CHAPTER 7

For several minutes, I stood still in my room, so angry, and scared, and confused, I didn’t know whether to scream, or cry, or hit something. I tried to read the novel on my nightstand to distract myself from the disaster my life had become, and when that didn’t work, I turned on the TV. But nothing on television held my attention and all the songs on my iPod only seemed to magnify my anger and frustration.

My mind was so full of chaos, my thoughts coming much too fast for me to grasp, that no matter what I did or where I stood, I couldn’t escape the miserable roar of half-formed thoughts my head spun with. I was starting to seriously recon sider that sedative—desperate to just be nowhere for a little while—when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Another text message from Nash. U OK?

Fine. I lied. U? I almost told him he’d been right. That I shouldn’t have told my aunt. But that was a lot of information to fit into a text.

Yeah. With Carter, he replied. Call U soon.

I thought about texting Emma, but she was still grounded. And knowing her mother, she stood no chance of a commuted sentence, even after practically seeing a classmate drop dead.

Frustrated and mentally exhausted, I finally fell asleep in the middle of the movie I wasn’t really watching in the first place. Less than an hour later, according to my alarm clock, I woke up and turned the TV off. And that’s when I realized I’d almost slept through something important.

Or at least something interesting.

In the sudden silence, I heard my aunt and uncle arguing fiercely, but too softly to understand from my room at the back of the house. I eased my bedroom door open several inches, holding my breath until I was sure the hinges wouldn’t squeal. Then I stuck my head through the gap and peered down the hall.

They were in the kitchen; my aunt’s slim shadow paced back and forth across the only visible wall. Then I heard her whisper my name—even lower in pitch than the rest of the argument—and I swallowed thickly. She was probably trying to convince Uncle Brendon to take me back to the hospital.

That was not going to happen.

Angry now, I eased the door open farther and slipped into the hall. If my uncle gave in, I’d simply step up and tell them I wasn’t going. Or maybe I’d just jump in my car and leave until they came to their senses. I could go to Emma’s. No, wait. She was grounded. So I’d go to Nash’s.

Where I wound up didn’t matter, so long as it wasn’t the mental-health ward.

I inched down the hall, grateful for my silent socks and the tile floor, which didn’t creak. But I froze several feet from the kitchen doorway when my uncle spoke, his words still low but now perfectly audible.

“You’re overreacting, Valerie. She got through it last time, and she’ll get through it this time. I see no reason to bother him while he’s working.”

While I appreciated my uncle standing up for me, even if he didn’t believe in my premonitions either, I seriously doubted Dr. Nelson would consider himself “bothered” by a phone call about a patient. Not considering what he was probably getting paid.

“I don’t know what else to do.” Aunt Val sighed, and a chair scraped the floor as my uncle’s shadow stood. “She’s really upset, and I think I made it worse. She knows something’s going on. I tried to get her to take a sedative, but she busted the bottle on the refrigerator.”

Uncle Brendon chuckled, from across the kitchen now. “She knows she doesn’t need those damn pills.”

Yeah! I was starting to wonder if my uncle wore chain mail beneath his clothes, because he sounded eager to slay the dragon Skepticism. And I was ready to ride into battle with him….

“Of course she doesn’t,” Aunt Val conceded wearily, and her shadow folded its arms across its chest. “The pills are a temporary solution, like sticking your finger in a crack in a dam. What she really needs is your brother, and if you’re not going to call him, I will.”

My father? Aunt Val wanted him to call my dad? Not Dr. Nelson?

My uncle sighed. “I hate to start all this now if we could possibly put it off a while longer.” The refrigerator door squealed open, and a soda can popped, then hissed. “It was just coincidence that this happened twice in one week. It may not happen for another year, or even longer.”

Aunt Val huffed in exasperation. “Brendon, you didn’t see her. Didn’t hear her. She thinks she’s losing her mind. She’s already living on borrowed time, and she should not have to spend whatever she has left of it thinking she’s crazy.”

Borrowed time?

A jolt of shock shot through me, settling finally into my heart, which seemed reluctant to beat again for a moment. What did that mean? I was sick? Dying? How could they not have told me? And how could I be dying if I felt fine? Except for knowing when other people are going to die…

And if that were true, wouldn’t I know if I were going to die?

Uncle Brendon sighed, and a chair scraped across the floor again, then groaned as he sank into it. “Fine. Call him if you want to. You’re probably right. I just really hoped we’d have another year or two. At least until she’s out of high school.”

“That was never a certainty.” Aunt Val’s silhouette shrank as it came closer, and I scuttled toward my room, my spine still pressed against the cold wall. But then she stopped, and her shadow turned around. “Where’s the number?”

“Here, use my phone. He’s second in the contacts list.”

My aunt’s shadow elongated as she moved farther away, presumably taking the phone from my uncle. “You sure you don’t want to do it?”

“Positive.”

Another chair scraped the tiles as my aunt sat, and her shadow became an amorphous blob on the wall. A series of high-pitched beeps told me she was already pressing buttons. A moment later she spoke, and I held my breath, desperate to hear every single word of whatever they’d been keeping from me.

“Aiden? It’s Valerie.” She paused, but I couldn’t hear my father’s response. “We’re fine. Brendon’s right here. Listen, though, I’m calling about Kaylee.” Another pause, and this time I heard a low-pitched, indistinct rumble, barely recognizable as my father’s voice.

Aunt Val sighed again, and her shadow shifted as she slumped in her chair. “I know, but it’s happening again.” Pause. “Of course I’m sure. Twice in the last three days. She didn’t tell us the first time, or I would have called sooner. I’m not sure how she’s kept quiet about it, as it is.”

My father said something else I couldn’t make out.

“I did, but she won’t take them, and I’m not going to force her. I think we’ve moved beyond the pills, Aiden. It’s time to tell her the truth. You owe her that much.”

He owed me? Of course he owed me the truth—whatever that was. They all owed me.

“Yes, but I really think it should come from her father.” She sounded angry now.

My father spoke again, and this time it sounded like he was arguing. But I could have told him how futile it was to argue with Aunt Val. Once she’d made up her mind, nothing could change it.

“Aiden Cavanaugh, you put your butt on a plane today, or I’ll send your daughter to you. She deserves the truth, and you’re going to give it to her, one way or another.”

I snuck back to my room, shocked, confused, and more than a little proud of my aunt. Whatever this mysterious truth was, she wanted me to have it. And she didn’t think I was losing my mind. Neither of them did.

Though they apparently thought I was dying.

I think I’d rather be crazy.

I’d never really contemplated my own death before, but I would have thought the very idea would leave me too frightened to function. Especially having very nearly witnessed someone else’s death only hours earlier. Instead, however, I found myself more numb than terrified.