Fall to Pieces by Naidoo Vahini

Author:Naidoo, Vahini [Naidoo, Vahini]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-10-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

“ELLA, ARE YOU sure?”

My back is pressed against the wooden wall of the barn. Mark’s toying with a piece of red chalk, tossing it from hand to hand. “Are you sure?” he asks again in his lazy drawl. He knows I’m not backing down. Not now.

Amy would’ve kept on going.

Mark sweeps the chalk around me in a wide arc until I’m encased in a red chalk bubble. I stretch my arms and touch the sides of the bubble, shuffle my feet outward until they’re at the edges of the red line, too. My head sinks lower, and my hair shifts up behind me, pressed against the wall.

“Okay, guys,” I call. “I’m ready for target practice.”

“Ella—” It’s Tristan. He’s holding a dart in his hand, and he’s got this look on his face. I told him he could go—again—and he didn’t reply, but he hasn’t gone anywhere. Yet. I’m certain that once the darts start flying at me, he’ll fly out the door. “Are you sure you really want to do this?” he asks.

“Stop confusing me. I’m up for it.” When he shakes his head, my mind starts racing. There’s only so much you can do before a person rats you out. If Tristan tells anyone—my parents, the school—I’m fucked. “Look, Tristan, this is really safer than me jumping off things. I mean, even if one of the darts hits me, they don’t look like they could kill.”

He raises his eyebrows and turns the dart over in his hands. His eyes linger on the sharp metallic tip. Okay, so what if he has a point? So what if they look totally dangerous? They’re not going to kill me.

Because I’m a fucking teenager. And because we’ve set this up so that the gnome’s watching me from the third floor. And it’s highly unlikely that my best friend and I are both going to die in front of the same garden gnome.

“Besides,” I say, feeling a need to justify myself out loud, “I can get back more of my memory like this—”

I stop speaking before I finish the sentence, because this is the first time I’ve mentioned getting my memories back. My hand wants to slap itself over my mouth, take back the words.

I can’t. They sit in a nest of hay.

Mouths agape.

“You mean—” Petal says. “You mean you’re remembering stuff from that night?” Panic flickers like something flammable in her voice. I’m amazed the entire barn doesn’t go up in a blaze.

I close my eyes. What’s so bad that she’s this scared for me to find out about it? What terrible thing are they hiding from me?

My chest constricts. My deep breaths shallow out. I dig my nails into my wrist to keep myself in the moment.

Wake up, Ella. Wake up. This is not the time to go under.

I choke out a response. “Yeah. Remember, I asked you where I was when Amy died?” It was one of the first things I said to Petal when she came out of her room.

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