Free The Killing Jar by Jennifer Bosworth Page A

down. Mom and I checked her into the hospital, where she remained for ten days. On day seven, we were alone, and she said, “I need you to do something for me, Kenna. I need you to say goodbye to me now.”
    I remembered how the blood drained, not only from my face, but from my entire body down into the floor, leaving me cold as a corpse.
    â€œNo,” I had told her, shaking my head. “No.”
    â€œYou have to,” she insisted. She told me she was tired of fighting. She tried to convince me it was okay, that she was ready, that this was no life, being trapped in this body, that I should let her go. She asked me to make her a promise. She asked me to live for her after she was gone. To stop hiding from the world and let myself be happy. She tried to take my hand. She had tears pouring down her cheeks as she begged me to be happy. For her if not for me. But instead I broke down sobbing, and I ran from her, from her touch, from what she wanted from me, because it was impossible. Impossible.
    I could not say goodbye. I never did.
    Now it was time for me to ask of her what I couldn’t give. I was dying, and I needed her to live for me.
    I stood by her bed, holding myself because I felt like, at any moment, my skin might open up and pour my dying guts out onto the floor. I gazed down at her sleeping face. She looked like me now, almost identical. We’d never looked alike, not one day in our entire lives. She’d always been a shrunken, distorted version of me. A homunculus. But now we were the same. She was me, and I was her. But there was so much life in her now, more than she needed. I could feel the life radiating off of her like heat off of a sunburn. I had given her too much, I thought. I should have kept a little of that life for myself, because now I was the one dying. What if I could take just a little of what I’d given to keep us together?
    I reached a hand toward her arm but didn’t touch her, stopped within an inch of her. Still, I could sense the flow of energy trapped beneath her skin. The delicious medicine inside her, of which she now had an excess. My skin seemed to stretch toward her, strands of me unraveling as they had done in the basement. I looked down at my hand and saw searching threads of light emerge from my palm. I tried to will them to shrink back into me, but my stomach lurched and the invisible pincers snapping at my skin bit deeper, and I couldn’t stop. The pain drove my rational mind into hiding, so all that was left was need and desperation.
    Erin’s eyelids began to flutter. She whimpered and I startled back from the bed, gasping, curling my hands into fists. The spell I’d been under was temporarily broken. The filaments of light that had emerged to connect me to my twin were gone, but I could feel them struggling to break free. I tightened my fists until my fingernails dug into my palms.
    Erin’s brow furrowed tightly, creating a row of wrinkles between her eyes. Her eyelids twitched rapidly. She whimpered again and muttered something under her breath. I leaned closer to hear.
    â€œDon’t hurt her,” she cried softly. “Please stop it. Please don’t hurt my mom! No, no, no, NO!”
    Erin began to thrash wildly on the bed, arms flailing, fighting against some unseen enemy. But I knew the enemy’s name.
    Thomas Dunn.
    Trapped in her dream, my sister screamed.
    â€œErin. Erin, it’s okay. It’s just a dream,” I tried to tell her, but she was still caught between waking and dreaming.
    Footsteps pounded toward the room. The door burst open, and a frantic nurse with her hair falling out of a ponytail charged inside.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” my mom asked, awake and sitting up now, climbing out of bed.
    â€œShe’s having a nightmare,” I said quickly, guiltily. “It’s okay. It’s just a nightmare.”
    As though these words reached her through sleep, Erin’s eyes flashed