A flash. Someone grabbing my arm—a pop, a crack. Bracing myself and falling.

Steps. The only steps could’ve been to the basement.

And then—a pain so bright and intense it stole my breath.

Her face. Her voice. Okay, okay, stay calm, take this—

It was her. Always her.

When had my omissions turned to lies? When I was six, in the hospital, with my mother standing over me? Had she believed even then that I understood and was complicit? A survivor, like her.

The medication must have caused the sleepwalking episodes—whatever my mother had given me at night, trying to keep me calm and complacent while she went on with her life. But children didn’t react the same way adults did. They were more prone to sleepwalking, to overexcitement.

“You staged the whole thing?” The whole story. A fraud.

She stared at my cup, waiting, and I took another sip.

“No, it all took on a life of its own. It was supposed to be just a few hours. Just a little while. Your shoe outside, to lead them to the woods, where you wandered off and could’ve gotten hurt all by yourself. But it all got carried away. It rained—it poured, and the shoe got caught on a grate, and, well.” She shrugged. “It took on a life of its own, and we just had to seize it.”

The cellar. The four walls. The stagnant water and the cold rocks. The unfathomable darkness and the pain—for which she must have treated me. The black hole of my memory while I’d been kept unconscious. A pain medicine she must’ve given me to keep me that way.

“How did I get underground?”

She waited until I took another sip, and I could see the white granules of my medicine. How much was too much? Did she know? Did she care?

“The media attention got to be so much, they were going to find you. They were coming with infrared, and I got you to an access point closer to the river.” She gave a small laugh. “My God, Arden, you about gave me a heart attack. They couldn’t find you. You weren’t there. I told you to sit tight, but you didn’t. You didn’t.”

Her reaction on the television was surprise—she hadn’t been acting. I had gone missing. I had traversed the darkness on my own. I had saved myself.

“I know it must’ve been terrible, but you have gotten so much from it. So much. And we have another opportunity right now.”

I shook my head. Hated that she was here, that she couldn’t stop. That all she ever saw in me was another opportunity worth taking, another story to spin, another piece of me to give away.

“People are going to want to talk to you. To us. That boy tried to frame you, and you survived it—again.”

“Mom, stop,” I said, eyes closed. Because I realized something—every night, even before Sean Coleman, she had been drugging me. She had been up here, keeping me in the dark; locking me outside. Had she been trying to scare me, to make me run or call for help? Did she bring me outside, leading me into the night, for nothing more than a story? Putting my life in danger so I’d have to get help, get attention? So people would notice?

Until she saw Sean Coleman out there, and everything went horribly wrong—

I was always just a commodity to her. Something to cash in on. She hurt me. And Sean. And—

“What did you do to Elyse,” I said.

“You need to relax,” she said. “Drink, relax.”

What was she doing to me? The same thing she’d done to Elyse?

No more. I stood, letting the mug fall to the floor, shattering into pieces, the contents splashing. She jumped away, surprised. “Did you hurt her?” I said.

She stepped back, before she regained her footing in the conversation. “Some people are more than willing to hurt themselves,” she said. “She told me the very first day we met how she was in recovery. How she’d just come from a rehab facility. You can’t give away things like that about yourself. You need to be more careful.”

Oh, God, it was my mother. It was no one but her. My mother had harmed her. I felt my pulse racing, the four walls closing in. “No,” I said. “Please, no.”

“She wasn’t some innocent, love. She kept an eye on you. Helped me move things from the hospital. Was more than happy to take money to keep her hands clean of the worst of it.”

Elyse had been scared that day, looking out my window. Like she knew something more than I did. And she’d tried to run. My mother had stopped her.

I had been wrong. My mother was not an opportunist but a predator. And right now I was just another part of her story. If I wasn’t going to help her, what would I be this time? The poor, tragic figure who overdosed? The girl who couldn’t take the police attention, the stories, the rumors?

If I wouldn’t go along with her, what would she do?

Would she hurt her daughter for her own gain? I had no doubt. She had done it before. She would hurt anyone.

“You’re horrible,” I said, the word scratching against my throat.

I heard them before I saw them, the faint blare of the sirens. My mother turned to the window, frowning. “What did you do?” she asked. The lights fractured through the glass. Her hand went to her back pocket, where she’d kept my phone.

“I called 911,” I said.

She closed her eyes. “Okay, okay.” Hands out, like she was thinking up a story even then. A way to spin this, to come out on top. She stepped closer. “You’re on something, honey,” she said, like she’d arrived just in time to help me. “It’s making you not yourself.”

“I’m not, though,” I said. “I didn’t drink it.”

She was so close, I felt the four walls closing in, with no way out. She grabbed me around the arm, like she was incredibly angry but wasn’t sure what to do.

“This is what we’re going to do,” she said. And up close, I could see the cold calculation in her eyes. Tallying her own way out. I knew, of course, there was only one.

How many steps she had taken to this point. How many options remained.

I was doing the same.

The sirens were getting louder, more insistent, and in that moment, I felt it: the cold and the dark, reaching out for the cinder-block walls. Pushing back against something that was no longer there. I pushed her off me. I pushed her back with everything I had, watched her fall through the fragile window, glass shattering, glass everywhere.

She collapsed onto the decorative balcony, which was not built to hold any weight. I thought it might fall, might crumble to the earth right then. But it didn’t. A scattering of glass and blood, and her, unbalanced, pushing to her feet again.

The sirens upon us now, the red and blue lights in sight, catching on a shard of glass in her hand as she stood upright. I stepped closer, and she said, “Arden,” and I did not care to hear. I did not care to hear a single thing she said, ever again. She would’ve killed me. Still might.

The steps behind me; the window in front of me. The night air billowed in, cold, freeing. Letting me know I was no longer trapped. That there was a way out.

I focused on the glass in her hand, on what I had to do to escape her. Before she could stand, before she could lunge with the glass: one more push, and the decorative balcony rail gave way. Her eyes met mine for a fraction of a second—her hand grasping for me as I stumbled backward—and then she was gone.