Chapter Three
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ring.
A heavy, crusted lid peeled open, letting in the darkness.
Ring, ring, ring.
Discordant jangling rattled in my pounding brain, dragging me groaning out of the fog.
Slowly, achingly, I scraped myself off the steering wheel—flopping back onto the seat.
Ring, ring, ri—
The noise finally stopped, allowing silence to give way to the screaming in my head.
“Aghh.” A shaky hand rose to my temple.
It came away tacky with blood.
“S-Sue?” I croaked. I blinked through the blood, straining to see through the dark, dark, and more crushing dark. “Sue? Are... you o-okay?”
The noise started up again, making me cry out.
Cellphone, my sluggish brain supplied. It’s my phone. Call for help.
“Need help—” I turned my head, and screamed.
Wide, unseeing eyes stared at me through a red mask... even though her body faced the other way.
“Ahhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh!” I shoved against the car door, screaming, pounding, and pulling until the latch popped free—spilling me out onto the forest floor.
I crawled a single inch before showering the dirt in gas station potato chips and diet soda.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I cried, crawling farther still.
Sue’s eyes followed me the whole way.
Sobs wretched my throat. I cut ever more slices into my skin, clutching my face with clawing hands.
Sue was dead.
I didn’t need to check. I didn’t need to question. No one survived after gaining the sudden and tragic ability to tap their spine with their chin.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” I screeched, screaming into the forest. She was sleeping. She couldn’t brace herself. Protect her head. She had no chance.
She had no chance at all.
I threw myself back, pounding the leaves and twigs—screaming myself hoarse.
How often I wished that bitch would get what was coming to her, but not this. NOT THIS!
“Oh, God, no,” I cried. “Why? Why n-now? Why like this? Why me! How much can you shit on me in one day! How much?!”
My raw, strangled throat gave out, but shrieking raged on in my head.
How could this happen? I was so close—so close. And now I had to go back to my dying mother... and tell her I killed her eldest daughter.
Loud, hiccupping cries heaved my chest—shredding the last flicker of hope in my soul. Nothing could ever be the same again.
The person I entered the world with—the one whose soul shared mine until nature tore us in two—she was gone. And the only thing that was certain now was that my life could change, it could even improve. But it would never be whole.
Ring, ring, ring!
“Fuck’s sake.” I shoved up, tearing across the ground. “What do you want!?” I snatched up the phone, reading Satan clear and shining on the screen. “Ugh! Fuck off, Dan!”
I reeled back to fling my cell as far as I could—
Stop! I halted with my back arched in half. Take a breath. Think. Call for help.
Sucking in a shuddering sob, I lowered the phone on my lap—breathing in and out, slowing my thumping heart as the ringing came to a blessed stop.
A glance around didn’t reveal much other than trees, dirt, dark, and more trees.
Back in high school, there were a spate of accidents on the backroads, and my friend Courtney organized a petition and protest to get more streetlights in Lantana.
They must’ve missed this street because I couldn’t see anything beyond the glow of my phone light.
But we can’t have veered far from the street. I tried to stand and fell forward, clutching my spinning head. I’ll wait by the road for the police.
I gazed into the gloomy blackness that swallowed Sue. They’ll know what to do.
Pressing call, I typed in 9-1-
My phone went off again, flashing Dan’s true name across the screen. Rage flared in my soul and ripped a snarl from my lips.
I’m bleeding in the dirt next to my dead sister, and this evil, predatory piece of shit was blowing me up because I missed the date he blackmailed me into.
“I’m not fucking coming, you controlling dung-licking shitbag!” I screamed, or tried to. A raspy croak was the most my ruined throat could manage. “Release all the videos you want, my life can’t get any worse than this!”
I slapped End Call and went back to the call screen, my thumb hovering over the final digit.
I didn’t move.
When the police came, they would know what to do, but... I also knew what they’d do.
They’d tell me everything was okay. That there was nothing I could’ve done, and that Sue’s death was a tragic and unavoidable accident, but...
My mother wouldn’t.
The cops would drive me to that house. To my mother. And she’d demand to know why.
Why couldn’t I swerve in time? Why wasn’t I paying attention?
Why was I driving so fast? Why wasn’t I careful?
Why wasn’t I safe? Why didn’t I try to save her?
Why did I drag my sorry ass into her home with nothing to my name but my sister’s corpse and a sex tape currently trending on the Ajumma Gossip Network?
Why was I a fucking failure who couldn’t even get a family reunion right?
Why didn’t I die too?
I rocked back, tears springing to my eyes as my phone sounded off again.
The big, triumphant moment that I’d always been waiting and wishing for—the day my mother apologizes and welcomes me back—would end with her throwing me right back onto the street.
Maybe she would let me hang on to her final gesture and not remove me from her will once again, but even if she didn’t, ten thousand dollars and old furniture weren’t enough to cover IVF, and it certainly wasn’t enough for what happens after IVF.
It wouldn’t cover getting me and my baby out of a drug-infested apartment building surrounded by cops.
It wouldn’t pay for me to go back to school and get my degree.
And it wouldn’t pay for me to give my baby the good parts of my childhood, like flying back to Korea for Chuseok with the whole family, or drama summer camp with her best friends.
I turned my head, gazing in the direction of the manor. “There’s nothing waiting for me there...” My eyes drifted back the way I came. “...and there was never any life worth living back there.”
Dan blew up my phone again, drowning out my whispery croak.
“I’m the one who should’ve died.”
Dropping my head in my hand, I answered the fucking phone.
“Hello.”
“Sar—! Wait, hello? Who is this?” His irritation filled my ear. “Who the fuck are you, man? Why are you answering my girl’s phone?”
My mouth wanted to snap that I wasn’t his girl...
...but nothing came out.
He doesn’t recognize the smoker’s hacking cough that’s become my voice.
“Hello?! I said who is this? Where’s Sarah?”
I dropped my hand, slowly lifting my head up, and up, and up—my gaze latching on eyes I couldn’t see.
“Hey! You better fucking answer me!” he roared. “I swear, if that bitch is fucking around on me, I’ll—!”
“She’s dead.”
“What?” His anger snapped like a cold front—all heat and fire doused under frigid shock. “Wait, what did you say?”
“I... I...” My mind raced a mile a minute, throwing words at me like a dealer tossing product out the window with the cops on his tail.
“There was an accident,” I rasped. “I pulled over to see if everyone was okay, and if they needed help and... she’s dead, man.
There’s nothing anyone could’ve done. I’m sorry. ”
“No, no, no, stop,” he cried. “Just stop!”
I’d give the bastard something. He actually sounded stricken.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. What accident? Where are you? Where is she!”
“I’m out on some road in the middle of nowhere,” I confessed. “I was driving cross-country when I saw a dead deer on the highway and skid marks. I had a bad feeling, so I stopped to look and...”
“Oh, God, no. Oh my God! No,” he barked. “No, that’s not possible. You’ve got it wrong. Why the fuck would Sarah be out on some highway in the middle of nowhere? You’ve got the wrong person.”
“This is literally her phone, guy.” I was almost impressed with myself for sticking to the ruse. Part of me believed what I was saying. “You called her yourself—”
“No! She’s not dead! Whoever the fuck’s in that car stole her phone.”
I tossed my head. “I don’t know anything about that.
All I know is I need to call the police, and get out of here.
I don’t want anything more to do with this.
I’m not going to be in a police station all night, questioned about why I was found next to a dead woman.
” The bullshit just kept falling and falling out of my mouth.
“No one’s going to care about why you stumbled on some junkie thief. That’s not Sarah, and—and— I’ll prove it!” he burst out. “Send me a pic. I’ll tell you it’s not my Sarah.”
I was still shaking my head even though he couldn’t see. “The phone’s locked. How am I supposed to—”
“Three-seven-eight-one,” Daniel snapped, shocking me.
I had no idea the guy knew my phone passcode. But then, he was always hovering and following me around at work. Why should it surprise me that instead of doing his job, he stole a minute to peek over my shoulder and sneak my code?
Still, I hesitated.
Of course he was going to ask for proof.
He knew how desperately I wanted to get rid of him.
A part of him had to be thinking this could be all some horrible trick, but still, this was my sister.
My evil bitch of a sister, but still, my sister—and she deserved basic respect in death.
And the one thing she would hate above all was to be seen the way she was then.
From the split second I looked at her before flinging myself out of the car, I saw her airbag’s failure to deploy left her to smash her face into the dashboard at the seventy-five miles an hour I was driving.
The force snapped her neck and ruined her face, leaving nothing recognizable behind except a mask of blood, and our eyes. Letting her body be something Dan swiped past while he was searching for our sex tapes was just obscene but I had to be rid of this fucking leech for good.