and panting desperately.

“Have you seen Mary?” she asked, trying in vain to catch her breath. Her eyes darted around the room.

“No,” Joon said. “Isn’t she out there skating?”

“I thought she was,” Amy heaved. She slapped her hands on her sides. “Damn it. She promised she’d skate with me. She promised. Jen Morris said she just saw her leave.”

“What?” Joon felt the acid in her stomach rising up to her throat.

“Mary told Jen she was feeling sick,” Amy said, “so she left. Just now. Can you believe that? She just walked out. Why did she tell Jen, why didn’t she tell me? She didn’t even tell you, did she? God, do you think she bothered to tell anyone else she was leaving?”

Joon’s mouth went dry. Her heart began to race uncomfortably like a scampering bug in her chest. She was sure Mary had told someone else she was leaving. And she knew exactly who that person was.

“Ugh, that bitch …” All of Joon’s muscles contracted at once as she violently clutched her Dolce winter hat in her fists. “That bitch.”

“What?” Amy looked a little shocked by Joon’s reaction. “Who? What’s wrong?”

But Joon was already elbowing her way back through the crowd, laboring skate by skate, making her way to the stone and marble steps that led out of Rockefeller Center and down to Fifth Avenue. Now she understood. Now she knew why he’d left in such a rush. Because she knew Mary. She knew how she operated. All Mary had to do was drop the hint to him that she was leaving. That was all Mary had to do, and she knew it. She knew he would follow.

Joon only got as far as the top of the icy steps—just in time to see Mary standing alone in a swirl of snow and sleet on the corner of Fiftieth and Fifth. She had one arm crossed over her immaculate white parka for warmth, and the other barely raised in the air, half heartedly trying to hail a cab when she knew there wasn’t an available taxi for miles. She was still holding Patrick’s hot chocolate in her hand.

A gleaming black limo drove up through the heavy traffic, sloshing through the gray water, past a Salvation Army Santa cheerfully ringing his brass bell. It pulled up next to Mary, and Patrick emerged from the sunroof like the world’s most beautiful jack-in-the-box—like Mary’s knight in snowy armor. He said something to Mary, and she threw her head back and laughed in that particular singsong way that made all the boys her slaves. It was the laugh that made them feel like she’d already had sex with them at least twice, even if she’d never touched them.

At that moment Joon shut her eyes tightly, and she actually made a wish. A cold, hard wish, like a desperate little girl wishing on a star.

Mary, please don’t get into the limo. Please, just this once, don’t take a boy away from me. I’ll forgive you for all the others, if you’ll just leave me Trick. Just once, show me our friendship means something to you. Show me that you haven’t conveniently forgotten I exist again. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t get in….

But of course Mary got in. Of course she did. Giggling and innocent, and completely heartless.

Joon raised her skate off the ground and stomped the blade down into the icy stone with all her might. It sent a bolt of exquisite pain through her shin, a pain she almost welcomed, because it was physical, unlike the pain in her heart, which she knew wouldn’t fade, which would grow and spread and hang over every day to come.

(pain)

MARY’S TEETH WERE CHATTERING as she clenched her jaw against the pain in her arms. Joon’s right, she thought miserably, still reeling from the overwhelming force of her memory—Joon’s memory—the entire sordid night that had come into her head all at once. The pain in her arms was nothing compared to that feeling: that dull, anticipatory ache of losing something, losing someone you care about, of seeing it all beforehand and not knowing how bad it will get but knowing it won’t stop at unbearable, it will go right past unbearable and just stay there, forever, morning to night, every day from now on.

Mary was crying, Joon’s exquisitely applied mascara running down her cheeks. Patrick had dumped her that morning—the memory (the real memory) was still vivid.

At least Patrick had done it fast and hard—it only took five minutes, from the trepidation she’d felt when she’d first seen him standing on the sidewalk waiting for her, to the final shock as he did the deed and walked away.

Fast and merciful, she thought, just like one of those movies where somebody prays for a quick death.

Not at all like what Joon had gone through.

Gone through because of me, Mary added miserably.

And he hadn’t even meant it! The breakup pain had lasted—what? Maybe twelve hours? Twelve hours of indulging her pain like a little girl. Twelve hours without Patrick and I couldn’t even function. How could she have possibly endured what Joon had gone through that December night, and all the time since? Watching her and Patrick parade their relationship like models in a sexy jeans ad, taking every opportunity to rub Joon’s nose in it? Endlessly talking to Joon about Trick, and, at the end of every day, going back to the Peninsula and settling onto one of the plush hotel couches while Joon went home alone?

The savagery of Joon’s memory—the depth of the pain Mary had caused her best friend—was amazingly strong, like being kicked in the stomach and having to smile and ask for more.

And then she’d gotten him back—and forgotten all about it.

But it was even worse than that, Mary realized bitterly, swaying in the darkness on the fraying rope that burned her wrists like hot metal shackles. She’d actually made jokes about Joon and Patrick’s breakup, right to Joon’s face, as if Joon had nothing better to do than laugh at the merry whimsy of her life. And it wasn’t the first time, Mary realized miserably. Going back through the years, how many boys did I—

She stopped thinking about it, because something was moving.

She could barely see it, straight ahead—but she was sure of it. The memory hadn’t taken any time, she realized; exactly like when she’d been Scott, the whole thing was there, just as with any vivid memory.

In the center of the black shape of the house, a pale rectangle of light appeared, widening slowly, revealing a silhouetted figure.

That’s me.

Of course it was. As soon as Mary had realized where she was, and had identified the glow of the Mercedes’s headlights, she understood what was about to happen. Once again, she was looking at herself, earlier in the day, watching herself do exactly what she remembered doing.

Behind Mary, framed in the dim doorway, another shadowed figure appeared.

It’s Amy. The silhouettes of the two girls were immediately, completely recognizable. Mary would have known Amy anywhere. It was clearly her.

Straining to listen, Mary could just make out their distant voices through the whipping wind and the rain.

“I can’t,” Amy was yelling—her voice drifted through the wind, barely reaching Mary where she hung from the fraying rope. “Oh, Jesus, don’t make me go out there—”

Go with her! Mary pleaded mentally. She remembered what had happened to Amy … what had happened to both of them.

In the distance, barely visible in the farmhouse’s doorway, Real Mary said something inaudible, and Amy’s voice got more anguished. “Don’t … me here,” Amy’s thin, high voice carried over the wind. “Don’t leave me here alone.”

If I can hear them, they can hear me, Mary realized, breathing painfully through her nose and trying to scream again. The bandage over her mouth made it impossible, but she squealed and moaned desperately, kicking her legs and wriggling to get their attention.

Real Mary was already moving, wading forward into the dark rain, moving closer to the hole she couldn’t see. “I’m coming!” she called out—Mary could hear her voice clearly, now. “I’m coming, Joon!”

No, no, no, Mary thought desperately, watching herself start wading into the tall weeds. Stay there, idiot! You’re going to fall into the hole—you’re going to get trapped!

The rain kept falling, freezing her to the bone like an endless cold shower. Tipping her head back again, Mary stared upward, following the ropes as they climbed above her, impossibly high, converging like high-tension cables flanking a desert highway, vanishing into the blackness of the trees, far above. Can’t climb, she thought desperately. No way up—no way down. As she stared upward, trying again to scream—and hearing her own muffled moaning, recognizing Joon’s voice—the ropes twanged like guitar strings, vibrating like a rush-hour subway platform.

“I’m coming, Joon!” Real Mary was bellowing, straight ahead, back at the farmhouse’s back door. “I’m coming! I’ll be right there!”

Lightning flashed brilliantly then—a long, extended multiple flash like a fireworks display—and suddenly, Mary got a clear view of something she hadn’t seen before. Another big surprise.

Below the edge of the embankment—the steep, ragged cliff where the tall weeds ended and the ground dropped away. There was a flat shelf of rock, like a recessed butte set into the earth well below the cliff’s edge. The shelf was wide and relatively dry; it was sheltered from the rain, she realized, by the overhanging curved wall of earth, clogged with tree roots and rocks. The stone shelf wasn’t that far down—just about five feet below the tips of her dangling feet.

Someone was down there, Mary saw.

The lightning was like a Times Square movie-premiere klieg light. It was so bright that, for a half second, she had an unobstructed view of the figure that stood back against the edge of the embankment, completely out of sight of the farmhouse.

A boy in an oversized bright yellow Patagonia raincoat.

Scott Sanders.

Mary’s eyes—Joon’s eyes—widened as she stared incredulously. Scott was standing right there, just a few feet away, gazing critically up at her, frowning in concentration. A coil of rope lay on the wet rock ledge next to him, along with a giant flashlight and his ever-present red book bag.

Scott again, Mary thought. Jesus, did he tie me—Joon—up?

Scott was holding something in his hand—a small device—but she didn’t recognize it. Beside him, on the rock face, was what looked like steel netting from a construction site, holding a thick pile of cinder blocks.

“Amy!” Real Mary was screaming. “Amy, where are you?”

She tried again to scream, but, again, all she could do was moan and squeal. The bandage on her mouth made it impossible to speak.

Mary remembered watching Joon squirm and buck and moan, from right over there—from exactly where Real Mary’s shadowy figure was moving forward. It’s just like Scott, in front of school, she realized, astonished. The exact same thing. This is me, warning myself.

“I can’t find Amy!” Real Mary sobbed. “Joon, hang on—”

No, no, no—Mary shook her head frantically, trying to signal Real Mary to stay put; she was about to drop into the—

Crack! Even hanging from the rope above the stream, Mary could hear the force of the impact as Real Mary dropped into the hole in the ground.

Below her, Mary could just make out the dim yellow of Scott’s oversize raincoat as he moved, reacting.

“Joon!” Real Mary screamed. “I’m trapped—I can’t move!”

Below, out of Real Mary’s view, Scott was moving again. Mary barely heard an electronic click just as she saw a red light flashing on the device in Scott’s hand.

Another click sounded, far above her—tilting her head back again, Mary saw a tiny flash as sparks detonated on the rope above her, and the rope started to come apart.

Some kind of trick, Mary thought. He put something up there, on the rope, so he could just press a button—some kind of clever Scott gizmo.

It was incredible, amazing. This was a setup. It was done on purpose. Scott was deliberately faking me out—making it look like the rope was breaking.

“Don’t move, Joon!” Real Mary screamed, from her spot planted halfway in the ground. “Jesus, don’t—”

Scott fumbled with whatever he was holding and another tiny light flashed and the rope broke.

This is it, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. I’m dead—

Mary felt the sickening nausea of sudden free fall as she dropped straight down—and then something grabbed her, roughly pulling her, and she felt a blast of pain as she tumbled forward, Scott’s arms around her waist as he pulled her on top of himself. She rolled, banging her kneecaps against the wet stone as she and Scott tumbled backward.

She was safe. She was on solid ground, her knees and scraped shoulder blades screaming in agony, raising her head, her hands still bound to the rope that now draped across the stone like a limp snake.

Up above, out of view, back toward the farmhouse, Real Mary was screaming.

Scott stood up, letting go of her, and then he lunged to one side and pushed against the steel netting, propelling the pile of cinder blocks so they toppled over the edge of the narrow embankment. After a moment, the entire cluster of steel and cement dropped into the stream, making a very loud splash.

That’s what I heard, Mary marveled. I can’t believe it. He completely fooled me.

But why?

Scott had returned to her side. She stared up at his shadowed face, hidden behind the hood of his ridiculous yellow raincoat. Scott was kneeling on the wet stone, mud smeared on his khaki trousers, fishing in his red book bag. He pulled out the soft silver cloth Mary had seen before (When I was him, she remembered) and, as he unfolded it, Mary suddenly recognized it as a space blanket—the kind that marathon runners draped around themselves after a race.

He was prepared for this, Mary realized, as Scott sidled over to her, producing a gleaming Swiss Army knife. He flicked on a flashlight (looking around critically first, to make sure the light wasn’t visible from up by the house), then leaned to cut the ropes, freeing Mary’s ankles.

“You okay, Joon?” Scott whispered.

Mary nodded.

“Good. I think I pulled my back out.” Scott was helping her to her feet, draping the metallic blanket around her. Mary was too astonished to react—she just shivered, staring at Scott as he stooped to gather all his belongings, including the flashlight and the knife and what she now saw was a plastic controller from a child’s remote control toy.

I don’t believe it, Mary thought weakly. Like a fucking movie stunt.

“I warned you it would be touch and go,” Scott told her, collapsing the antenna on his toy remote and coiling the rope. “I’m sorry, Joon—I thought I’d do a slightly better job of catching you.”

Mary couldn’t believe her ears.

They did it together—Joon was totally in on this.

But that was nothing compared with what she saw next.

In the near distance, behind where Scott was briskly packing up his belongings, a silhouetted figure was coming toward them, slowly edging along the narrow shelf of rock. Mary had been fumbling with the wet ropes on her wrists, trying to get herself free, but when Scott’s flashlight beam flickered in the right direction and Mary saw who was joining them, she froze in complete, mute shock.

Amy.

“That worked great!” Amy whispered, brushing her wet hair from her face as she joined them, leaning to help Scott latch his bag. Amy grinned at Mary, her eyes glittering in the reflected glare of the flashlight. “Joonie, did you see me? Did you hear me? I deserve a fucking Oscar for that!”

You sure do, Mary thought, totally bewildered.

She couldn’t believe her ears.

It wasn’t just Amy and Scott. It was Joon, too.

“You okay, Joon?” Amy had walked closer, carefully picking her way across the mud-streaked embankment and reaching to pull the silver blanket more snugly around her—Joon’s—shoulders. “You totally had the hard part—I can’t believe you agreed to just, like, hang there.”

The rain kept falling around them. Real Mary was still sobbing—her voice penetrated through the howling wind.

What the hell are you all doing? Mary wanted to scream at them. But her mouth was still taped shut, just like her raw wrists were still bound with loops of rope—there was nothing she could do but move along the narrow rock shelf with them.

“You took your bloody time getting here,” Scott complained in a harsh whisper, looking at his watch. “Listen, we’ve got to get moving. Dylan’ll be here in just twenty minutes.”

Jesus, Mary thought weakly. She’d raised her bound hands to her face and was trying to find the edge of the adhesive, to pull the bandage from her—Joon’s—face.

Him too?

They all ganged up on me! She still couldn’t believe it. Her head was reeling.

That doesn’t make sense. She was trying to remember everything that had happened next—after Joon’s fall—and how it fit together with what she’d just learned.

Like any of this makes sense.

“Do that later, Joonie,” Amy told her impatiently, pulling Mary forward. She was referring to the bandage. “Where’s your car, Scott?”

“On the other side of the parkway.”

They brought another car, Mary thought weakly. She remembered Amy sitting next to her in the Mercedes, driving intently—fooling her completely, playing her like a violin. She still couldn’t believe it.

Scott was checking his watch again as he led them along the embankment, back the way Amy had come. The rain kept falling as they followed the narrow rock ledge’s path as it sloped upward. They passed the edge of the farmhouse, far off through the trees, and suddenly the Mercedes’ headlights were shining right in her eyes.

“Patrick’s going to have a dead battery,” Scott whispered to Amy. “The headlights are going to be on all night.”

Their voices seemed to be fading away into the roar of the rain and the wind—Mary caught herself staring sideways through the weeds at the distant glare of the headlights, glowing like phosphorescent moons.

“Yeah.” Amy used a nasty tone that Mary had never heard before. Her voice was barely audible now—the whole world was fading to white. “But did you hear the bitch scream? It’s totally worth it.”