Page 42 of Dead Set on You
Now the need to tell her scratches at the back of my throat.
I scramble to the other side of the counter. “I’m home. I’m here,” I say, my voice desperate. Cristina doesn’t respond. “I’m right here!” I shout, waving wildly.
She chatters as she walks.
I amble after her, across the kitchen and living room, down the hall, toward the linen closet.
“It is in God’s hands.” She switches to Romanian … and passes me without a glance.
I don’t follow.
Instead, I slide to the ground and pull my knees to my chest, feeling more helpless than I’ve felt in the last decade. And that’s saying a lot.
Stevie Popovici knew how to survive, because if Margot—my mother—taught me anything, it was this: how to figure things out with Annie. Our mother was too busy chasing attention to give it to her daughters, so prone to spending any income on herself that we became survivors.
Annie was only two years older than me, but she was my sister, my mom, my best friend. She was a wild spirit who had big dreams and an even bigger heart. With her around, nothing felt impossible or scary. Whatever our mother didn’t provide, Annie found a way for us to get.
By the time I was six, Annie had taught me how to heat up canned spaghetti on the stove without burning myself. By my eighth birthday, we’d figured out which utility companies gave the longest grace periods before shutting off the lights. By the time I turned ten, we had a rotation of excuses for why I was always late getting to school, because most of the time we’d walk the entire way.
And by fourteen, I was standing alone, planning Annie’s funeral.
We had no clue that she was diabetic at first. It started with dizzy spells, rapid weight loss, blurry vision—things Margot waved off, calling them “growing pains” or “attention grabs.” It didn’t help that she didn’t trust doctors. One of her loser boyfriends had once said hospitals were for people too weak to fight, and Margot made it gospel. She said modern medicine was a scam, that pills were poison. So Annie didn’t get the right treatment, but she didn’t push Margot. And when it got worse, I begged, and we finally got insulin … because Great-Aunt Julia stepped in, offered to pay and care for Annie.
For a while, it worked. Until Margot found other uses for the money. She also liked the sympathy, the way people askedabout her sick kid. She liked being seen and doted on. And when it mattered most, when Annie didn’t get her insulin in time, her blood sugar dropped and she collapsed in our living room. Margot wasn’t there. But the damage was.
By the time Annie made it to the hospital, it was already too late. The machines kept her going for a while, but she never woke up. Margot only showed up to sign paperwork. And at the funeral? Margot didn’t cry. She sat rigidly beside me, offering no comfort.
I already hated her by then.
I cried for a week straight. Hating the four walls of the trailer home closing in on me. Hating the patch of daisies outside the door and how they reminded me of Annie. Hating the universe for taking her and leaving me behind because I wasn’t half as good.
But I survived.
It took me two years to save up enough money to leave. Great-Aunt Julia’s 1990 Honda Accord brought me to Chicago, where at sixteen, I worked odd jobs and put myself through school. I faked parents when I needed to. I gave out burner numbers when teachers asked for emergency contacts. I learned how to talk like I had a home to go to, a family who cared.
So I lived out of the Honda until I could pay the rent for a basement room, where I lived through the first years of college, alternating between working and studying. Seeking internships and scholarships and anyshipthat could help me pay the bills and move forward. Not once looking left or right or behind because forward was the only direction that meant survival. A way out.
And finally, when I’d scraped and clawed my way out of the darkness, I emerged as Evie Pope and kept doing what I’d always done.Run.
Straight into the afterlife.
You’re not dead,I can almost hear Rafael’s voice reminding me.
Releasing a shaky breath, I press the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. I haven’t allowed myself to feel so Stevie in a long time.
A sharp pain radiates from my chest—from the place where something new grew after Annie died. Grief lodged itself between my ribs that day, an unshakable, throbbing, broken thing. An imagined appendage I never asked for. It’s been aching quietly ever since. Thinking of Annie makes it sharper. Thinking that all that running led me right back to nothing makes it unbearable.
A deep, familiar voice makes my breath catch.
CHAPTER ELEVENEIGHT DAYS AFTER, PART II
Rafael is in my apartment.
I pump the brakes on my emotional tailspin and scuttle to the end of the hallway on all fours, ears perked toward the voices.
His voice is a low rumble.
I lean in a little more, curiosity replacing the ache in my chest, and peek around the corner.
