Chapter 3

"Over?" I shot up in bed. My head felt like it was full of needles.

Three days. I'd been out for three days.

"What did you do to me?" I tore the IV needle out of the back of my hand. Blood welled up. My fingers wouldn't stop shaking—whatever they'd put in me was still there, dragging at my arms, my thoughts. I forced my eyes onto her face. "There's nothing wrong with me. It's you. You put something in my food. Didn't you."

The door opened and Cole came in, hands in his pockets.

My mother's eyes filled, tears spilling over. She reached into her bag and dropped a folded sheet of paper on the blanket.

"Sloane, I didn't want you to see this. But you're getting worse." Her voice shook. "You've had a severe anxiety disorder for years. The blackouts, the way your body shuts down—"

I looked down. A clinic's stamp at the top, the words printed clean and cold: severe anxiety disorder with stress-induced dissociative collapse.

"This is fake." I ripped it in half, then in half again. "I've never set foot in this clinic. You made it up."

"Sloane." Cole leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his face doing sympathy while his eyes did something else. "Stop. The doctor said it himself—you wanted this so bad you broke your own brain. The fainting is just your body protecting you. Look what you've done to Mom. Just accept it."

I looked around the room at all of them, at the patient, put-upon pity on their faces, and the floor seemed to tip.

This was the trap. They wanted me to become the crazy girl they kept describing, until everyone believed it. Right now I could scream the truth until my throat bled, and not one person would take my side.

So I stopped.

I dropped my head into my hands and made myself sob. "I'm sorry. Maybe—maybe I really am sick. I'm sorry."

My mother crossed the room and folded me into her arms, stroking my hair. "Good girl. It's all right now. No more exams. Mom will take care of you."

I let her hold me. Over her shoulder, my eyes were dry.

Inside, something cold settled into place. I was going to find out exactly what they'd done to me. Just not here. Not yet.

They brought me home and barely let me out of their sight. They watched me like I might run, or break.

Two days later I told my mother I needed to run to the store for pads. It was the one errand she never followed me on.

I went to the library instead and pulled up the results on a public computer.

My score sat at the very bottom of the list. Zeros where I'd missed the afternoon section. Third year in a row. Three years of my life, gone.

Then I found Cole's name. My brother, who copied my homework for years and never once finished a book, was being named for the Merritt scholarship—the full ride, the one thing in that house worth more than me.

I stared at the screen and laughed under my breath. There was no version of this where Cole earned it. None.

I went home and dug the bottle out of the bottom of my backpack. The tea inside had gone cloudy and sour. I poured it into a clean water bottle and sealed it tight.

With the cash I'd been saving, I found a private lab and paid them to test it for drugs.

Three days later, while the whole family sat around the couch arguing happily over where to hold Cole's party, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I slipped into the bathroom and answered.

"Miss Carrow," the man said. "Your rush results are in."