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keys.”
    Socks, iPod, phone charger, underwear, towel… I
searched through my room, hoping I wouldn’t forget anything important. In my
haste, I didn’t think about the house or what I was leaving behind. All I could
think about was getting to Jason in Colorado.
    Before Sarah could question me any further, someone
started pounding on the front door. Startled, we looked at each other. I
brought my index finger to my lips and cautioned Sarah to stay quiet before I
tiptoed to the living room. Upon hearing a dog whining on the front porch, I
moved slowly toward the peephole and peered out.
    “What the—”
     
     
    1 SENT TEXT MESSAGE:
     
    To: D
    Jason called. He’s coming for you. Hang on, D!
    December 11, 2:30 AM

5
    Dani
     
     
    I can’t breathe , I thought frantically. I was being
constricted, pressed into something warm and hard and sort of lumpy. And I
wasn’t lying down anymore. And I thought I might die if I didn’t get a drink of
water.
    “Go make yourselves busy,” a woman ordered. I didn’t
recognize her voice. “Now!”
    The footsteps I heard sounded like a somber stampede. The
front door opened, and after several long seconds, shut quietly.
    I still couldn’t breathe. At my pathetic whimper, the
squeezing instantly relented. Suddenly, I was lying back down on the cushy
couch, staring up into a man’s angular, tear-streaked face. With its chiseled
features and eyes like brilliant blue topaz, he could have been an ancient,
grief-stricken warrior.
    Jason.
    I’m dead, I
admitted. Jason never cries. He probably
doesn’t know how to cry.
    His eyes widened, showing more whites than usual, before
he scooped me back up and crushed me against his camouflage parka. I sat limply
in his arms as he held me like I was a little girl freshly awake from a
nightmare.
    “Jason,” I grunted. “I…can’t…breathe.”
    “Sorry.” He loosened his hold just enough to keep me from
suffocating and murmured, “I thought…Dani…You didn’t look alive…”
    With the newfound ability to breathe, I imagined sitting
there forever. I was nestled safely in Jason’s arms and listening to him
whisper softly while I remembered what it was like to be alive. I’m not
dead.
    Briefly, I tried to recall how I’d come to be on the
couch, feeling like a decrepit corpse. The memories seemed trapped, guarded by
a fragile sheet of ice. I prodded the mental block gently and recoiled at the
turmoil that immediately burst to life in my chest. Thankfully, the pain faded
as I shoved the memories back under the thin barrier.
    After a few minutes, Jason had regained his composure. He
picked me up and carried me into the bathroom with my dog trailing close
behind.
    “Thanks. I can take it from here,” a pretty, blonde woman
told him briskly, and I was transferred to her deceptively strong arms. “I’m
Chris.” She smiled, reassuring me like a mother to a sick child, as she set me
carefully on the tile floor. “I’m going to help you wash up,” she explained,
already peeling off my soiled pajamas. “You’ll feel like a new woman when I’m
done with you.”
    The ruined clothes were promptly tossed into the
wastebasket beside the toilet, and with equal efficiency, I was deposited into
the steaming bathwater. Only after I was clean did I acknowledge the acrid
stench coming from the wadded-up pajamas in the little garbage can. My
pajamas. Oh…that’s disgusting…
    Embarrassment washed over me. Jason had touched me—held
me—in those foul clothes. Not only had he smelled everything my body had
expelled during the two days I’d spent passed out on the couch, but he probably
had it all over him.
    Sometimes, the smallest, least important thing could
light the fuse leading to the mounds of emotional dynamite piled in my head.
With mortification as the spark, waves of despair and horror exploded in my
chest. Cam! He’s dead…
    Sitting in the bath, I began to cry. Chris let me work
through it, holding my hand as I poured out