I stared at Hailey’s note, completely unable to react or process the words.

Hailey had known she was in some kind of trouble. She knew she was going to die. But how?

There was no doubt in my mind that this was her handwriting, so the note had to be a year old.

But when had she put it here? And how had I missed it back then?

She must have written this right before she died. That was the only explanation about why I hadn’t found it earlier. School had just started back for our sophomore year, and she must have slipped it into our notebook that Friday afternoon before we left for the weekend. Instead of taking the notebook home, I had left it here in my locker.

And she’d died before I ever had the chance to see it.

I brought a hand to my mouth, silencing the terrified sob that tried to escape.

My best friend had been in terrible trouble, and I had done nothing to help her. Not only that, but I’d somehow gotten myself mixed up in it all.

I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t understand.

The space around me began to spin, and for a moment, I was scared I would pass out like I had in the kitchen my first day home.

I leaned against the cool metal of the lockers and took a series of deep breaths, willing myself to stay upright.

This note was proof that something more had been going on with Hailey. Something sinister that couldn’t be explained away by some toxicology report.

But what? What had really happened that night?

And what was happening to me now? The dream. The symbol. The locker. Something horrible was going on, and if I didn’t figure it out, I was going to die just like Hailey had died.

Before this moment, I’d been frustrated by the loss of my memories, wanting to make sense of the drug accusations and the death of my friend, but now, the truth was more important than ever.

My world had suddenly shifted off-balance.

What happened that night hadn’t just been some mistake or some teen tragedy caused by addiction or depression. Hailey was...

I couldn’t even force myself to think it, but the word was sitting there on the edge of my brain.

Murdered.

Her note didn’t give me much to go on, but it was obvious she’d been afraid for her life. She had been in some kind of trouble. Enough to try to tell me that if she died, it wasn’t what it looked like.

It wasn’t an accident.

This note changed everything. Someone had been watching her. Someone had killed her.

She said she was fighting against the darkness, but what did that mean? I closed my eyes and saw the black liquid bubbling from her lips and streaming down her face.

The bell rang and the hallway filled with students ready to go home for the day.

I took a deep breath and stuffed the note into the front pocket of my backpack. I tucked the spiral notebook into the main compartment of my bag, along with the books I needed to take home for the night. I closed my locker and headed for the front doors, hoping my sister would be out there, ready to go.

I was anxious to get home and read the note again. I had to find out the truth.

Mom had already arranged to take off early from work so she could pick us up today, so I expected her to be waiting. All I needed to do was make it home without anyone picking up on the fact that I was on the verge of a complete and total breakdown.

I needed time to process this and figure out what the hell I was going to do about it. I needed to look through the rest of my notebooks and make sure she hadn’t written anything else in there that might give me some clue as to what kind of trouble she was in.

“Marayah, hey, wait up.”

At first, I just kept walking, hoping that he would go away. I really didn’t want to talk to my ex right now, but he caught up with me, out of breath.

“Hey,” he said again.

“Hi, Troy. What’s up?”

I glanced around for my sister, but she was nowhere to be found. For now, I was kind of trapped.

“I’m really sorry about what that jerk said in class,” he said. “You know the rest of us don’t feel that way, right?”

I sighed. News travelled fast if Troy already knew about it. I really wasn’t in the mood to play nice.

“How would I know that?” I asked. “It’s not like anyone came to see me or tried to keep in touch while I was gone. How am I supposed to know how everyone feels about me if you’ve been avoiding me?”

He closed his eyes for a long moment and ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair. “I know. That was a really shit thing, Marayah. I wanted to come see you, but it just felt too real, I guess. I didn’t even know what to say to you or how to face you.”

“Did you ever think about how I must have been feeling?” I asked. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I couldn’t seem to make them stop. “I lost my best friend, Troy. Can you imagine what it was like to wake up six weeks later in the hospital and be told that she was gone and that I’d almost died? That I’d missed her funeral and would never get to say goodbye? Can you imagine what it was like to be accused of being addicted to drugs and alcohol? To be suicidal? Do you know what it was like to sit in that drab mental hospital day in and day out with absolutely no one to talk to about it? With no one who believed me?”

He looked away and backed up a few steps. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

My outburst had obviously scared the crap out of him. I took a deep breath to try and calm down for a second before I could speak again.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s a shitty situation all the way around, and we can’t change that. But I was really hoping that I’d come back to find out I still had at least a few friends around here who had my back.”

“If this is about Lena, I told you—”

I held up my hand. “Stop. This isn’t about Lena. It’s about needing to know I’m not completely alone in this,” I said. “Everyone’s worried about saying the wrong thing to me, so they don’t talk to me at all. And then apparently some people have their own very elaborate theories about what really happened that night and they feel free to judge me and my friend and make assumptions about what we were up to. But they’re wrong about all of it. No one has a clue what really happened that night.”

His forehead tensed. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I know we haven’t had a chance to really talk about it, but my mom told me you couldn’t really remember much from that night.”

My skin went cold. Something about the way he said that and the way his face tensed up made me wonder if he didn’t want me to remember it.

I stepped closer to him and looked around to see if anyone was listening to us, but no one else was paying attention.

“Troy, do you know something you aren’t telling me?” I asked. “Did you see us? Do you know where we went or what we were doing?”

He fidgeted with the strap on his backpack and cleared his throat.

“No, not really,” he said. “It’s been a long time since that whole thing went down.”

“But we were going out at the time, right? Did you go to the party that night?” I asked.

I’d been so caught up in my own strange memories of that night that I hadn’t even thought about the people who must have seen us at the party before we left. Maybe someone saw something important.

“I was there, but look, I don’t think now is the right time to talk about it,” he said, glancing around. “I don’t really remember much, anyway.”

He was lying to me. I could tell by the way he kept avoiding my eyes and shuffling his feet. He knew something he didn’t want to talk about. But why? What was he hiding?

“Troy, if you know something, you need to tell me,” I said. “If you feel so bad about abandoning me and dating someone else, then you owe me at least this. You owe me the truth. I need to know.”

“I have to go,” he said. “All I wanted to do was let you know I was sorry that guy hurt your feelings. Take care, okay?”

He didn’t even give me a chance to respond. He just bolted toward the doors to the school and disappeared inside, as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.

Frustrated, I kicked the base of the flagpole in front of the school and cursed.

This whole time, I’d known there was something more to that night. I’d known it wasn’t as cut and dry as Dr. Millner said.

There was a lot more to the story, and no matter how often people had told me I needed to move on, I’d been unable to just let it go.

Well, now I knew why. The truth was still locked away somewhere deep inside of me, and I was going to find the key, no matter how long it took.