I didn’t get a chance to look at the pictures on my phone until after dinner. I retreated to my room and pulled them up on my laptop.

They were even more terrifying the second time around.

It was all the same symbol, but they were all different sizes with varying degrees of wildly drawn lines.

This was clearly the work of a person who was completely out of their mind. That didn't fit with my friend at all. She was healthy and perky and much more positive and outgoing than I had ever been.

Hell, she’d just run a 5K two days before the accident and gotten first place. She wasn’t sick. She couldn't have been. Maybe I needed to talk to her coach and find out if she’d noticed anything strange.

And how was I going to explain these drawings?

I cropped out one of the clearer versions of the symbol and uploaded it to Google’s image search, but it came back with no results. I chose another and repeated the process, but there were no matches.

I shook my head, not sure what else to do. I wasn’t exactly a skilled private investigator.

My fingers hovered over my keyboard for a minute before I finally typed ‘strange symbols and drawings on the wall of a closet’ into the search engine. Most of the results were either from fictional books or articles on the web about children who were believed to be possessed by demons.

Demons?

My mouth went dry as I clicked through to some of the articles on the first couple pages of my search. I didn’t want to believe that there could be something supernatural at work here, but what other explanation could there be? Snakes didn’t usually bite you in a dream and leave a mark that carried into real life.

I didn’t see any of the symbols I’d seen in Hailey’s closet in any of the articles, and my eyes were tired from staring at the screen for so long.

I closed my laptop and lay back on the bed, trying to make sense of it all and figure out where to turn next. If I approached anyone about this symbol, they’d want to know where I saw it, and I wasn’t ready to explain that to anyone.

My phone buzzed with a text message from Troy. He had sent several, trying to apologize for the other day, but I ignored him.

Other than my sister and Nicole, I didn’t really feel like I had anyone I could talk to lately. They all thought I was crazy or unstable.

Dr. Millner had warned me that I might have trouble separating reality from illusion, and I was scared to death that all of this was in my head. But I had the note and the pictures to prove it. I wasn’t making that up.

I closed my eyes, exhausted to my core. I thought I’d never feel more alone than I had during those days in Longview, but I was wrong. I was more alone now than ever.

At some point, I must have drifted off to sleep, because when I woke up, the sun was shining through my curtains and my mom was knocking on my door.

“Are you awake, Marayah?” she asked. “School starts in half an hour. I’ve got to run, but I’ve got breakfast started for you downstairs. Honey?”

I sat up, my head throbbing from sleeping in a strange position all night. I winced and shook the pins and needles out of my arm.

“I’m up,” I said. “I’ll be down in a few.”

Mom opened the door a crack and peered in at me.

She frowned when she looked at my clothes and the laptop and notebooks strewn across my bed. I quickly slid my notes under my Calculus book.

“Did you sleep in your clothes?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess I fell asleep doing my homework last night,” I said. “I just need to brush my teeth and change real quick.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She stepped into my room and placed the back of her hand on my forehead. “If you want, I can stay home with you. I just need to make a few phone calls first and move a couple of meetings.”

“No,” I said quickly. “I’m fine, I promise. I was just really tired, that’s all.”

She seemed to think about it for a minute before finally giving in. “Okay, if you’re sure,” she said. “I have a pretty busy day lined up, but if you need me, you just call. Promise?”

“I promise.”

When she left, I quickly brushed my teeth, threw on a fresh pair of jeans and the first t-shirt I could find, and ran downstairs to devour my breakfast.

“Let’s go,” I told Kimi, rushing her toward the car.

“Whoa, what’s your hurry,” she said. She grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter. “We’ll be fifteen minutes early.”

“I know,” I said. “There’s someone I need to talk to before the first bell rings.”