She opened her mouth, closed it. Then she went to work paging through several manila folders on her desk. “Let me see, I know I’ve got you in here somewhere… . Ah! Here we are.” She pulled a sheet of paper from one of the folders and passed it over to me. “Everything look okay?” I scanned my schedule. AP U.S. history, honors English, health, journalism, anatomy and physiology, orchestra, and trig. Clearly I’d had a death wish for my future self when I’d registered for classes last year.
“Looks good,” I said, throwing my backpack over my shoulder and pushing through the office door.
The hall outside was dim, the overhead fluorescent lights casting a dull gleam on the waxed floors.
In my head, I told myself this was my school. I belonged here. And even though it was jarring every time I reminded myself I was now a junior, despite the fact that I couldn’t remember finishing sophomore year, eventually the strangeness would wear off. It had to.
The bell rang. In an instant doors everywhere opened and the hall flooded with the student body. I fell into step with the current of students fighting their way to the restrooms, locker bays, and soda machines. I kept my chin tilted slightly up and leveled my gaze straight ahead. But I felt the eyes of my classmates when they looked my way. Everyone took a surprised second look. They had to know I was back by now—my story was the highlight of local news. But I supposed seeing me in the flesh cemented the fact. Their questions danced front and center in their curious stares. Where was she?
Who kidnapped her? What kinds of icky, unspeakable things happened to her?
And the biggest speculation by far: Is it true she can’t remember any of it? I bet she’s faking.
Who just forgets months of their life?
I fingered through the notebook I’d been hugging to my chest, pretending to search for something highly important. I don’t even notice you, the gesture implied. Then I threw back my shoulders and faked a look of indifference. Maybe even aloofness. But under it all, my legs were shaking. I hurried down the hall with only one goal driving me forward.
Pushing my way inside the girls’ bathroom, I locked myself in the last stall. I dragged my back down the wall until I was sitting on my bottom. I could taste bile rising in my throat. My arms and legs felt numb. My lips felt numb. Tears dripped off my chin, but I couldn’t move my hand to wipe them away.
No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, no matter how dark I forced my vision, I could still see their leering, judgmental faces. I wasn’t one of them anymore. Somehow, without any effort on my own, I’d become an outsider.
I sat in the stal several minutes longer, until my breathing calmed and the urge to cry faded. I didn’t want to go to class, and I didn’t want to go home. What I really wanted was the impossible. To travel back in time and get a second chance. A do-over, starting with the night I disappeared.
I’d just climbed to my feet when I heard a voice whisper past my ear like a cold current of air.
Help me.
The voice was so small, I almost didn’t hear it. I even considered the possibility that I’d invented it.
After all, imagining things was all I was good for lately.
Help me, Nora.
At my name, goose bumps popped out on my arms. Holding still, I strained to hear the voice again. The sound hadn’t come from inside the stal —I was alone in here—but it didn’t appear to have come from the larger area of the bathroom either.
When he finishes with me, it will be like I’m dead. I’ll never go home again.
This time the voice sounded much stronger and more urgent. I looked up. It seemed to have floated down from the ceiling vent.
“Who’s there?” I called up warily.
At the lack of a reply, I knew this had to be the start of another hallucination. Dr. Howlett had predicted it. My thoughts turned anxious. I needed to remove myself from the setting. I had to distract my current train of thought and break the spell before it overtook me.
I reached for the door lock, when a sudden image burst across my mind, eclipsing my sight. In a terrifying twist of scenery, I could no longer see the bathroom. Instead of tiles, the floor under my feet became concrete. Overhead, metal rafters crisscrossed the ceiling like giant spider legs. A row of truck bay doors ran along one wall.
I’d hallucinated myself inside a—
Warehouse.
He sawed off my wings. I can’t fly home, the voice whimpered.
I couldn’t see who the voice belonged to. There was a stripped lightbulb overhead, ill uminating a conveyer belt at the center of the warehouse. Aside from it, the building was empty.
A drone reverberated all around as the conveyor belt turned on. A clanging, mechanical noise carried out of the darkness at the end of the belt. It was carrying something toward me.
“No,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think to say. I swept my hands in front of me, trying to feel the bathroom stal door. This was a hallucination, just like my mom had warned. I had to push through it and find a way back to the real world. All the while, the awful metal ic scraping grew louder.
I backed away from the conveyor belt until I was pressed up against a cement wall.
With nowhere to run, I watched as a metal cage rattled and clanged out of the shadows, moving to the edge of the light. The bars glowed a ghostly electric blue, but that wasn’t what seized my attention. A person was hunched inside. A girl, bent to fit the confines of the cage, her hands grasping the bars, her blue-black hair tangled in front of her face. Her eyes peered through the screen of hair, and they were colorless orbs. There was a length of rope emitting the same eerie blue light tied around her neck.
Help me, Nora.