A few minutes past midnight.  The glare of headlights in the driveway.  Music blared, shocking the summer crickets into silence as the lawn swarmed with people, all of them young and adventurous and wearing the cavalier smiles of the newest generation of idle rebels.  The teenagers lounged about by the pool, dizzy with summer breeze and alcohol.  Down the street, the neighborhood was dark, a shadow-washed canvas waiting for the splash of light, for the wail of sirens that as of yet had no reason to appear.  A girl in a red dress popped open a can of beer and raised it to her crimson lips, caught in the blissful moment of midair weightlessness that always precedes a terrible fall.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“I want to get out,” Cassidy said.  “Someone get me out of here.”  She gazed around at the bland gray walls.  This prison was miserable enough; the least they could do was let some light into this god-forsaken place.

“This place is the worst,” groaned her new fellow inmate, who had been transferred from the next town over a few weeks ago.  He stashed another stack of papers away into the beige-painted metal filing cabinet in the corner.  “Our shift’s almost over, though.”

“Thank goodness.” Cassidy smiled up at the clock, silently thanking it for showing mercy at last after all these long hours.  There was nothing in the world worse than a long day at the office, and she couldn’t wait for the weekend.

“I second that,” said her coworker.  Jonathan, his name was.  It didn’t matter.  As soon as she got these files put away, she would escape from this place and instantly forget his name and the names of everyone else who worked here.  She breathed a huge sigh as she stashed the papers out of sight.  It was like a ten-ton weight had been lifted from her shoulders.  She straightened out her spine for the first time in hours.  The hands of the clock finally crept to four P.M.—  or close enough— and she grabbed her purse and made a beeline for the door.

“Wait,” said Jonathan.  Cassidy sighed and turned her head.  She had almost made it out.

“Yeah?” 

“I just remembered to tell you.  There was someone here looking for you earlier when you were on break.” 

“Oh?”  She rotated the rest of her body around to face him.  “Who?”

“I don’t know.  She didn’t tell me her name.”  He pulled on his jacket and walked toward the door.  “She had long hair and a gray plaid sweater.  I told her she could wait until your lunch break was over, but she didn’t stick around.”  He shrugged and stepped outside.  “Must have had somewhere to be.”

“Huh.”  Cassidy bundled her wavy brown hair into a messy ponytail and scurried out of the building, sucking in a lungful of fresh, crisp air.  Finally, she thought as she turned the corner and started toward home.  It had been a long week.  Maybe she’d stop at the coffee shop along the way.

She heard her phone buzzing inside her purse.  Pulling it out, she glanced at the number.  It was her sister, and it was about time, too.  It had been forever since she’d last seen Angela.  She shifted her purse to her other arm and held the phone to her ear.

“Angie, where’ve you been?  I tried to call you but you didn’t pick up.”

“Yeah,” said Angie’s voice.  Music was playing in the background.  “I’ve just been so busy lately.”

Cassidy rolled her eyes.  How many times had she heard that one?  “Well, did you get the job?” she said.

“What?” said Angela.  Oh, great.

“You said you were thinking about applying for a job.  With that company in Oaksfield?”

“No, I’m still looking,” said Angie.  “But Dave told me about this position in accounting at—”

“Wait a second,” said Cassidy, her brow furrowing.  “Who’s Dave?”

“My boyfriend, Cassidy,” said Angie, as if this was common knowledge and always had been. 

Cassidy sighed.

“And where did you pick up this newest addition to your ever-lengthening train of trashy boyfriends?”  Cassidy rolled her eyes and kicked a pebble down the street.

“He’s not trashy.  He’s a nice guy,” said Angela.

“If you say so.”

“Like you know anything.  You’ve never dated a guy in your life.”  Angie’s voice stung like some kind of venomous insect. 

“I swear, Angie, if you met him at that bar you like to hang out at—”

‘Call ended,’ chimed a robotic voice from Cassidy’s phone.  She sighed at it, and the sigh turned into a hiss as she crammed her phone in her pocket.  Great.  So instead of getting a new job, Angie was getting yet another new boyfriend.  And she would treasure him and adore him and do something crazy like plan a cruise she couldn’t afford or sell her apartment and move in with him, and then a few weeks later she would dump him.  Cassidy knew the cycle all too well.  It usually ended in Angela showing up at her door in desperate need of support, usually of the financial variety.  It would be nice if for once Cassidy could manage to save up enough money to escape this constant nine-to-five marathon of misery and pursue something she was actually interested in.  She rubbed her forehead.  Yep.  Keep dreaming.

Something clattered on the rough pavement behind her, and she turned around.  An empty can rolled down the street, and a battered gray sneaker came down on it with a loud metallic crunch, frayed, dirt-caked shoelaces flopping like dead snakes over the shiny surface.  Cassidy’s eyes traveled up.  It was a young woman, at least she assumed it was a young woman, though all she could see of her was an oversized, droopy sweater and a long curtain of dark hair that fell across her face like a waterfall of ink.  Her sleeves were so long that only the tips of her fingers peeked out.  Gray plaid sleeves, they were.

“Hi,” said Cassidy.  She took a step toward the girl.  “Were you the one who was looking for me earlier?”

The girl tilted her head.  From behind the curtain of hair, one dark eye glittered.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What?”  Cassidy offered her a confused smile.

“For your loss.”

“I think you must be mistaking me for someone else,” Cassidy said.  “I— haven’t lost anyone.”

“No, you haven’t.”  The girl paced a few steps toward Cassidy.  Her gait was stiff and awkward, a little lopsided.  “But I believe very strongly in planning ahead.  I always do, see?  Days, months, weeks ahead.”

“That’s… A good thing to do,” Cassidy said.  Her smile was wavering now.

“This trip, for instance.  I’ve been planning it for years.  Years and years I’ve been waiting to visit.”  She took a few more steps, back and forth across the pavement.  A zombie, that’s what it reminded Cassidy of.  Dead stiff, shuffling about.

“You’re from out of town, then?” she said.  She stared at the girl.  Her voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“I agonized,” said the girl.  “Agonized.  Over every single detail.  Every single scenario that could’ve taken place.  But that’s the thing, isn’t it?  Nothing ever goes as planned.”

“Um— Yeah,” said Cassidy, taking a small step back.  “Yeah, totally.  Um—”  She searched her mind for an escape route, for some imaginary obligation that would draw her away from this eccentric woman.  “I have to go—”

“The problem is,” said the girl.  She jolted toward Cassidy, raising her voice.  “Before I could complete my plans, I had to know what city it was I was visiting.  That’s what took all this time.  The looking.”

“Well, this place isn’t the most interesting,” Cassidy said.  “But—”

“I’m not interested in the fishtank.”  The girl’s eye, peeking out from that curtain of hair, was fixed on Cassidy’s face.  “I’m interested in the fish.  And I do think I’m about to haul in quite the catch.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Cassidy.  What does that even mean? 

“Not for the fish.”  That dark eye was piercing, unblinking, and Cassidy didn’t like the way it looked at her.  It was like it was hungry, like when it fixated on her it cut through right to her core, and there was something about the girl’s gaze that felt deeply and chillingly personal.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Do you believe in miracles?” said the girl.

“What do you mean?”

“Was it a good conversation?”  The girl pointed to Cassidy’s pocket, where her phone was.

“It’s not any of your business.”  Cassidy crossed her arms, stepping backwards.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the girl.  Her voice was sweet, a little too sweet, like a fruit on the cusp of rotting.  “I couldn’t help but overhear.  Angie.  That’s a pretty name.”  The girl limped up to Cassidy and stopped right beside her, the weak afternoon sunlight glinting on her hair.  “I always wanted a sister.”

A chill spread outward from deep inside Cassidy’s chest as the girl walked away.  How had she known that?  It was almost as if the girl knew her, knew Angie was her sister just by looking at her with that piercing gaze.  She pulled her jacket a little tighter around herself, waiting until the girl turned a corner before starting to walk again.  The wheels in her brain were spinning.  No, it wasn’t anything to worry about.  The girl probably already knew Angie and she was just playing some sort of stupid joke on her or something.  It could be anyone under that curtain of hair.  For all Cassidy knew, she knew the girl too and just wasn’t aware of it.

“Angie has the weirdest friends,” she muttered to herself.  Yes, it was just one of Angie’s friends.  That was all there was to it.  But as she walked down the sidewalk to her house, the girl’s words still lingered like a sour taste.  I’m sorry for your loss.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The girl in the red dress was floating, queen of the world, looking down on the glittering scene before her, empty cans and bottles strewn across the grass like diamonds.  A few drinks had blurred the crisp lines of reasonable thought down to a pleasant hum in the background, the looming pressures of the future had drifted away, and she felt nothing but the sparkling bliss of now.  And right now, in this moment, she was young and perfect, the prettiest girl in the world, the treasure of every lovestruck high school boy.

Oh, how lucky she was to be this beautiful.

A long shadow stretched across the driveway, and the girl in the red dress looked up as a figure cut through the beam of the headlights.  It was another girl, in worn jeans and a secondhand t-shirt, her hair cut like a boy’s.  She walked with her shoulders scrunched up, like she was trying to collapse into herself, like she was hoping to bundle herself up into a cocoon and go into hibernation.

“Oh, look,” said a girl with too much makeup on.  Her lips curled into a sneer at the sight of the new arrival.  “Who invited Marjorie?” 

“Hey, Frankenstein,” yelled a blond boy leaning against a gray truck.  “You should send back that half of your face.  Ask them for a replacement.”

Marjorie flinched and scrunched up her shoulders a little more.  The girl in the red dress watched her as she slunk across the lawn to where a group of boys was lounging in lawn chairs.

“Hi,” she said.  Her voice was quiet as she pulled a photograph out of her pocket and showed it to them.  “Hi, I’m— I’m looking for my cat.  He got out again.  Has anyone seen him?”

“No,” said one of the boys.  “Probably ran off because he couldn’t stand to look at you.”

“Yeah,” chimed in another.  “Probably got scared.”  The boys snickered.  Marjorie turned her head away from them, the right side of her face tilted toward the ground.  It put her head at an awkward angle and made her look like a plastic doll in the process of having its head pulled off by a sadistic child.  She picked her way across the lawn to the girl with too much makeup on and held out her photograph.

“Have you seen—”

“Eww,” said the other girl.  “Get away from me.  I don’t want your gross rash.”

“It’s not a rash,” said Marjorie, but the other girl was already walking away.  Marjorie stood, all alone, like a little plastic bath toy bobbing in a vast, hostile ocean. 

* * * * * * * * * * *

Cassidy sat hunched over a mug of tea, letting it over-steep and go cold as she stared out her living room window, watching the sky go dark.  Why was she letting it get to her?  That girl was just a random stranger she met on the street.  Cassidy made a point of not letting things people said get to her.  It was why she could remain calm in the face of disgruntled managers and Angie’s friends who never liked her and everyone else she’d ever had to deal with.  But something about that girl made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end like static electricity.  She couldn’t get over that feeling that she had met the girl before.  And what had she said?  She always planned ahead?  Plan ahead for what, exactly?

“So stupid,” Cassidy muttered to herself.  She pulled her phone out of her pocket.  Five new messages.  From Jonathan.  Great.  Last week she had made the mistake of texting him a picture of that new company schedule that outlined the changes to employees’ hours.  Now he had her phone number and was asking if she wanted to get together for lunch this weekend.  She leaned on the table and rubbed her forehead.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like him or anything.  He was a perfectly nice guy.  But she liked her nice, solitary little apartment just fine, thank you very much.  Besides, Angie always invited her to her stupid parties on the weekends.  Now she would have two invitations to refuse.  She scrolled through the messages, swirling her cold, bitter tea in its little blue mug, until she reached the words at the bottom of the screen:

oh btw when that girl came looking for u earlier i gave her ur number.  hope thats ok!

Cassidy put the phone down.  You did WHAT?!  She wanted to smack some sense into him.  Of all the things he could’ve done.  You don’t just give random strangers my telephone number, you stupid boy!  She put down her tea, rubbing her forehead with both hands now.  Yes, texting him that schedule had been quite a mistake indeed.  She did not need that weirdo calling her.  Thinking about it made a shudder ripple across her skin.  She left the phone on the table and crossed the room, hunkering down the couch and turning on the TV.  The news channel yammered on.  She didn’t absorb any of it.  She was still thinking about Angie and her new boyfriend and Jonathan and that strange girl.  Why couldn’t she get it out of her head?

The phone rang.  Cassidy didn’t move.  She didn’t want to answer it.  She huddled under her blanket, waiting for it to stop.  It rang again, and Cassidy groaned and dragged herself off the couch.  If it was that girl, trying to get under her skin again, she swore to herself she would kill Jonathan.  She picked up the ringing vexation from the table and looked at the screen.  It was Angie.  She held the phone up to her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hey, Cassidy.  Sorry I hung up on you earlier,” said Angie.  “It’s just I wish you wouldn’t automatically assume that I have bad taste in men and every guy I date is trashy.”

“Look, Angie,” said Cassidy.  “I don’t want to start this again, okay?  Can we just drop the subject?”

“I think you should meet him.”

“What?”  Cassidy paced across the floor.

“You should come meet him.  Maybe it’ll change your mind about him.  And if you still don’t like him, at least you’ll have an actual reason.”

“I’d love to,” Cassidy said.  “I really would, but I can’t.  I’ll stop saying those things about him, okay?”

“Come on,” Angie said.  “Just come say hi.  We’re at a party at his place.  It’s on Birch Street, you can just drop by—”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t right now.”  Cassidy sat down at the table and took a sip of her tea.  It was fiercely bitter and had begun to acquire a fishy taste.

“Why not?” said Angie.

“I just— I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?” Angie said.  Cassidy’s eyes scanned the room as if she could find a convenient excuse nestled in the bookshelves.

“I’ve just had a lot of things going on at work lately,” she said.

“So what you’re saying is you have nothing to do whatsoever.”  There was no doubt in Angie’s voice.  She saw right through Cassidy’s lie.

“That’s not—”

“You think I ever actually buy this?  You’re never ‘busy’.  You never even leave your apartment.”

“That’s not true,” Cassidy said.

“Really?  When was the last time you got together with a friend?  Went for coffee?  Had fun?”  On the other end of the phone, Angie sighed.  “You used to be the life of the party, Cassidy.  And then it was like you just shut down.  For years.  You isolate yourself from the whole world.”

“I don’t isolate myself,” Cassidy said.

“What happened?” Angie said.  Cassidy leaned her head against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut.  She couldn’t revisit that day.  Not after she had spent years trying to forget it.

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“It’s like you turned into a whole different person.  You wouldn’t even talk to me about it.”

“Nothing happened,” Cassidy repeated.  She bit her lip, hard, until she felt certain it would leave a bruise.  “Why are you bringing this up again?  It was years ago.”

“I just don’t understand you,” said Angie.  “I want to know where you went.”

“Look,” she said.  “I don’t want to go to your party, okay?  I just want to stay right here and I want you to leave me alone.”

“Cassidy—”

“Just leave me alone.”  Cassidy hung up the phone and put her hands over her face.  She didn’t just want to stay cooped up in her apartment anymore.  Now she wanted to flatten herself against that dingy pink wallpaper, face-first, and stand there until she became simply part of the walls.  She wandered into the kitchen and dumped the rest of her tea down the sink.  It slithered toward the drain in a dark amber rivulet, and she set the mug down on the counter with the fast-food containers from earlier’s dinner, all heaped up in a crooked hodgepodge dump.  She shuffled into the living room and collapsed on the couch, pulling her blanket over her head, and she stayed like that even when it got so stiflingly hot she could barely breathe.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The girl in the red dress watched Marjorie wandering across the yard like a lost ghost trying to find its way back to purgatory.  Everyone else in the yard was staring at her now, too, gawking at the strange specimen that they were certain had found its way to their high school from a traveling freak show.  She kept her face tilted so the right half was in shadow, and her arms were curled around herself, as if by that act the raggedy little girl could protect herself from whatever words were aimed at her.

She turned her head, and the light struck her face.

The left side was normal, a face that could have belonged to anyone.  It had no peculiarities, nothing that made it stand out in a crowd, only a slight dusting of freckles and the beginnings of premature worry lines on her forehead.

The right side appeared to the girl in the red dress as if it had been grafted from an alien life form.

Across her cheek stretched a vivid purple blotch, dark and heavy like an ink stain, that crept up and around her eye onto the corner of her forehead and dribbled down to her chin.  The skin was uneven, rough-looking in comparison with the other side of her face, and her left cheek was just a bit asymmetrical with the right.  Her lips were lopsided: about a third of her mouth on the right side was discolored, and her lips were fuller there.  The right corner of her mouth drooped downward, perpetually a half-centimeter lower than its counterpart on the left.

The girl in the red dress stared at Marjorie, and the outcast shriveled under so many pairs of eyes like a leaf under a hot sun.  Marjorie clutched her photograph to her chest and drew in a deep breath, and, with the air of one stepping through a minefield, she walked toward the house.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The phone rang, rudely awakening Cassidy.  Beneath the blanket, she curled up into a ball, waiting for it to stop so she could drift back into oblivion.  The phone, unfortunately, seemed to have a different agenda, and so, at long length, Cassidy kicked the covers off and climbed off the couch, stumbling drowsily over to the table.  It was Angela, for the third time today.  And what are we going to argue about this time? Cassidy thought as she picked up the phone.

“Angela, this is the third time you’ve called.  I’m trying to sleep.”  She glanced at the lit-up numbers on the clock.  It was almost midnight.  

“Cassidy?”  Angie’s voice had a thickened quality to it, like she had been crying.  Or drinking.  Or both.  “Cassidy, will you come pick me up?”

“I thought you were at Dave’s house,” Cassidy said.  “That’s like a block away from your house.”

“I’m not going to my house, I’m walking to your apartment building,” Angie said.  “I’m on Ninth Street and I just passed Rosewood.”

“Then you’re already more than halfway here,” Cassidy said.  “Why are you walking to my apartment building, anyway?”

“I just don’t want to be alone,” Angie said.  Oh, no, Cassidy thought.  She knew what that meant.

“You broke up with Dave, didn’t you?” she said.

“We got in an argument,” Angie said.  “It was a stupid argument, really.  But he got so angry and then he just picked up a plate and threw it at me, and then I left, and—”  Angie stopped talking for a second, and Cassidy heard a sharp breath that might have been a sob.  “And there was this girl standing in the yard, just standing there, and I thought she was just there for the party, but now she’s following me, and I need you to come get me.  I even went around the block and she’s still following me.  She’s been behind me the whole time and it’s scaring me.”

Dread chafed at the back of Cassidy’s mind.  I’m not interested in the fishtank.  I’m interested in the fish.  And I do think I’m about to haul in quite the catch.

“The girl,” said Cassidy.  “What does she look like?”

“What does that matter?” said Angie, her voice jumping up an octave.

“Just tell me what she looks like,” Cassidy said.

“I don’t know.  She’s got this really long hair draped across her face.  I can’t tell what she looks like.”

Jitters swarmed through Cassidy’s chest.  “Hold on,” she said.  “I’m coming to get you.”

Cassidy’s phone buzzed.  She lowered it from her ear and looked at the screen.  It was a text message.  From an unknown number.

Hello Cassidy.

She felt like she had been plunged headfirst into icy water.  It was her.  She ran across the apartment, opened the door, sprinted down the hall.

“Cassidy?” came Angie’s voice through the phone.

“I’m on my way,” Cassidy said. 

“Hurry,” Angie said.  “She’s getting closer.”

The phone buzzed again.  Cassidy looked at the screen.

This is all your fault.

She ran for the stairs.  Her heart was thumping madly, as if any second now, it would burst out of her chest.  Her legs felt wobbly as she ran down one flight, then another.  A group of people was coming up the stairs, and she charged into their midst, shoving them aside. 

“Out of my way!” she yelled.  “Out of my way!”

“Hurry!” Angie said.  With the phone pressed against her ear, Cassidy could now hear a frantic clack-clack-clack, the sound of Angie running in high heels.  “She’s right behind me.  Get here!”

Cassidy dashed out of the stairwell to the door and ran out into the parking lot.  It was dark outside, and a frigid wind knifed at her face and her arms.  She fumbled with her keys and unlocked the car, clambering inside and dropping her phone in the cupholder.  Her hands were unsteady, and it took her three tries before she finally jammed the keys into the ignition and turned.

Nothing happened.

“No!” she yelled.  “Stupid machine!”

“What happened?” said Angie’s muffled voice inside the cupholder.

“My car won’t start!”  Cassidy turned the key again.  Still nothing.

“What do you mean your car won’t start?”

“I mean it won’t start!”  Cassidy pounded on the steering wheel with her hand.

“Why won’t it start?” shrieked the cupholder.

“I don’t know!”

The clack-clack-clack of Angie’s running footsteps slowed.

“I think I lost her,” she panted.  “I don’t see her behind me anymore.”

“Where’d she go?”  Cassidy strangled the steering wheel with her left hand as she turned the key with her right.

“I don’t know,” said Angie.  “But I don’t see her anywhere.”

“Are you close?” Cassidy said.

“Yeah,” said Angie.  “Yeah, I see the back of your apartment building.  Is your car working now?”

“No,” Cassidy said.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”  Her phone buzzed, and her eyes flicked over to the screen.

Didn’t I tell you I plan ahead?

There was a clattering and a muffled shriek from the other end of the phone.  Cassidy tumbled out of the car and pelted around the apartment building. 

“Angie!”

She reached the back of the building.  A barren parking lot greeted her, littered with cigarette butts and bits of broken glass.  She searched around, but there wasn’t another human being in sight.

There was another shriek, somewhere near the gas station and the convenience store.  Cassidy ran towards it.

“Angie?” she called.

There was the sickening whack of something hard and heavy hitting flesh and bone, and the street fell silent.

“Angie!”  Cassidy dashed madly down the street, the convenience store jarring in her vision with every footstep.  She heard the slam of a car door as she tore across the parking lot of a closed fast food restaurant, past the gas pumps, to the darkened convenience store. 

A figure stood at the far end of the parking lot, still and silent.  Cassidy walked toward it.

“Is that you?”  She stepped closer.  A neon sign on a nearby building flickered on for a second, casting a momentary red glow on the figure, and Cassidy recoiled.  It wasn’t Angela.  It was the girl, her hair hanging over her face like a horde of black snakes.  She stood for a second, and, though Cassidy couldn’t see her face, she could feel the girl staring at her.  Her lungs seemed to shrivel in her chest until she couldn’t breathe.  The pounding blood drained out of her face.  She was frozen to the broken concrete, unable to move, unable to take her eyes off the girl. 

The shadowy figure turned and walked away, vanishing behind the convenience store.  Cassidy heard an engine starting up, and then a car sped out from behind the store, rocketing off into the night.  All at once, a wave of dizzy panic hit her, and she rushed around the side of the store, her stomach churning at the thought of what she might find.

Behind the store, the concrete was bare, a cracked, lonely expanse of parking lot.  As Cassidy stumbled across it, her foot hit something, and she looked down.  It was a metal pipe, short and heavy like a club.  Beside it, there was a small, dark stain on the concrete, and Cassidy didn’t need to picture it in the daylight, didn’t need to imagine its vicious crimson color to know what it was.  She sank down on the pavement, among the spent cigarettes and the gum wrappers, curling her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth.  It couldn’t be real, it just couldn’t.  Not on a normal, boring day like today, not in the controlled, carefully cultivated mundaneness that she had worked so hard to craft her life into.  She remembered Angie on the phone earlier today, excited to go to that stupid party with her stupid new boyfriend, carefree and happy just like she always was.  Cassidy wished she could go back to this afternoon, back to when things were still normal.  I won’t even hound her about getting a job or make snarky comments about her taste in men.  Just please let me go back!

* * * * * * * * * * *

The room was hot and crowded, packed with sweaty bodies, and the music was so loud it could have melted through one’s eardrums.  The girl in the red dress walked in to get another beer and saw Marjorie struggling her way through it like an ant swimming through a river of molten molasses.  One of her friends, a tall blonde in a sleeveless shirt, walked up beside her as she watched the misfit bounce from person to person, clutching that photograph.

“What is she doing here?” said the blonde.  “You can’t just show up to a party you’re not invited to.”

“She’s going to scare off the guests,” said the blonde’s boyfriend.  Giddy from all the beer, the girl in the red dress giggled.

“I’m going to go tell her to leave,” the blonde said.  “She can’t be here.”

The blonde girl marched across the room, her boyfriend and the girl in the red dress trailing along behind.  They found Marjorie interviewing a couple who had been curled up together at the table in the corner of the room, sharing affectionate kisses and a bag of potato chips.

“Hey,” said the blonde.  Marjorie turned around, and the couple stood up and scooted off into the crowd, leaving their potato chips neglected on the tabletop.  Evidently they had lost their appetite for both food and romance.

“Hi,” said Marjorie.  “Have you seen—”

“What are you doing here?” said the blonde.  “You weren’t invited to this party.”

“I’m looking for my cat,” Marjorie said.

“Well, he’s not here,” the blonde said.  “Now get out.”

“Please,” said Marjorie.  “Have you seen him?”  She held up the photograph.

“Didn’t you just hear me?” said the blonde.  “Leave.  We don’t want you here.”

“Yeah, you’re killing the mood,” the blonde girl’s boyfriend said.  “This isn’t a Halloween party.  Now leave before someone catches your nasty disease.”

“It’s not a disease, for the hundredth time,” Marjorie said.  The normal side of her face was turning a flaming shade of pink, and her eyes were wet and glassy.  “It’s a birthmark.  I was born with it.”

“Whatever,” the blonde said.  “Just get out.  You can’t come if you’re not invited.”

Marjorie turned to the girl in the red dress.  “Have you seen him?”

The girl in the red dress could feel her friends watching her.  Waiting for her to come to their aid and throw Marjorie out of the party.  She looked away from Marjorie’s pleading eyes, fixating on the little patch of her ear where her birthmark crept onto her earlobe.

“No,” she said.  “I haven’t seen him.  And I don’t want to see you either.”

Marjorie scrunched up her shoulders, turning away.   

“Now leave,” said the blonde girl.  Marjorie slunk away into the crowd, and the girl in the red dress opened another can of beer, drowning the little pang of guilt inside her until it disappeared.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Cassidy hunched in an old, coffee-stained chair at the police station, slowly pulling her hair out strand by strand.  It was eleven-thirty in the evening, and she was ready to drop dead from exhaustion.  Last night was replaying over and over in her mind.  Angie’s shaking voice on the phone.  Cassidy’s racing heart as she turned the key in the ignition.  The girl standing in the dark by the convenience store.  The spot of blood on the pavement.  She had been there, listening to those blood-chilling screams.  They had been so close.  So close that maybe, if she had gotten there a little sooner, she could have stopped it.  If only she had gotten down those stairs in her apartment building a little faster.  If only she hadn’t wasted so much time trying to start the car. 

She replayed the scene in her mind again, only this time, when she rushed out of the building, she didn’t stop when she got to the car.  She kept going, around the apartment building, down the street, into the convenience store parking lot.  There was Angie, behind the store.  She grabbed her sister by the hand and ran, flying down the street until they were safe, until they were back in her well-lit, tidy apartment.  She wrapped her arms around Angie, squeezing her tight.  She was never going to let go of her again, not ever.

The fantasy dissolved, and reality slammed Cassidy in the face like a brick.  She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged her purse, burying her face in it.  She was right there.  She could’ve stopped it, that beautiful little scenario inside her head could’ve been real, but she didn’t.  This was her fault.

There were footsteps on the tile floor.  Cassidy opened her eyes and wiped them, sitting up.  It was a police officer, the one she had talked to earlier.  She stood up.

“Excuse me, officer,” she said.  The man stopped and turned.  “Have you found out anything yet?”

“No, ma’am,” the officer said.  “Nothing yet.”

“Nothing at all?”  Cassidy dragged her fingers through her hair, yanking out a few more strands.

“Ma’am, it hasn’t even been a full day since your sister’s disappearance,” the officer said.

“So what?” said Cassidy.  “So what?  Do you people have some sort of rule saying you have to wait to investigate a crime ’til a week later, when there’s nothing you can do about it?”

“Ma’am, I assure you, we are putting all available resources into finding your sister,” the officer said.  “I am just asking for your patience.  We will find whoever is responsible.”

“You want me to be patient?”  Cassidy’s face was turning almost as pink as her bloodshot eyes.  “You tell me you don’t even have a clue who did this, and you just want me to sit here?”

“Ma’am—”

“She’s still alive out there somewhere,” Cassidy said.  “And she’s scared, and she’s alone, and you need to find her.”  She stabbed the officer in the chest with her index finger.

“We’re looking into it,” the officer said, backing up out of arm’s reach.

“Well, look harder,” Cassidy spat.  “She’s still alive.  She has to be.”  She wiped her eyes as the officer backed into the other room.  “She has to be.”

The door closed on the retreating officer, leaving Cassidy alone again.  She sunk back down into her chair, hugging her purse close to her chest.  Inside her purse, her phone buzzed.  She took it out and looked at the screen, and her heart started thumping like a ten-pound chunk of lead.  It was a text from the girl.  The girl who took Angie.

You can still save her, you know.

Cassidy’s heart did a somersault.  She stood up, vaulting across the room to the door.  She had to show this to the policeman.  The phone buzzed again.

Come meet me.  I’ll give her back to you.  But if I see a police car or a single other person besides you, she dies.

Cassidy’s insides squirmed like her stomach had been replaced by a horde of slippery earthworms.  There had to be some way she could show this to the police and trick this mystery woman into thinking she had come alone so that the police would surprise her and arrest her.  No, she couldn’t do that.  That would be too risky, and she couldn’t risk Angie’s life.  She stared at the screen, hovering in the middle of the room.  Another message appeared.

So what do you say?

Cassidy squeezed her eyes shut.  Tingling waves of nervous nausea were sweeping through her stomach.  Yep.  I’m about to die.  She opened her eyes again and typed out a message.

Ok.  Where do I go?

Over the bridge, responded the girl.  Once you cross the river, there’s a dirt road immediately after the bridge.  It’ll be on your right hand side.  It leads into the woods.  Once it ends, keep going straight until you find me.

I’ll be there, Cassidy replied.  She started to tuck her phone into her pocket, but it buzzed again.  She looked at the screen, and dread rose in her chest like heartburn.

Be there tonight.  If you’re not there by midnight, I’ll kill her.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The girl in the red dress watched as Marjorie walked up the stairs, stopping people she passed along the way to show them her photograph.  The tall blonde girl crossed her arms, scowling.

“What is she still doing here?”

“Geez,” the blonde’s boyfriend said.  “Is she deaf?  We only told her to leave like thirty times.”

“I’m going up there,” said the blonde.  She turned to the girl in the red dress.  “Come on.”

They shoved their way through the crowd until they reached the stairs.  The girl in the red dress stumbled on the way up, and her friends had to wait for her to recover her balance.  Holding on to the banister, she made it to the top, and the three of them stalked through the second floor, a trio of wolves on the hunt.

They found Marjorie in the master bedroom.  A crowd had congregated around her, and she was backed against the wall. 

“You should get some makeup,” taunted a girl.  “Cover that gross thing up.”

“Hey, ugly!” yelled a boy.  “Does that thing on your face wash off?”  He threw a plastic cup at her face, and it struck her forehead.  She flinched as beer dripped down her face.

“I told you we didn’t want you here,” the blonde said as the trio made their way to the center of the crowd.  “Go back to the zoo where you belong.”

“Yeah, get out of here,” the blonde girl’s boyfriend said.  He threw his beer at her, too, and the metal can hit her on the shoulder, soaking her too-big t-shirt.  She flinched again, and the crowd laughed.

“What, are you scared?” said another boy, tossing a can at her.  Another plastic cup was thrown, and another.  “Here, have some more!”

Marjorie wrapped her arms around herself, flattening herself against the wall.  “Leave me alone,” she said.  Her voice was trembling.

“Aww, is she going to cry?” said the girl in the red dress.  She stepped toward Marjorie.  The chiding voice of her conscience had been drowned in a steady stream of alcohol, and now all she could hear were her friends, cheering her on.

“Why are you doing this?” Marjorie said. 

“Because it’s just too easy,” said the girl in the red dress.  “Ugly little freak.”

She leaned forward and shoved Marjorie.  Marjorie stumbled, and the girl in the red dress shoved her again.  She fell to the floor, wet and dripping.

“Need a hand?” the blonde girl’s boyfriend snickered.  He grabbed her by the arm, lifted her to a sitting position, and flung her back against the wall.  She struggled back to her feet.  There was a sliding door beside her, and she slid it open and inched out onto a balcony.

“Yeah, that’s it, run away,” said the girl in the red dress.  She followed Marjorie out onto the balcony.

From up on the balcony, one could see that the second story was in fact the third story:  the house was built on a hill, and, while in the front of the house, the basement was submerged underground, in the back, it was completely aboveground.  Stairs curved from the balcony all the way down to the stone patio below.  The girl in the red dress stumbled across the balcony, leaning on the flimsy wooden railing that was all that separated her from a three-story drop.

She stepped away from the railing.  Marjorie started down the stairs, then stopped.  She turned around, her eyes fixating on a shiny piece of paper.  It was her photograph, lying on the balcony.  She walked back up to the top of the stairs.  The girl in the red dress stepped in front of her.

“Where are you going?”

* * * * * * * * * * *

By the time Cassidy made it from the police station to the bus stop, it was eleven-thirty-nine and freezing.  She squirmed as a gust of biting wind swept across her face.  She let out a long breath.  The bus would get here at eleven-forty.  She had sprinted all the way from the police station to the bus stop.  After all, there was no way on earth she would be able to walk from here all the way across town to the bridge and make it to the woods by midnight, and if she had gotten to the bus stop just a few minutes later, if she had missed the bus—

No.  She couldn’t think about that.  The reality was that she was here, and she would get on the bus, and it would let her off by the bridge, and she would make it.  She had to make it.

“Cassidy?” said a familiar voice.  She turned around.  It was Jonathan.  And he was walking toward her.  “What are you doing here?”

Cassidy glanced to her left.  The bus was lumbering down the street.  Hurry up, hurry up.

“Now’s not a good time, Jonathan,” she said.

“Hey, you never got back to me about lunch this weekend,” he said.  She glanced back at the bus.  It was drawing closer.  She shifted her weight from foot to foot, watching it.

“So?” Jonathan said.  “What do you think?  I mean, I was kind of hoping we could do something today, but I’m free tomorrow.  Say, eleven-thirty?  Maybe noon?  I know this great restaurant on Main Street, I think you’d really love it—”

“Jonathan.”  Cassidy turned back to face him.  “I’m really kind of busy right now.”

“No, I’m not talking about now.  I meant eleven-thirty tomorrow.  We could get together for lunch, you know, and kinda see where that takes us?”  He combed his fingers through his hair, grinning sheepishly.  Cassidy checked her phone.  Eleven-forty.  The bus was getting close.  She could hear it rumbling towards them.

“Jonathan, I really don’t have time to talk about this right now,” she said.

“Why not?” Jonathan said.  “It’s eleven-thirty at night.  What could you possibly be doing that’s so important?”

Cassidy looked back at the bus.  It was slowing down, creeping up to the bus stop.

“Cassidy?” said Jonathan.  “Are you single?”

The bus screeched to a halt.  “I’m busy!”  The bus opened its doors.  She started to run toward them, but Jonathan grabbed her arm.

“Wait!” he said.  “Is that a yes?”

“Let go of me, Jonathan!” she yelled.  Her stomach was bubbling with dread.  The monstrous engine was idling, and a growing plume of exhaust unfurled into the frigid air.

“Come on, Cassidy,” he said.  “Just give me an answer.  I like you.”

“Let’s get moving, people,” yelled the bus driver.  “I’m on a fixed schedule here.”

“Let go!” said Cassidy.  She squirmed in his grasp, but he wouldn’t release her.

“I mean, I really like you,” he said.  “I know I’ve only known you for a few weeks, and I know this is really sudden, but I’m telling you, I know a good match when I see one, and I think we should just go for it.  What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Last warning!” yelled the bus driver.  Cassidy could feel her heartbeat in her face.  She yanked on her arm, and Jonathan almost teetered over, but still he held firm.

“I’m tired of holding back, you know?” he said.  “And you have to feel it, too, I just know it, so I’m doing this.  I’m actually doing this.”  He took a deep breath.  “I’m asking you out on a—”

The bus rumbled away.  Cassidy broke free from his grasp and ran after it, waving her arms.

“Wait!” she yelled.  “Wait, come back!  Come back!” 

It sped up.  She was losing ground.  “Wait!”

It turned the corner.  Cassidy slowed down to a halt, panting.  Her head was spinning.  That was her chance.  That was her one chance to save Angie, and now it was gone.  She thought of Angie, being held hostage somewhere, afraid, with no one to help her, about to die, all because Cassidy missed a stupid bus.  She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, to stop a flood of tears.

“Cassidy?” Jonathan called after her.  She stormed back down the sidewalk.

“I hate you!” she screamed.  “I hate you!  Do you have any idea what you just did?”

“Whoa,” said Jonathan, backing up a step.  “Calm down.  There’s another bus coming at eleven-fifty, you know.”

“It’ll be too late,” she said.  “That was my only chance!”  She stared at Jonathan, wishing she could rip his stupid head right off.  Or maybe…

“Wait a second,” she said.  “Is your car anywhere around here?”

“Yeah, why?” he said.

“I need it.”

“Wait, what?” he said.  Cassidy scanned the streets for his car and found it in the grocery store parking lot nearby.  She took off running, and Jonathan scrambled after her.

“I need your car.  Give me the keys!”

“To get where?”

“I’ll go on a date with you.  Just give me the car keys now!”  She held out her hand, and Jonathan tossed her the keys.  She unlocked the car and got in, and by the time Jonathan had the door open, she had the keys in the ignition and was putting it in drive.  The car had a built in clock, and the numbers on the screen read eleven forty-three.  Seventeen minutes to save Angie.  She stepped on the gas.

“Whoa, whoa!” said Jonathan, slamming the door and scrambling into his seat.  “Wait ’til I’m in the car!”

Cassidy sped out of the parking lot and down the street.  She sped into the other lane, passing car after car.

“Where are we going?” Jonathan said.

“You should put your seat belt on.”  Cassidy flew around the corner just as the traffic light turned yellow, stomping on the gas pedal.  Her speed climbed to forty miles per hour.

“No kidding!”  He fumbled for his seat belt.  Cassidy blew through downtown, passing stop sign after stop sign without even slowing down.  Her speed kept increasing.  Forty-five miles per hour.  Fifty.  There was an intersection up ahead.  The light was red.  She whizzed through it anyway.  A horn blared behind them as they sped off.

“Cassidy, have you lost your mind?” screamed Jonathan.  “What are you doing?  Slow down!”

Cassidy turned a corner, and there was a squeal of tires on pavement.  “You’re the one,” she said, blasting through another red light.  “Who made me miss my bus!”

“Look, I’m sorry!” Jonathan said.  He was clinging to the sides of his seat.  “Just slow down!  You’re going to get us killed!”

Cassidy glanced at the clock.  Eleven forty-six, and she still needed to get across town, beyond the city limits, and across the bridge, and then wander off who-knew-how-far into the woods before midnight.

“I’m sorry, Jonathan,” she said.  “But this is an emergency.”

A group of college kids wandered out into the street, and Cassidy pounded on the horn.  They swiftly dispersed, and she sped down the street and made a wide-swinging, messy left turn.  There.  This was the road that would take her out of town and to the bridge.  She was going to make it.

Sirens blared behind her.  She looked in her rearview mirror.  A police car had sprung to life and was chasing her down, lights flashing.

“Cassidy!  Pull over!” yelled Jonathan.

“Where did he come from?”  Cassidy looked from the police car to the road ahead.

“Are you insane?  Just pull over!  Stop the car!”  He was gripping the sides of his seat white-knuckled now, and Cassidy thought he might lose circulation to his fingers.  “Oh, heavens, you’re going to get us arrested, aren’t you?”

Cassidy glanced in her rearview mirror again.  She couldn’t pull over.  She had to make it to Angie.  She stepped on the gas pedal a little harder, and the needle of the speedometer climbed up from sixty to sixty-five.

“He’s following us,” said Jonathan.  “Are you seriously leading the police on a chase?”

“Just shut up!  I’m trying to concentrate here!” Cassidy yelled. 

“Yep.  She’s insane.  Absolutely insane!”  Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut.  “Why do I always decide to date the crazy ones?”

Cassidy squinted.  Up ahead, there was something in the middle of the road.  She squinted.  It was a barricade, and beside it was a sign that said ‘ROAD CLOSED’.

“You have got to be kidding me!”  She swerved down a side street.  The police were still right behind her.  Her heart was thundering in her ears, louder than the sirens.

Another set of flashing lights emerged around a corner in front of her.  Her heart spasmed.  She sped around the block, both police cars on her heels, back to the road she had been on before.  The orange and white striped barricade loomed in her vision, and she smashed through it, swerving past a large piece of construction equipment.  Jonathan let out a shriek.  The police sirens howled as Cassidy sped up, and the buildings got smaller and more spaced out until she sped out into open country.  She could see the bridge up ahead, and beyond it, the woods.  She glanced at the clock.  Eleven-fifty-one. 

Another police car slid into view, coming over the river.  It stopped in the middle of the road, blocking the bridge, its lights flashing like dragons’ eyes.

“No!” Cassidy yelled.  “No, no, no!”

She swerved to the right and sped off the road, cutting through a barren field.  If she couldn’t go over the bridge, she would find another way.  The speedometer jumped up to eighty-five miles per hour.

“What are you doing?” said Jonathan.  “Let me out of the car!”   

Cassidy tore across the field, down to the riverbank.  The water stretched, dark and shiny like a long black snake before her.  She gripped the steering wheel and forced herself to breathe.  It was becoming extraordinarily difficult to take in enough oxygen.

“Cassidy,” Jonathan said.  “Cassidy, that’s the river.  That’s the river!”

“Yes, I know it’s the river!”  She slammed on the gas.  “I used to kayak all the time.  It’s really shallow here, trust me.”

She looked at the clock.  Eleven-fifty-three.  She rocketed down the riverbank, and the car splashed into the dark, murky water, struggling through the current.  The sirens were wailing.  Beside her, Jonathan was screaming something unintelligible.  The water was getting deeper, and the car was slowing down. 

“Come on,” she said.  “Come on!”

Cassidy glanced behind her.  The police cars were parked on the riverbank, and policemen were starting to come out of them.

“Yep,” Jonathan muttered.  “Yep.  We’re just going to drive through the river.  It’s fine.  This is fine.  Everything’s fine.”  He was shaking his head from side to side, like he thought he could shake off this whole situation and go back to sanity.

The water was getting shallower again.  It was eleven-fifty-four.  Policemen were wading through the water behind them.  They were almost to the other side.  Just a few more yards and they’d be on dry land.

The car hit a patch of mud and stopped.  Cassidy mashed the gas pedal all the way down to the floor, but the wheels spun in place.  She punched the steering wheel and put the car in park, opening the door. 

“Wait a second!” Jonathan said.  Cassidy scrambled out the door and into the muddy water.  It filled up her shoes and soaked her pants all the way up to the ankles.  She started to run, but her coat caught on the corner of the car door, and she stumbled, wrestling with it.

“Stop right there!” yelled a policeman.  Cassidy’s head whipped around, first toward the police, then toward the woods.  She tore her coat free from the car door and splashed through the water to the edge of the river.

“I said stop right there!”  Cassidy started to run up the riverbank.  Her foot slipped in the mud, and she fell forward.  She could hear the police splashing through the water toward her.  She scrambled up the riverbank on hands and knees.

“This is your last warning!” called the policeman.  Cassidy rose to her feet and ran for the woods.  A gunshot rang out behind her.  She covered the back of her head with her hands— Like that’s going to do you any good, said a voice in her mind— and sprinted into the trees. 

The sirens faded to background noise as she ran through the woods.  Moonlight filtered down through the bare branches, casting a surreal glow on the forest.  She slowed down, gasping for breath, and checked the time on her phone.  Eleven-fifty-seven.

“Angie?” she called, running through the trees.  “Angie, where are you?”

She searched the woods, turning in all directions.  There wasn’t a sign of human life anywhere.  The screen on her phone now read eleven-fifty-eight.

“I’m here,” she yelled.  “Please!  I’m here!  Can you hear me?”  She looked around, squinting in the darkness.  “Just let Angela go.”

She kept running.  She was getting lost now, and she wasn’t even sure if she was even going in the right direction.  This could be it.  Angie might die in these woods simply because Cassidy made it there a few minutes late.  The thought made her feel nauseous.  She was here on time, she had made it all this way, but she just didn’t know where to look.  Turning in frantic circles, she began to hyperventilate.  Here she was, letting her sister die, because she didn’t know where to go.

There was a rustling in the trees somewhere to her right.  Cassidy ran toward it. 

“Angie?” she shouted.  “Angie, I’m here!  Where are you?”  She fought through a dense cluster of pine trees, and they scraped at her face as she shoved them aside.  She stumbled out into a small clearing, walled off from the rest of the world by thick, dark pine branches.

In the center was a dead tree.  Angie was tied to it.

Angie was a mess.  Her hair was matted and tangled, and there was a dark red streak in the front where blood from a wound on her forehead had soaked into it.  There was more blood dried all over her face, and a vivid bruise had sprouted like a grotesque flower on her forehead.  She was gagged, and her eyes were frantic, like a wild animal’s.

Cassidy rushed over to her and removed the gag from her mouth.  Angie tried to speak, but her first several attempts came out as frantic sobs.

“You— Have— To leave,” she finally choked out.  “She’s going to hurt you.”

“Angie, what did she do to you?” Cassidy said.  “Your head—”

“I’m serious, Cassidy.  Just get out of here.  Leave now, while you still can.”

Cassidy fumbled with the ropes binding Angie’s hands, struggling with the knot.  “We’re both going to get out of here.  It’s going to be okay.”

There was a soft rustling in the trees behind Cassidy.  Angie’s eyes went wide, and she fell still and silent.  Cassidy turned around.  The mystery woman was standing in the clearing, her long, dark hair blowing gently in the biting wind, watching Cassidy the way a stalking lion watches its prey.

In her hand she held a large, hefty axe.

“You came,” she said.  “I was beginning to wonder.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Cassidy demanded. 

“Didn’t I ask you the same thing?”  The girl hobbled toward Cassidy with that stiff zombie-walk of hers.  “Because it’s just too easy, Cassidy.”  The girl took another step.  The axe glinted viciously in the moonlight.  “How does it feel to have the tables turned on you, hm?  How does it feel to be the victim for once?”

Cassidy took a step back, inching a little closer to her sister.  That voice was so familiar.  She was certain it belonged to someone she knew.

“Who are you?” Cassidy said.

“Oh, did you forget about me?”  She passed the axe from one hand to the other.  “Did you forget about me after everything you did to me?  After you destroyed my life?”

She brushed her long hair away from her face, and Cassidy’s lips parted in a silent statement of dread.  She knew that face, alright, from the freckles to the forming worry lines to the sprawling, inky blotch across the right side.

“Marjorie,” she gasped.  She looked down at Marjorie’s feet, staring in wonder.  “But that’s not possible.  How are you—”

“Walking again?” Marjorie finished for her.  She planted the long wooden handle of her axe in the snow and leaned on its head like a cane.  “I asked if you believed in miracles.  Do you believe in them now?”

“Marjorie, I’m sorry for what I did to you at that party, I swear.  Please, just—”

“Sorry?”  Marjorie’s face twisted into a terrible hybrid of a laugh and a grimace.  “You don’t even know what sorry is, you sick, cold-hearted monster.”  She shook her head.  “What I would give to have been born a beautiful, stupid girl like you.”

“I am sorry, I really am, I swear,” said Cassidy.  “I never went to another party again after that, I just couldn’t face myself.”

Marjorie gripped her axe with both hands.  “Well, I’m going to make you feel sorrier than you’ve ever felt in your entire life.”

“Please,” Cassidy said.  She stepped toward Marjorie.  “Leave Angie out of this.  She’s never done anything to you.”

“Cassidy?” Angie said.  “What’s going on?  What is this?”

“Well go on, tell her,” said Marjorie.  Cassidy stared from Marjorie and the axe to her shaking, wild-eyed, bloodied sister.  This was all her fault.  All because of what she did.  It ate away at the inside of her chest like corrosive chemicals.

“Tell her,” Marjorie ordered.  She shoved Cassidy, and Cassidy crumpled to the cold, muddy ground.  “Tell her what you did.”

“I—” Cassidy began.  Angie’s eyes caught her own, and she looked away.  A sob was beginning to work its way up from deep inside her chest, and she clamped her teeth down on it.  She rubbed her eyes, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

“Oh, are you going to cry?” Marjorie taunted.  “Tell her.  Say it.”

“I was at a party, a few weeks after high school graduation,” she said.  Her voice was rich and heavy with unshed tears.  “And I was drunk.”

She could picture the scene clearly in her mind, as vividly as if it had happened mere minutes ago.

Her red dress fluttered around her legs as she stood on the balcony, the lingering taste of alcohol fresh on her lips.  Her friends were gathered around behind her, laughing, making noise.  Marjorie was standing in front of her, her hair cut short, her face a few years younger and her worry lines less pronounced.  Marjorie inched forward.

“Will you give me my photograph back, please?”

“We were teasing her about her birthmark,” Cassidy said.  “And we got carried away.”

“Come get it, ugly freak,” Cassidy said.  Marjorie started to step forward, but another plastic cup was tossed through the door.  It struck her on the head, and she flinched, retreating back a step. 

“Are you scared?”   Cassidy took a step forward.  Marjorie glanced from her to the stairs to the photograph.  She started to turn, to retreat.

“We were up on the balcony,” Cassidy said.  “I pushed her.”  She sniffed, closing her eyes.  “And she fell.”

Marjorie inched onto the top step.  Cassidy stumbled forward and shoved her, hard, and she toppled forward, tumbling down the stairs.  The stairs curved, looping around in a lazy spiral.  Marjorie kept going forward. 

She hit the old wooden railing on the side of the stairs, and it splintered and gave.  Marjorie crashed through.  Cassidy’s heart lurched, and the world slowed down as she watched Marjorie drop, and drop, down to the stone patio below. 

She hit the stone with a thud, her arms and legs twisted at awkward angles.  Cassidy stared down at her, dizzy and sick, her stomach writhing.  She crumpled down to her knees.  Her friends all gathered around her on the balcony, staring down at the bent and broken creature below them.  A crowd was congregating on the patio now, everyone shouting, all the noise and the motion blurring together into one deafening haze, screaming in Cassidy’s ears.  And in the center of it all was Marjorie, perfectly still in that twisted position, her eyes wide open, her face contorted into a silent scream.  She sat there, staring down at her, for what felt like a thousand years. 

Sirens in the distance.  The shouting got louder.  Two of Cassidy’s friends grabbed her by the arms and pulled her up to a standing position, dragging her away from the balcony, through the house, down the stairs.  She could hear them yelling, “Run, run!”  over and over, but it all sounded distant, like it wasn’t her they were talking to, like it wasn’t her being guided down the stairs and rushed out the back door, through the neighbor’s yard and down the street.  In her mind, she was still kneeling on the balcony, staring down at Marjorie, at her tortured, asymmetrical face and her bent and twisted limbs.  She stumbled and fell on the asphalt.  Her friends tried to help her back up, but she curled into a ball and would not move.

What had she done?

“I was in a wheelchair for a couple years after that,” Marjorie said.  “I spent more time in the hospital than I did at home, getting surgery after surgery, going to physical therapy, just so I could walk again.”  Marjorie paced a couple steps to the left, then a couple to the right, hobbling stiffly.  Cassidy looked from her to Angie.  Angie was staring wide-eyed, her mouth open, her lips curled.

“I could have been going to college,” Marjorie continued.  “I wanted to be a marine biologist.  I would be in college studying biology right now if it weren’t for you.  I’m a good researcher, you know.  But instead I spent the past four years in hospitals, with big chunks of my life ripped out of my memory by anesthesia and surgery.  And the only thing keeping me going through all of it was knowing that one day I was going to find you and make you pay.”

“Marjorie, please,” said Cassidy.

“I did my research,” Marjorie said.  “I found out where you work.  Where you live.  You and that sweet little sister of yours moved halfway across the country and I followed you all the way here.  For this.”

“Cassidy?”  Angie was staring at her like she’d just watched a UFO drop firebombs on her house.  “Is all of this true?”

“I was drunk.”  Another tear leaked down Cassidy’s face.  “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“But it did happen,” Marjorie said.  “And you never accepted responsibility for it.  I told people it was you, but you just had so many alibis.  Must be nice to be the girl with a million friends.”  Marjorie swung her axe in a practice swing.  Cassidy crawled backwards on hands and knees, inching away from the gleaming blade.

The sound of sirens cut through the trees.  The police.  They were still looking for her.  Marjorie’s head whipped around as she scanned the woods, and Cassidy seized the opportunity.  She stood up and reached for the ropes binding Angie, fighting with the knots.  They were tied so tightly that Cassidy couldn’t even budge them.

“I’m going to kill you!” Marjorie whirled around, and Cassidy let go of the ropes.  “I told you not to bring the police.”

“I didn’t!” Cassidy said.  “They saw me speeding and they followed me here.”

“This is your fault,” Marjorie hissed.  She raised her axe for a swing, but she wasn’t looking at Cassidy anymore.  She was looking at Angie.

Cassidy dove, ramming into Marjorie’s legs as she swung, and the axe missed Angie’s neck by a few centimeters, biting into the wood of the tree she was tied to.  Angie screamed.  Marjorie let out a yell as she toppled to the ground, and Cassidy scrambled to her feet, rushing back to Angie’s side.  The sirens were getting closer.  Cassidy struggled hopelessly with the knots as Marjorie dragged herself back to her feet, like a stiff old zombie rising from the grave, using her axe as a cane to push herself up.  She staggered forward, raising her axe. 

“Hey!” Cassidy yelled.  She ran around to Marjorie’s other side, and Marjorie turned, her long hair tangling in the wind.  Her eyes were like an animal’s, vicious and rabid and glittering.  “Hey, over here!” 

She backed up into the woods.  The sirens were sharp and clear now.  The police were getting closer.  If she couldn’t get Angie free, then maybe she could at least lure Marjorie toward them.  She took a few more steps backward, at a fast walking pace.  Now, just how fast can you hobble?

Marjorie’s lips curled into a snarl, and she tightened her grip on the axe.  She broke out into a galloping run, her legs falling in an unnatural rhythm on the ground.  Cassidy turned and sprinted into the trees.  She heard the axe cutting through the air behind her, whooshing dangerously close to her left ear.  Her heart jolted.  Behind her, she could hear Marjorie’s footsteps tearing through the fallen leaves and Angie’s screams for help receding into the trees.  Lights flashed up ahead, through the forest.  A police car.  So that’s where that dirt road is, Cassidy thought.  If she could only make it there, this could all be over. 

Her foot hit a fallen branch concealed in the leaves, and she fell, hitting her head on the trunk of a tree.  Her ankle gave a sharp twinge of pain.  In an instant, Marjorie appeared over her, axe raised.  She swung.  Cassidy rolled out of the way just as the axe struck the spot where her head had been a second ago.  Adrenaline was shooting through Cassidy’s veins like a poisonous drug.  It was making her lightheaded and sick and frantic.  She scrambled to her feet and ran.  Her ankle was throbbing.  Marjorie pried the axe free from the thick, gnarled root of the tree and galloped after her, her tangled hair flying behind her.  Cassidy kept her eyes fixed on the lights of the police car ahead of her.  Marjorie was close behind her.  She tried to scream for help, but she was too out of breath.  Now, she could make out the outline of the police car, and where the road ended, and she could see figures emerging from the car.  And if she could see them, surely they could see her.  She was almost to safety.

A sharp pain split through her back, and she fell.  Marjorie stood over her, holding the axe.  The blade was dripping red.  Cassidy tried to move, tried to get up, but the wound in her back screamed with such agony that she couldn’t sit, couldn’t breathe.  She rolled over and tried to crawl, but Marjorie brought the axe down hard on her spine.  A half-scream writhed its way out of her, but she couldn’t muster the breath to finish it.  White sparks were flashing in her vision.  Between them she could see men running through the trees toward her.

“Drop the weapon!” someone shouted.  “Drop the weapon now!”

Marjorie swung the axe again.  Pain flared through Cassidy’s whole body, terrible and all-consuming, like she was drowning in a molten river of it.  Her head dropped to the ground, her neck twisted sideways, her face half-buried in the leaves.  Cassidy tried to move, but she couldn’t.  A kaleidoscope of memories was streaming through her mind.  She remembered drinking lemonade on her grandmother’s porch and standing up and cheering at Angie’s high school graduation and camping in the woods and eating wild strawberries and playing with Angie on the playground when they were little kids.  She wanted to be that little kid again, wanted to grab her sister by the hand and run, as far as she could.

A gunshot rang through the woods.  There was a heavy thunk as the axe fell to the ground.  Marjorie collapsed beside Cassidy, her long hair spread out around her head like a fan.  Her face filled up Cassidy’s vision, the purple stain deep and inky in the moonlight.  It was beautiful, Cassidy thought.  Like spilled paint. 

Marjorie’s face was twisted with pain, her worry lines deepening.  It made her look much older.  Her mouth widened into a sad smile.

“It was worth it,” she whispered.  Among the shouting and the sirens and the chaos, they were the only words Cassidy heard.  “It was worth it.”

Marjorie’s smile fell, and her face went slack.  Her dark eyes still stared into Cassidy’s, but they no longer glittered.  Cassidy’s vision went blurry, and as she sank beneath the surface of that molten river, she remembered Angie still tied up back in the clearing.  They’re going to find her, she thought.  She’s going to be okay.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Cassidy woke up to steady beeping and the harsh smell of sterilizing agents.  She stared at a blur of light and color, at formless splotches that wavered in her vision.  A voice echoed in her ears, the words jumbled and distorted.  It felt like she was underwater.  It was hard to breathe.

The smeary world slowly formed itself into a hospital room.  Machines she couldn’t name stood all around, and tubes protruded from her arm.  Above her stood a nurse with a clipboard and a friendly smile.

“Cassidy?” she said in a soft voice.  “Can you hear me?”

Cassidy tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Can you wiggle your toes for me?” said the nurse.

Cassidy tried to wiggle her toes, but she couldn’t move them.  Her feet were as still and unresponsive as blocks of wood.  She tried to bend her knees, but nothing happened.  Panic shot through her.  The beeping of the machine next to her got faster as her heart raced.  She tried to lift her arms, sit up, turn her head, but she remained still as a corpse.  She tried to speak, but she couldn’t open her mouth to form words.  She was paralyzed.

And it was all her fault.