Page 13 of Ruin My Life
Her hazel eyes locked on mine.Begging.
I reach out across the floor, trying to find her hand. Her soul.Something. But my fingers only brush the rough fibres.
She’s gone.
There’s no trace of her here.
My lip trembles. I bite down—hard—until the copper tang of blood fills my mouth.
Nothing about this is right.
Amie, just barely sixteen and so full of light and wild dreams—gone. Justgone.
And no one seems to understand what the world’s lost.
Everyone mourns Mom and Dad. Their faces were on red carpets and press interviews, always in the spotlight. But Amie and I stayed out of it. Mom said too much attention at a young age was dangerous, and honestly, welikedthe quiet.
Now all I want to do is scream her name into every camera lens on the planet. Tomakepeople see her.
To make them understand.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
The thought returns like it never left.
I will kill him.
I will kill them both.
I release my lip and inhale sharply, my ribs straining, lungs burning.
But the pain in my chest is nothing compared to the hollow ache where my heart used to be.
I sit up carefully, mindful not to tear any stitches, and rise from the floor.
For the first time in days, my legs don’t shake.
They’re steady.
Planted.
Determined.
I head for the laundry room beneath the stairs and rip open the plastic hospital bag. My sweatshirt drops to the floor in a blood-stiffened heap. I lift it with my fingertips, flakes ofdried red falling like ash, and toss it into the washing machine.
I pour in enough detergent, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda to scrub away sin itself, then crank the cycle to cold and hit start.
Next, I make my way upstairs to my room.
My luggage still sits untouched at the foot of the bed. Amie had opened it the day I got back, but nothing inside had caught her eye enough to steal.
I unzip one of the side compartments and pull out my laptop, then carry it down the hall to Dad’s office.
I remember helping him set it up—choosing the specs of his computer, installing the software, teaching him how to run the security system before I left for university.
I plug into his network and open up the hard drive, pulling every second of camera footage and copying it to mine.
Every angle. Every timestamp.
