Free 0758269498 by Eve Marie Mont Page B

expression and then followed after her.
    I slumped back down on the stage, overcome by a mind-blowing, bone-numbing fatigue. The voodoo doll used in the play was lying about two feet in front of me. I leaned over and swiped it, holding the doll in my lap. It provided a strange comfort.
    Finally, I shoved myself off the stage and walked back toward the party to face up to what I’d done. As I walked through the hallway, I had the strange sensation of someone following me. A chill ran up my back like a cold finger. Shivering, I quickened my pace, almost breaking into a run by the time I reached the back door.
    When I opened it, I stopped cold on the threshold. No music was playing, and everyone in the garden was staring at me. Michelle and Owen weren’t there, but Elise was, standing sentinel at the front of the group, her eyes boring into me with disgust.
    My instinct told me to turn and go the other way, but that seemed too cowardly. And then Elise began to laugh. “So Little Miss Perfect ain’t so perfect after all,” she said. “I mean, really, Emma. We all know you’re on the rebound, but going after your roommate’s boyfriend? That’s low, even for you.”
    Everyone had gathered behind her, and I got the surreal feeling that it was happening to someone else, that if I pinched myself, I’d snap out of this living nightmare and realize that nothing from the last week had actually happened: Gray was still my boyfriend, Owen was still a friend I’d never kissed, and Michelle was still a friend I’d never betrayed.
    And because I wasn’t prepared for this sort of attack, because I refused to believe that Michelle could have set me up like this, I just stood there, shocked into silence.
    “What kind of person would do that to her best friend?” Elise said.
    “A bitch,” said another.
    “What a slut.”
    The stream of epithets continued. When I’d finally summoned the strength to move, I descended the stairs and passed through the mob as they continued to taunt me and stare, then I set off toward the stables, hoping to find Michelle and Owen there.
    About halfway down the path, the sky opened and a cold rain descended. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the hill that I remembered the stables had burned down and a sterile new equestrian center now stood in its place. The barn where Michelle and Owen and I had forged our friendship last year was gone.
    Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Perversely I went to stand in the same spot where I’d been struck by lightning last year, wondering if God would be audacious enough to strike the same place, and person, twice.
    But this was sheet lightning, the kind that lights up the entire sky rather than descending as a scary cloud-to-ground bolt. I walked past the equestrian center and toward the stream, feeling that strange compulsion again to cross over the log bridge and into the woods. Lightning flickered sporadically, illuminating the rosebush on the opposite bank, its red blooms still brilliant even in late October.
    Before I knew it, I was over the bridge and running like my life depended on it. Branches and twigs snapped below me as I trudged through the brush, moving deeper into the woods with every step. The faster I ran, the more numb I became to the elements. The rain barely seemed to touch my skin, and the storm grew distant and muffled, like something from a dream. Some mysterious momentum kept moving me forward until I burst into a clearing and onto Braeburn’s playing fields.
    Except the bleachers and the track and the white chalk outlines were all gone. And the sky was bright and clear, lit with a peach glow as if dawn was already approaching. The atmosphere around me seemed to change suddenly—the rain stopped, the air stilled. And while the rest of the world seemed to pause, my body hummed, like it was surging with electricity. Every one of my senses tingled.
    I walked across the field, trancelike, until I reached the