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xxii. Blair Cameron Must Die
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Do you know that feeling like you're about to do something very, very terrible but the action is so innocent that you don't think too badly of it? Do you know what it feels like to have your brain scream at you to get out of a boat you have tied your bones to? Do you know what it is like to see the exit?
Because Blair Cameron could see it, very concretely too. From behind the cabin of the Phantom, she watched the Valley of the Dolls turn into nothing but a distant landscape. Blurred points and faces she hoped she'd forget when she closed her eyes and went to sleep at night. Night . . . the sky was already darkening and every roll of thunder brought with it its very own pull of grey-black clouds that threatened to swallow the island whole.
Escaping the Valley was something she never could even imagine for herself. It has always been so unattainable, so absurd, that she hadn't even bothered thinking about what life would be like without the hands manhandling her lungs. Every breath she took was controlled by the need to be better than everyone else, and though that was pride, it usually came with the shallow of the lifestyle.
Her father wasn't hers anymore, or maybe he never was. Maybe he was just an illusion, a shell, an idea she created to feel as though she'd be safe forever. She always thought her father was trying to pull her out of the crevice in the floor filled with doll parts, but it turned out he was the one to lock her in at night.
So Blair had lost everything. My, how the mighty have fallen. Splattered on the concrete was everything she knew; she only kept her love and dread in her back pockets.
"Weather advisory for Tropical Storm Danielle, expected to make landfall in the Outer Banks surrounding areas within the hour. Wind speeds are about 65 miles per hour . . ."
Blair was a smart girl, her mother always said. Sure, it was often in a bragging manner to make her friends feel as though she was superior, but the Cameron girl truly did want to believe it. She was an intelligent young lady with a bright future ahead two days ago. Now? There was a hurricane settling and she was a mere fugitive escaping the island that has been trapping her for the last sixteen years with her sister's lover behind the wheel and her mother's voice screaming in her head. She could hear it as she sat on the back of the boat, looking at the dark horizon. Someone was calling.
"John B! Blair!" That wasn't the voice of her mother.
Blair gasped and immediately jumped off her seat, making way behind the dashboard only to find her sister running down a dock ahead, screaming their names at the top of her lungs.
