Page 63 of Her Bully

Chapter Twenty-two

My cell phone pings with a text from an app I don’t remember installing on my phone.

It’s a clock. Like a countdown to something but its set for my next birthday.

What the hell is this?

F. M. K. I turn the letters over in my mind. Fuck. Marry. Kill.

“You’re my three,” Kyson’s words play over in my mind as I clean up the cupcakes from the floor. I slip, going down on my ass, banging my head hard against the edge of the counter.

I blink dazed by the impact and wince as I touch the side of my head. My vision blurs and I try to focus but can’t. Static rings in my ears and I close my eyes.

“I have to,” I hear my father’s voice in my head. A memory I’ve tried so hard to forget. I can see it all so clearly now as if I’m there now.

I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard loud voices. He was fighting with my mother. His hands were around her throat. It was my birthday. I know this because there were cupcakes on the counter. He killed her. I saw him kill my mother on my birthday.

I touch my fingers to the base of my throat.

“To win the game you have to sacrifice the person you love most,” a voice says softly behind me.

“I’m going to play with you like your father did with your mother and my mother played with my father.”

I stare at the heart-shaped ring on my finger. My father knew this was going to happen.

“It’s our legacy and our curse,” Helen whispers, appearing next to me. She places her hand over mine and I see she’s wearing the same ring as me. I never noticed it before.

“What’s going on?”

“Didn’t your father explain the rules of the game?”

“No.” I pull away from her.

“I don’t understand any of this. What game?”

“The one you’re playing, silly,” Lauren tells me, and I blink wondering where she came from.

I rub at my eyes and sit up in my bed having no idea what’s real and what isn’t.

The door to my room opens and Lauren enters. “Are you feeling better?”

“What do you mean? How did I get in my bed?”

“I came by like I said I was going to and found you on the kitchen floor crying over your ruined cupcakes. You’d slipped on the icing after you dropped them and bumped your head on the counter. You don’t remember any of this?”

“No.”

“Maybe you have a concussion.”

“How long have you been here? Where’s Kyson?” I glance around my bedroom.

Lauren sits on the edge of my bed. “Like maybe half an hour. My dad came and got my siblings, and you said you were going to take a shower. I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen and came up here just now to check on you. You were home alone when I got here.”

“Where’s my phone?”

Lauren picks it up off my nightstand and hands it to me. “Here. Are you sure you don’t want to go get your head checked?”

I swipe a thumb across the screen of my phone and see I have a new message from Gauge. It’s a photo of Kyson and me in the kitchen from earlier.

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