A bullet hit my forehead and I stumbled back, rubbing the paint from my visor.

“Better run, sucker,” Ash called from behind a nearby hay bale. “I’m coming for you.”

I had just given her the damn gun and she’d already gotten a shot in.

I ducked behind the small wooden structure at the back of the paintball lot, checked my gun, and tried to figure out where the hell Ash was. It should have been easy to spot her, since she was wearing a white zip-up plastic jumpsuit over her clothes, but I couldn’t see her anywhere when I peered around the corner.

“Chicken shit,” I heard a voice call.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I ignored it. I couldn’t get to it beneath the jumpsuit anyway. And I kind of knew it was one—or both—of my parents. Ash and I had run hand in hand from the hospital out the back entrance. Apparently, she’d done it before because she knew the way and she knew how to bypass all the alarms.

My parents were going to kill me, but she was so excited to get out of there. I had to go. I had to see where she would lead me.

We’d gone for milkshakes, and I found out that Ash had a biting wit and an infectious sense of humor.

Then she’d seen the sign for paintball and coerced me to take her.

Suddenly, a paint ball hit the top of my head, and I looked up to find Ash dangling from the branch of a tree above me. “You’re no fun at all,” she groused. “You’re not even trying. I don’t understand what Lynn sees in you.”

I raised my gun and shot right at her. Paint spattered across the protective visor covering her face.

She wiped it away with the sleeve of her jumpsuit and grinned at me. “Now we’re talking!” She dropped from the tree, landing on her feet in front of me like a cat. She leaned into my side and nodded toward a couple entering the gate into the playing field. “I think we should go for them.”

“We should probably ask them if they—” But before I could finish, Ash had taken off and had shot one of them in the shoulder. I realized quickly that it wasn’t a guy and a girl; it was two guys. One of them looked up when he saw Ash in all her gear and gave her an appreciative glance. He lifted his gun and aimed it at Ash. I shot him in the leg.

He looked up, his gaze stormy. He and I began a battle of shoot-to-kill while Ash ducked behind a hay bale. I looked over and found her on top of it, shooting them both in rapid-fire pulls of the trigger. Her gun made an empty click and she stopped to reload. But they knew exactly where she was.

One of them cornered me away from Ash, and I watched out of the corner of my eye as she got farther and farther from me on the course.

“Ash!” I called.

I could no longer see her, and neither could they.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one of them sang out as he wandered from bale to bale.

Suddenly, Ash darted from behind the obstacle and lifted her gun, smashing the butt of it against the guy’s helmet. He covered his head with his arms and fell to the ground, but she kept pounding him. She had fury in her gaze, and angry words fell from her lips, but I couldn’t tell exactly what they were. She made no sense, but there was absolute hatred in her actions.

“Ash!” I cried and I ran to pull her back from him. She fought me, so I tossed her to the ground and covered her body with mine. “Ash,” I said, trying to get her attention, but she was lost somewhere in her mind.

Suddenly, she froze beneath me. “I’ll never let anyone take her. Never again,” she said, her chest heaving. She clutched the front of my jumpsuit in her fists and her blue eyes stared into mine, never breaking contact.

“Take who?”

“Lynn. I have to protect Lynn.”

I didn’t let her up. I was afraid to. I held her there beneath me until she began to cry. Someone called the police, and my mom and dad came with two big men from the hospital. But by the time they got there, Ash was a babbling mess. She spoke of closets and darkness and Lynn. She whispered warnings and platitudes, all while sobbing uncontrollably. She alternated between hysterics and complete calm.

When Mom got there, she motioned for one of the nurses to administer medication. Ash didn’t even flinch. She looked grateful, actually.

“What were you thinking, Mason?” Mom asked. “Ash isn’t well enough to leave the hospital. She’s there for a reason.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Lynn is the only one of them who’s allowed to leave. And that’s because she’s the only one who can handle the outside world, Mason.” She stared at me like she’d never seen me before. “How could you, Mason? You probably just set her back months in her treatment plan.”

I watched as they loaded Ash into the back of an ambulance. “Can I ride with her?” I asked. I could at least hold her hand.

Dad said nothing and got into the ambulance with her. The men closed the door behind them.

I ran a hand through my hair and yanked hard. “Fuck.” The lights of the ambulance faded in the distance.

“I need for you to tell me everything that happened, Mason, while it’s still fresh in your mind.” Mom paced back and forth in front of me.

“It happened so fast.”

“The guy she attacked. What did he do?”

“We were just playing paintball.” I tried to remember if anything specific occurred.

“Did he say something? Do something? Something had to have set her off.”

Suddenly, it hit me. “He sang.”

She spun around to look at me. “Sang what?”

“Come out, come out…”

Mom finally relaxed. “Okay. We can deal with this.”

“What happened, Mom? I don’t understand. One minute she was fun and happy, and the next I thought she was going to kill him.”

“She probably would have if you hadn’t pulled her off.”

“But why?”

“Ash is mentally ill, son. She’s very disturbed. It’s impossible to say what will trigger her.” She stopped and stared at me, her hands on her hips. “I still can’t believe you did this. I trusted you.”

“Mom,” I hedged, “I didn’t mean to.”

“You meant to, Mason. You blatantly disobeyed me and did something you knew you shouldn’t have done. I’m taking your car for a month. You can take the bus to and from school.”

“Mom,” I complained. “Can I at least ride with a friend?”

“The bus, Mason. You can take the bus. I trusted you and you blew it. There are consequences.”

“The bus…”

“The bus.”

I threw up my hands.

“And I want you to stay away from them. All of them. It’s too much for you.”

“When you say all of them, you mean—”

“I mean all of them, Mason.”

“Lynn too?”

She nodded her head. “Lynn too.”

“But, Mom…” She wasn’t going to give in. I could see it in her eyes. She meant it. Every word. “Mom, I’m eighteen years old,” I reminded her. But the argument sounded feeble even to me.

“You’re still a child, Mason. You proved that with your actions today.”

She went to talk to the police, and she assessed the injuries of the guy Ash had attacked. His helmet bore the brunt of it, and he was fine.

But me? I was left with scars from that incident. Mom did let me see Ash again, but I never tried to leave the hospital with her again, after that one night, despite the many ways she begged me. Then she figured out how to hide her crazy convincingly, and Mom let her out for longer and longer periods of time. The hospital staff felt like she was no longer a threat to anyone.

But I knew deep in my heart of hearts that Ash would always be a threat. To herself most of all. To herself, she would always be dangerous.