Free Of Starlight by Dan Rix

hi, Leona,’ like she had no idea who I was. You heard that, right?”
    “Yeah, because you hit her with a car and knocked her out. You probably gave her brain damage.”
    I dragged a hand down the back of my neck, now pacing my bedroom. “This is so screwed up . . . so freaking screwed up,” I ranted. “What are we missing?”
    Megan’s eyes lit up. “Wait . . . if we didn’t kill her, if we didn’t actually kill her, then we’re off the hook, right? We don’t have to feel guilty anymore . . . right? ”
    The same hope had crossed my mind, but I’d already snuffed it out. “We killed someone , Megan. There’s a body rotting in the woods, and we put it there. Someone is dead because of us. Maybe not Ashley, but someone.”
    “Why do you keep talking about a body?” she said. “ What body? If she got up and walked away, then there’s no body.”
    I looked at her and licked my dry lips. “She was dead, Megan.”
    “Yeah, I thought so too. We’ve been wrong before.”
    “What if we were set up?” I said. “What if someone was trying to make another girl disappear and make it look like we killed her?” I flipped around and stomped across the room. “Never mind. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
    “Clearly,” she said.
    “She wasn’t breathing,” I said. “She didn’t have a pulse. For like forty minutes, she didn’t have a pulse. If you don’t have a pulse for forty minutes, that means you’re dead.”
    “Did you check her pulse?” said Megan. “ I checked her pulse. Maybe she had a weak pulse and I couldn’t feel it. I’m not a doctor.”
    “This is so screwed up,” I muttered.
    “How come it’s Ashley that shows up while we’re wearing dark matter?”
    Dark matter. I’d almost forgotten.
    We’d been talking to it when Emory called. The reminder left a chill.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe our brains are filling that in too.”
    “Maybe it’s because the girl who looks like Ashley and sleepwalks like Ashley and jumps out in front of our car the same night Ashley goes missing, is in fact Ashley.”
    I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Why don’t I just ask her when I have dinner with her tomorrow.”
    Ding-dong.
    The sound of the doorbell tied my stomach in a knot. Inside Emory’s house, footsteps pounded into the foyer, and a blonde blur streaked past the side windows, pausing just long enough to peek out onto the porch. The door unlatched and swung inward, revealing Ashley Lacroix.
    My stomach dropped out from underneath me.
    She was identical to the girl I’d seen in my bedroom and at Tina’s party, identical down to every perfect freckle on her sun-kissed face. Details I couldn’t have possibly known.
    How?
    “Hi . . .” she said awkwardly, shuffling her feet. She lowered her eyes shyly and shouted toward the kitchen. “Emory! Your friend’s here.” Then to me, playing with her hair. “You can come in if you want.”
    She didn’t hate me.
    She didn’t know me.
    I studied the side of her face, and a memory jolted into focus, stinging me like an electric shock—blood trickling down that face, her neck Megan had checked for a pulse, those blue eyes staring lifelessly as we piled her into my trunk.
    It was her. It had to be her.
    She caught me staring at her and blushed a little. “Emory,” she whined, as if she didn’t want to be alone with me.
    I paid attention to everything.
    Emory emerged from the kitchen, expertly kneading some kind of dough between his palms, his ruddy cheeks glowing with a thin sheen of sweat. The smell of something delicious wafted out from behind him. He flashed a crooked smile, and a strange ache formed in my heart, making me feel heavy and light at the same time. I’d never seen him like this before . . . happy.
    Oh God, he was gorgeous.
    “Leona, get in here. You’re on parmesan duty.” When I appeared confused, he waved me into the kitchen. “Ash, you going to help us cook or