False Sight Read Online Free PDF Page B

once again. Ashamed. I can’t blame her, really. She wants to live. Would I be strong enough to kill myself if I knew I had some hidden, malign aspect of my personality? Someone guiding me, making me do things I didn’t want to do?
Taking me over?
I don’t know.
“I’ll find another way,” she says, wiping her cheeks with her fingertips. “I can force her out. I can do it.”
I sway in place, swallowing against the urge to vomit. The key is too far away. “What if you can’t? She’s going to use you. Hey. ” She lifts her shame-filled eyes to me. “She’ll use you to kill us . Like Noah.”
Sequel turns away. She sticks the gun against her hip again.
“I’m going to come after you!” I scream at her. She walks up the steps, slowly, head down. “You should kill me!” Anything to make her come back. Give me the gun. Give me the gun so I can stop whatever Nina makes you do.
She says nothing, keeps climbing.
I lunge for the key and fall hard on my chest, gasping. My trembling fingers hover a few inches away. A door shuts upstairs. I stretch harder, moaning as the cuff cuts deeper into my wrist. Then I stop being brain-dead. I flip around and use my foot to pull the key to me. My feet are blood-spattered, like my hands. I was standing in Noah’s blood.
I get the key and jam it into the lock. A twist, and the cuff pops open. I charge up the stairs into a home from the sev- enties. Everything is dressed in yellow and dust. Cupboards filled with cobwebs stand open. The front door squeals when I shove through. It’s still full dark, no stars. No moon. A cool autumn night, the night Noah died. The faint scent of roses is on the air, and I follow it over the damp backyard grass and up someone’s driveway. My skin is colder in the unbloody places.
A man shouts to my left. I turn just in time to see Nina throw a man out of his tiny car. She slips behind the wheel, shuts the door, and takes off with squealing tires. I step into the street, and the headlights fill my eyes. The engine screams as Nina pushes the pedal to the floor. The car grows and grows until it’s right in front of me, and I almost let it hit me, but at the last moment I leap straight up and tuck my legs and feel the car pass under me. The turbulent air tugs me back down. The blacktop pebbles bite into my toes, and I turn to watch the taillights shrink to red pinpricks. Five seconds later, Nina squeals around a corner and is gone.
My mind is blissfully blank until I picture Noah lying next to the table again. Someone has found him by now; someone called for help even though they knew it was useless. Maybe they immediately searched for Peter and Rhys, or me and Sequel. Everyone saw the five of us together—another stupid move, even if we’ve only been in school a few weeks. I hope Peter and Rhys were smart enough to take off rather than get pulled into questioning by the police.
A thought strikes me like a bullet—I am a product of Mrs. North. She could’ve sewn some latent personality into my brain too. There could be a different North Iteration swim- ming inside me, waiting to hear a specific set of words or num- bers. Then she’ll surface, and I’ll be a danger to everyone.
And whatever made Mrs. North so ruthless in the first placeisinsideofmetoo.Icouldbecomelikehersimplybecause we have the same DNA. Her blood, her exact blood, already flows through my veins.
It’s not fair to Peter and Rhys. I try to imagine the things they’ll say when they realize the implications. It makes me sick all over again.
Headlights swing down the quiet road. My breath fogs out. I must be some sight—a shivering girl in a bloody red dress.
The car stops like I knew it would. The driver gets out, some guy, asking if I’m okay. I’m not okay. I tell him I need his car. He says, “What?” I sweep his legs out from under him and get inside and close the door.
The radio plays pop music. The clock says Noah died two hours ago.

I
    find the highway and drive south