Chapter 48
SOMETHING GOOD
The common room feels wrong without her.
The rug is too empty, the couch too firm.
My eyes keep flicking to the corner where Juniper would be sprawled out, running her mouth until Ryder threatened to sedate her early.
Every shadow that dances in my periphery feels like it could be her.
But it isn’t. And something tells me it won’t be ever again.
“Tell me something good,” Brielle whispers, voice trembling like she’s afraid no one will answer.
The thought of speaking a single word right now tears a hole in my heart. June’s plaque has been removed. Her room’s been scrubbed pristine. No one will tell us when or if she’ll be back. Every time I try to recall what happened that day, the memory slips further from my reach.
The other girls are just as unsteady. We’re stuck in a stage of suspended grief. The well hasn’t dried—so we just keep sinking deeper as the water grows colder, with no one in sight to offer a rope.
Ivy shuts her eyes, midnight braid slipping over her shoulder. “An endless sky, blue that dips to pink at sunset.”
I close my eyes tight, but all I see is shards of glass and an empty void.
“Trees with pretty gold leaves. Ryder said that once.” Bri’s cheeks are stained with tears. “I want to see them.”
Ryder leans over the counter, folding his arms tighter with a nervous glance. “You wouldn’t just see them,” he says quietly. “You’d hear them. Wind weaving through the branches.”
The sound hits me like a memory I don’t own. Wind, untamed and alive. My chest ripples at the thought of air that hasn’t been filtered through dusty grates. The taste of oxygen that’s mine alone, untainted by the program.
Colt clears his throat. “Morning rain. The kind that makes you want to stay in bed.”
Rain. I clutch the couch cushion like I could wring water out of it. I imagine it pouring through my bones until it washes out every drug, every order, every obedient thought they’ve ever burned into me.
Brielle blinks fast, fighting tears. “Stars,” she whispers. “Real ones.” Her hand finds mine.
“No rules,” I rasp, interlacing my fingers with hers. “No labs. No tests. No one deciding what’s best for us. Just—” I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. “Just us. Somewhere far away, where none of this can follow.”
Brielle’s mouth wobbles into a shaky half-smile. Colt’s jaw is tight, hands braced on the counter. Ryder stares at the floor, his usual smirk nowhere to be found.
Even the act of pretending feels wrong now, but we’re close enough to touch. Close enough to keep saying it, to keep making it real. And for one fragile second, I let myself believe in the story. Even as everything I thought I knew crumbles to ash.
They’ve spent so long trying to train the truth out of us, but all they did was prove that some things can’t be erased.