Page 58 of No Place Left to Hide

I hate her so much I can’t even breathe around it.

I want to say the perfect thing to hurt her the way she constantly hurts me.

I want to go grab her phone and stuff it in the garbage disposal.

But more than anything, I want her to slink back to the hole she crawled from and die there.

Twenty

Now

My legs have barely cleared the guardrail when I discover the other side’s only open air. The ground slants down severely into the trees, and I let go of Jena to throw out my hands to slow my fall. My hands and tights tear open on rough bark and branches that snap as they slice the skin on my legs. The only thing that saves my arms is Dylan’s sweatshirt.

We slide a good forty feet before we stop in a pile of branches and leaves and random trash blown off the highway. I land hard on my knees, pain radiating up through my hips.

“Fuck,” I say, clutching my palms to my chest. I can feel bruises blooming all over my body.

I look around for Jena and spot her a few feet away, a little further down the slope than me. I seem to have been stopped by an upturned chunk of roots from a half-downed tree.

“Are you okay?” I ask, scrambling to my feet as best as I can.

She tries to stand, and I slip down to her. We help each other up.

“Yeah.” Her voice shakes.

Rocks and dirt tumble down the embankment from above. We both look up. Over the metal guardrail, a pink glowing face stares down at us, and I fight back a scream. It’s dark enough that he might not be able to see us down here, and I don’t want to help him find us.

“Go,” I whisper, nudging her away from the road. “Quick, before he sees us.”

She moves, but slowly, staggering ahead like she’s not really sure what she’s doing. I grab her elbow and turn her toward me, worried she hit her head and gave herself a concussion. My incredible velvet jumpsuit is more than a little dirty, and there’s mud streaked across her chin, but otherwise she looks okay physically. Except for her eyes. Her eyes don’t focus on my face. They look straight through me.

I shake her. “Jena.”

She wobbles but doesn’t focus. Her eyes tick all around.

More rocks tumble from the road and I glance up. The man in the skull mask has lifted a leg over the railing.

I give Jena a little shake until she blinks and meets my gaze. “Snap out of it! We have to run!”

Her eyes go big, then she nods and moves, this time a little faster than before.

Is she in shock? What is this?

We run around trees and through brush as fast as we can in the darkness, but we’re not very far ahead when I hear a giant crash behind us. He landed in the same place we did. He’s in the forest with us.

I let go of Jena to dodge a tree. We come together again on the other side. Branches and trees jut out in every direction and while they almost clobber my face a few times, I’m grateful they’ll also slow down Brandon.

I don’t know where we’re going, just away from him.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Jena gasps. She starts to pull ahead of me. “This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening.”

Definitely in shock. I don’t bother responding. She doesn’t sound like she’s talking to me.

We break through a thicket and I almost hear it too late. Jena’s still zoned out, still running—straight for a river.

I reach out with both hands, grab a fistful of velvet, and yank her back. Her upper body teeters over the water before she falls back into me, safely on the shore. Water rages before us.

She stares at the white frothy river, and then at me. “Holy shit. I didn’t even see that.”

---