Although Dad had only suggested a week without driving privileges, Mom had upped that punishment to a month. Then she’d thrown in a teen pregnancy movie marathon to try to scare the hell out of me along with a strict No James Without Parental Supervision policy for good measure.

Obviously, I’ve managed to get around at least one of those punishments, but since my mother came down on me, I’ve only said a handful of words to my sister.

“I’ll get over it when I get my keys back,” I inform James hotly. When he rolls off of me, I grab the pillow closest to my face and crush it to my chest. His gray eyes search my face until I finally groan. “Okay, I’ll talk to her and apologize tonight. Are you happy now?”

His answer is muffled by the sound of my mom frantically yelling my name from downstairs. “Great,” he whispers harshly, his gaze darting anxiously to the door. “Maybe I should go.” He starts to get up, but I press my palm against his chest, shoving him back down.

“Calm the hell down.” I push myself upright, swing my long legs over the side of the bed and hop off. “If she thought you were in my room she would already be in here telling you what a manwhore you are. Since she’s not, I’m going to run down there before she gets worked up enough to come get me. I probably left an empty Coke can lying around and seeing it set her off.”

Grabbing a stretchy hairband off the nightstand, I fist my brown hair into a high ponytail and pile it on top of my head. “Sit tight, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Once again I dance across my room, winking at James when he gives me another longing look.

“Thanks for being a tease.” He hurls the pillow I was just holding in my direction, but I easily catch it before dropping it in my computer chair. “Hurry back.”

My mood is the best it’s been in weeks as I jog downstairs, grinning and humming Fuel’s “Shimmer,” which I can hear coming from inside my bedroom. That feeling of invincibility, however, takes a backseat when I reach the landing. My mother’s standing at the front door, her shoulders sagging forward and her hand gripping the doorframe for support.

What’s going on?

Curling my bare toes against the hardwood floor, I let my gaze slip past her to stare out toward the early autumn evening. And to come face-to-face with the cop standing on the front porch with a grim look on his weathered face.

I feel my heart lurch. “Mom, what’s going—”

Slowly—so slowly that I have a difficult time managing to breathe while I wait for her—she turns to look at me. This is when I notice that she’s trembling, the yoga body that she’s absolutely proud of shaking so violently I’m surprised she doesn’t tumble over.

“Is everything okay?” I whisper.

But when I squint, I realize she’s crying. I see the tears glistening on her cheeks. Finally hear the soft gasps coming from her parted lips. She lifts her hazel eyes, and as I register how wide and terrified they are, I know something awful has happened. Something that will obliterate me.

Suddenly, all thoughts of James waiting for me upstairs in my bed disappear and gnawing panic sets in.

Oh god.

Oh god.

I try to force my body to move, to finish walking down the stairs to get to my mother, but I’m frozen in place, my legs bogged down by some invisible force.

Fear.

No, terror.

I’m scared to death of whatever it is she’s about to tell me.

“Mom?” I whisper brokenly. I look from her stunned eyes, to her speechless, trembling lips, to the solemn face of the police officer and then back again. “Is it Dad?”

But somehow I know it’s not, even before she tells me in the calmest voice possible that she needs me to give my father a call at the car dealership he owns and tell him to get to the local hospital, NOW.

I know what she says next. The name is already racing through my mind, shattering all my control to bring me crashing to my knees. For some reason, though, I don’t hear her say it because the only sound  entering my ears is my erratic breathing and the last thing I said to my sister. “You’ll be fine.”

I was wrong.

Chapter One

Now

Last night, I dreamt of my sister. Lily. It was the second time she’s crept into my dreams since I lost her nearly two years ago.

She looked the same as she did the last time she talked to me, with her straight, golden-brown hair pulled into a taut ponytail at the nape of her neck, her red and white track windbreaker partially unzipped and exposing her plain white t-shirt, and the corners of her chocolate brown eyes crinkled because she was wearing a big, cheesy smile. Lily was always, always smiling. That single expression had been what everyone else loved about her the most, and yet it had frustrated the hell out of me while she was still here.

My sister was an eternal optimist.

I’d been too much of a bitch to appreciate that. Even after I realized just how much I lost the day she was ripped away from me, I was too selfish not to feel sorry for myself.

That was me. Evie. Always, always selfish.

But that messy and screwed-up part of me had never seemed to bother my older sister, and in my dream, she’d flung my tie-dyed bedspreads off of my body and onto the carpet before jumping on the bed next to me.

“Get up, and get it over with, Evie,” she sang, her typically quiet voice booming, strong.  Crossing her slim arms over her chest, she stared me down, her ponytail swishing as she twisted her face into a dramatic scowl.

“Look, I don’t care if you’re still mad at me. Get up. You’re gonna thank me when your lazy ass graduates. So, come on before you completely wreck your day.”

Before everything had changed, she said the same thing to me just about every morning—well, minus the part about me being mad at her, which was something that was sprinkled in whenever we had an argument.

So just like I did back then, I got out of bed. The only difference was that for once it wasn’t begrudgingly, and when I opened my eyes, my sister was gone. With reality now facing me, sleep was an option that could go screw itself.

Wiping cold beads of perspiration from my forehead with a towel I found balled up on the floor beside my bed, I slid my feet into a pair of worn flip-flops. I’d crept silently downstairs, taking care not to bump into any of the boxes and suitcases in the dark foyer waiting to be toted off to my new college in the morning—the second school in less than twelve months.

In the kitchen, I downed a glass of OJ, cringing at the citrusy burn in the back of my throat as I slid down on the floor beside the fridge. For the longest time I sat there, the hardware from one of the cabinets digging into my back, and the blinking light on the stove directly across from me causing the edges of my vision to blur. I sat there with my regrets and memories of my sister tumbling through my brain.

“Don’t worry,” I finally promised aloud, the sound of my voice in the empty kitchen slowly piercing my chest. “I won’t screw up this year. I won’t. I will not wreck things this time.”

Now, several hours and a lonely drive from Bristol to Richmond later, that mantra still pings sharply through my mind, a slight distraction to the task at hand—getting to my academic advisor’s office for our four o’clock meeting.

Telling myself that I wouldn’t screw up seemed to help during summer break. I hadn’t purposely gone out of my way to see how far I could push myself away from everyone I knew, everyone who was left. Of course, the fact I had exiled myself to my parents’ house all summer couldn’t exactly be described as progress.

Still ... this year is going to be different.

If I don’t tell myself that every single day, I’m just giving myself permission to mess it all up again, and with my track record, I need all the motivation I can get.