Page 54 of Death and Do-Overs

Imogen was still talking.

My legs felt like they were made of gelatin.

For most of my life, I’d known exactly who I was—a self-sufficient survivor. Now I was neither self-sufficient nor a survivor. I needed Imogen, just as Mar had needed Nie. And as Nie, I’d died.

I locked myself in the bathroom and started the water, then I undressed and stepped into the stream. I tried to let the heat wash away the self-pity that helped nothing. I tried to let it wash away the new anger I couldn’t comprehend.

I stood there, getting pelted by rust-scented water, until I went numb. I lost myself to the flow. Maybe I’d lost myself a long time ago. And maybe I should have realized that when I found myself turning to others for answers, for companionship, for anything at all instead of trusting myself to carry me through.

My hair plastered to my skin in black sheets. My fingers pruned. I leaned my palms against the cracked avocado tiles, closed my eyes, and tried to focus on conjuring Nie’s memories.

A gnarled stick.

The color yellow.

The color red.

Swirling black shadows.

I focused on the final image, the only one that made any sense to me.

I replayed the image over and over in my mind until the shadows turned into something else entirely, and the image elongated into choppy scenes recorded on brittle film.

Black tendrils transformed into wispy hair.

A black arm clutched my disembodied head. I, Nie’s head, was tucked against his side as he dove from the balcony, landed on his feet, and ran, carrying me like a linebacker with a football.

His? He?Why did I know this glorified gorilla was male?

Mar was scared.

Nie was angry.

“No.” I—Nie—had repeated the word, unable to articulate anything more complicated. That didn’t mean I couldn’t think more complicated thoughts.

My mind whirred with thought, and recognition.

I knew the shadowy gorilla…or at least I’d encountered him before.

He set me down on the ground and paced.

“No other choice,” he said, his voice broken with regret and resignation.

The memory crackled, like the film was damaged.

As it faded back into my mind and I shivered in the no-longer-warm shower, I realized that even if Bernadette was an untrustworthy shapeshifting creature of shadows, she wasn’t the one who’d killed Nie.

Imogen had been right all along.

I dried my hair and got dressed before returning to find Imogen lounging in bed watching TV. When she spotted me, she clicked the show off with the remote and popped up.

“Hey,” she said. “You were in there a really long time. I was starting to worry.”

It hadn’t felt long.

“But here you are,” Imogen said.

“Here I am.”

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