Chapter 51
COME BACK TO ME
There’s no floor here. No ceiling.
Only the weightless release of being stripped from my body piece by piece.
I can’t breathe. My lungs aren’t collapsing; I’m not gasping for air. My chest simply doesn’t exist anymore.
Am I dead?
No, this hurts. Dead people don’t.
Light cracks through the dark in flickers, phasing into visions that don’t belong to me. A bustling dining hall. Pale arms adorned in long white gloves. A girl with red velvet ribbons in her hair. Piano keys cracking under pressure. A shapeless scream that doesn’t have a mouth.
And a chandelier—
A chandelier imploding on itself, sending glass hurling to the ground.
I feel it hit me.
One piece. Then another. Every shard strikes true, cutting cold and sharp and wrong, and somehow I know this isn’t happening.
The ceiling bends and warps like it did in the testing room, only now, it’s above a ballroom. There are mirrors everywhere, tall and thin and impossible. I’m reflected in each one—but I’m never the same girl twice. I shift. Blur. Multiply into forms I don’t recognize.
One version of me sits at a piano. Another holds a glass with blood streaking down her palm. One is running barefoot down a hallway.
Which am I?
Displaced noises bleed through, warping the very essence of time. Laughter that sounds like knives. Music with no melody. The staggering end of a line with no path forward.
None of this is mine, and yet it feels like it is.
My hands lift involuntarily, and they’re glowing. Veins of light spider under my skin, sparking like wires shorting out. It occurs to me that I’m going to explode. I can feel it.
I’m dying.
Oh God—oh God. I’m dying.
I start to scream but nothing escapes. It reverberates inside my ribs, shaking loose every truth they’ve ever buried.
I see a white dress soaked in something too red. I see a clipboard. A number. A new name written on top of the old one. I see my parents as nothing more than faceless figures, turning away. I see him.
Vincent.
Too close to me, eyes too human for someone who’s supposed to be one of them. He’s kneeling. One hand steadying me, the other cupping my cheek. His face flickers as he speaks words I know he’s not allowed to say.
“You’re still in there.”
I try to say his name. I try to ask what’s happening to me. Why I remember things that didn’t happen and see things that can’t be real and why every part of me is unraveling.
I feel the remains of my consciousness slipping away. His hands tighten, but it’s already too late. My world collapses into startling white, and I’m falling again. Only this time, he can’t catch me.
Surrender thrums in my bones, bringing a levity to my mind that I don’t deserve. Darkness tugs, and I stop resisting. Sensations drain away, leaving only the echo of the girl I once was, and the one I couldn’t be.
Somewhere far beyond, his voice reaches desperately for me. A final plea bleeds through the static. Not attached to a number or barked like a command. Spoken low, like a secret to be cherished.
“Come back to me, please, Estelle.”