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For Matt, who soh the last year in one semi-sane piece

Thebeautiful hues of pink and purple and orange across the sky I sat in the sand with Tristan Parrish, his hand clutching mine, and stared down at his worn leather bracelet while I listened to the sound of his even breathing and the rhyth onto shore On any other day, this would have been the most romantic moment of my life But this was today And my life was over

Focus, Rory Focus and breathe

“So that night on the highway…that wasn’t a nightmare,” I said slowly “Me, my father, and my sister…we all died”

Tristan’s clear blue eyes were shot through with pain The callus on his thumb pressed into my palm “Yes”

I was numb as I spoke the next feords “Steven Nell killed us”

“Yes”

His grip onvoid opened up inside es assaulted me one after another, like a fil er The knife blade buried deep in hoverhead My last, choked breaths as I slowly slipped away and everything grew cold

My heart twisted painfully and I bent forward, struggling to breathe

“I’ain “I had to show you the truth”

He squeezed eous, chiseled face zipped into focus If this had been any other day, I would have been obsessing about what he was thinking Why he was still holding my hand Whether itover whetherbreath, or ifaround s a sixteen-year-old girl was supposed to be obsessing about I was not supposed to be obsessing about how I’d died

Overhead, a fat croed, swooping in and out before settling atop the roof of the white-and-blue beachfront house —in since we arrived in Juniper Landing exactly one week ago We’d been forced to flee our home in Princeton, New Jersey, when my math teacher, a serial killer who’d already killed fourteen other girls, had set his sights on me

We’d followed the FBI agent’s directions to a T, driving through a torrential downpour to our new location, our new identities as the Thayer faht we’d made it safely down to South Carolina, but we hadn’t made it at all Mr Nell had found us on a lonely stretch of highway and finished what he’d set out to do He killed my dad, then my sister, Darcy, then me

Suddenly, I shovedsand everywhere in my haste

“Where are you going?” Tristan scra his hand away, shaking from head to toe

“I have to tell my sister I have to tell my dad,” I said, my voice thick with tears

“No You can’t,” he said vehemently “You can’t do that”