Page 152 of Swallow Your Sorries

I turn around in the water and reach for a cluster of tree roots, but I can’t pull myself out. My limbs feel too numb.

“Zoi?” I call hoarsely before trying to whistle. I can’t. “Zoi?”

Zoi always helps me. I know that’s why Bae lets him loose on nights like this.

If I could just hold him. If I could just feel his beating heart and know that he’s alive and warm, I can suck some of that life back into me.

“Zoi?”

I just need to think about something, anything, to forget that bloated, deformed corpse.

It wasn’t my mother.

It wasn’t.

I try to think of Hale and his club, but the corpse creeps into every corner of the mottling lounge.

Instead, I try to think of last year’s Easter trips, where Bae got his neck covered in tattoos. Or last summer, when Étienne and Aria got us all invited to a random French fashion show. Or when Zedd and Stassi won regionals last year. I try to remember the swish of Stassi’s vibrant pink fringe dress, and the blinding whiteness of Zedd’s smile as he grinned ear from ear. That’s the most I’d ever seen Zedd smile. That was before he became the fatherly prude, Zaddy Zedd.

But soon Zedd’s happy face warps. His teeth break, and suddenly he’sher,who’s not her. He’s the corpse.

No.

NO!

I think of Elle’s green eyes that sparkle like two emeralds, and her long curtain of red hair. I can practically feel it tickling my cheek. I can smell the faint aroma of vanilla and honey that she washes it with. I can see the freckles on her cheeks, and the little heart formation beneath her left eye.

As she wraps her arms around me, it’s like she’s really here.

“Gant?” she whispers.

I reach for her, pulling her flush to my chest and instinctively she wraps her legs around me. I can’t believe how real she feels, her chest pressed to mine. Everything else is so fuzzy, but she’s completely in focus.

“Dove,” I whisper into her hair, inhaling her scent. “Don’t fly away yet.”

Her breath is warm against my ear. “Okay.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t…”

“I don’t want to be alone.” I feel frantic, manic, as I squeeze the air from her lungs, pressing her so tight against my chest that I swear our hearts merge into one massive heartbeat that clangs through my head pushing the macabre images aside.

“You’re not,” Elle says soothingly. “We’re together. In the forest. In the spring.”

Right, the spring.

“You’re afraid of water,” I say, but my voice sounds so distant.

“I am.”

“But you’re in the spring.”

“I am.”

“With me.”

“Yes,” she whispers.

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