Lena glanced behind her. She didn’t answer right away. “Why?”
That wasn’t the response I was expecting. Over the last week Lena had seemed intent on intruding into my life, but her mannerisms were now stiff and guarded. It felt like there was more than just a screen door between us. It felt like there was a wall.
“I … just have some questions.” She didn’t say anything. “I think we know each other better than I thought. But, I’m trying to figure out how.…”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled.
“I think you do, Lena.” Desperation was seizing me. “The video. I found the video of you … and me. In the auditorium. I know we were there … together.”
A flicker of interest. Her eyelashes fluttered.
“What were we doing there? Why—”
“I don’t know anything,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”
A sharp gasp shot out of my chest. She stepped back. Her hand was reaching for the wood door behind her.
“Wait!” I grabbed the handle of the screen door and pulled it toward me. She quickly shook her chin. “Please, I need answers. I have to know what’s going on. Please, Lena. How do I know you?”
A half a beat. “You don’t,” she said. “You would never spend a second trying to get to know me. Trust me.” The door swung shut with a loud and final clatter before the lock slid into place.
I clamped down on my tongue until it bled. I tugged at the roots of my hair. Why on earth was this happening to me?
I had worked hard to transform myself into someone that people wanted to be friends with and sometimes just flat-out wanted to be, but it was starting to feel like maybe somewhere along the way, without even knowing it, I’d sold my soul to the devil.
*
ONCE HOME, I paced the rug at the foot of my bed. Back and forth I went, gnawing the tough skin at the base of my thumb. Lena wouldn’t talk to me. Tate didn’t know me. So why should I care about either of them?
When I reached my window, I turned and began down the same worn line that I’d already trod.
But I did care.
I thought of the boys.
If I didn’t care, they may be dead soon.
Yet if Lena wasn’t a willing link, I had no way into my other life, the one that took place after nightfall.
And with that, I kept circling around the same two points. Every few minutes I’d glance around the room as I walked. I’d see the photographs pinned on a corkboard. Friends sporting high ponytails, our cheeks pressed together, giant red lollipop smiles. The orange and black pom-poms discarded next to a pair of overworked tennis shoes. SAT prep booklets. And my heart throbbed in pain. I missed it all. Even if popularity in Hollow Pines had wound up being less than a rags-to-riches fairy tale, I still missed it. Please let me keep it, I pleaded, as though she might somehow be able to hear me.
I sank onto the mattress and curled my thighs to my chest so that I could rest my forehead on my knees. Like grains of sand on a windy beach, I felt myself slipping away in pieces. Hot tears slipped down the hills of my cheekbones and crossed the bridge of my nose. My own mind was eating away at me, destroying me like a cancer.
I tried to breathe deeply only to have tears clog my nostrils. After several minutes, I finally wiped my nose and took several shaky breaths in and out of my mouth.
I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how, but I knew that if I didn’t figure this out and stop her it’d be as though Cassidy Hyde never existed.
I slid my fingers again over the last slimy tears on my face until my skin was dry and chapped; then I sat up straight. I needed to channel the old Cassidy—both of them. The one that could solve math puzzles in her sleep and the one that could save Homecoming when the caterer backed out at the last minute.
Think, Cassidy. She is no smarter than you. You are literally the same person.
I had already tried to go around her, to head off her plans, to beg her to stop. None of that had worked. So, if I couldn’t go around her, what would I do?
I must go through her.
My attention spiked like when I’d drunk too many Red Bulls before an exam. When I was younger, my mother used to tell me the story of Hansel and Gretel and the trail of bread crumbs. It was just a stupid fairy tale. It wasn’t real. No fairy tale was. I knew that now. But if I was going into the mad forest, what I needed was a way out.
The hypnotist had given it to me.