Twenty-Nine
The road winding through the national forest provides a false sense of security.
Everything bad happens in the forest, so the road is safe.
I’ll walk my way back to the town and wait for Beck to return.
I’ll tell Natalie to tell Evan to go find her.
She’ll be safe if she stays in the watchtower with the ladders up.
No one’s following me. Beck’s probably safe, and that should feel like a relief. But all it does is make my throat go tighter and tighter with the tears.
Why would I have ever thought Beck would see past my massive flaws?
If she liked anyone, she liked the mask I made just for her.
Detective Emma, Pathetic Abandoned Friend Emma, Innocent Emma.
Someone who was just as blindsided by the deaths, who only wanted what was right for people who didn’t deserve her pity.
But that person isn’t real. This is the real me.
Someone who hurts people when I get hurt.
Who hates people who treat me badly. Who passive-aggressively takes blow after blow and then explodes over an issue that was never that big to begin with.
I kept everything bottled up for so long and now it’s all spilling out and I can’t stop it.
Bullies are bad, but being emotionally unregulated and taking that out on the wrong people is just as bad.
I don’t deserve Beck. I haven’t deserved her since she was nice to me that October night at the Mystic Museum. At least Beck knows how to be honest.
I shouldn’t have left after seeing the woman. I should’ve had the guts to confront my friends directly. They would’ve caved and let me stay, in all likelihood. We would’ve patched things up. They wouldn’t have had a choice.
We could’ve faced whatever killed them together.
I should’ve died out here too.
My friends are dead because of my idea. They might’ve been shitty friends I should’ve cut off years ago, but it doesn’t negate that fact.
I should’ve died.
I should’ve died, I should’ve died, I should’ve died.
I’ve felt dead since I first saw that headline.
Maybe I should just let this witch-obsessed stalker take me. Maybe it’d finally bring me peace. Maybe—
I stop moving.
In the middle of the road.
I wait for the witch. I wait for the woman who’s followed me since this nightmare began.
I want to see her. I want to see what my friends saw.
Two bright eyes fill my vision.
A heartbeat, two, three…
The light stings my eyes, but I can’t look away. It’s peaceful, somehow. I feel the pain, but it’s so far back in my consciousness that it doesn’t matter.
I hope my friends felt this way before they—
And then—the blaring of a horn.
My mind snaps awake. The dull pain of the lights burns. My heart pounds in my chest, every nerve in my body buzzing.
A semi barrels toward me.
And I jump out of the way, dropping onto the foliage with a clack in my teeth and the taste of metal bursting into my mouth.
I lie in the dirt for a few seconds, ears ringing and blood pumping. Bones aching, muscles quivering, everything sharp around me. The smell of pine, the asphalt, the—
I’m alive.
I was seconds from not being alive just now.
I’m alive and I don’t want to die.
I push myself back to my feet and turn around.
I’m alive.
I walk back to the watchtower. To Beck.
No one else is going to die in these woods.
I have no idea how long I was gone for, only that Beck throws down the ladders when I call up for her.
I climb up with shaking legs and a trembling heart, so, so terrified of what Beck will look like when I see her again.
She’s inside the room when I reach the porch, a light shining through.
She’s got her back to the door, hunched over.
Probably looking through her sister’s phone.
I open the watchtower door and go to her.
Despite how my heartbeat has picked up, the comfort of stepping back into the watchtower settles over me like a sweater on a cold evening.
The room now smells like pumpkin spice air freshener, a scent I remember Paisley used to love.
Without the whip of the forest air, it’s downright warm in here.
Beck’s body and her heat sit seemingly closer than ever.
I suddenly can’t believe I ran out of this watchtower and into the dangers of the outside at all.
It’s like my instinct to survive has finally turned on.
The part of me that followed Beck because I like following Beck has taken the wheel again.
When she finally turns to me, all I see are the tearstains across her face.
I open my mouth, ready to burst into an apology for what I said on Paisley’s phone, for all the lying I’ve done between then and now, for every horrible thing I’ve said about her sister.
But she speaks first. “I have to confess something too.”