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When 17-year-old Arbor Hayes' best friend turns up alive after a mysterious six-month disappearance, she must piece together the fragments of her story to make sense of what happened. But as clues e...
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After we move the tables and chairs out of the foyer and back to where they belong, I call Jordan and tell her everything that happened. The medication I took that couldn't have been mine. The nightmare that really wasn't. The rearrangement of the living room furniture against the front door, as if I'm trying, once again, to keep the bad people out.
The irony doesn't escape me. If Mom and Dad only knew how terribly I've failed, they wouldn't be so quick to judge.
Dr. Wilder can't fit me in until tomorrow afternoon, which works out perfectly for my parents. They both want to be there with me, and this way they'll have time to make arrangements at work. I told them it's not necessary, but they insist, and no amount of saying I'll be fine on my own will appease them.
The best thing for me to do is just go along with their plan. I don't want to, especially now that I've figured out what Emma is up to, but accusing her will only make me look crazier. I'm sure that's exactly what she's hoping for, but I'm not about to give her the satisfaction. I know who the unstable one is, and for a change, it isn't me.
In the meantime, I'll play by Mom and Dad's rules. I'll stay home from school and take it easy. Not create unneeded stress. Fortunately, they both have full schedules, and neither one can drop everything at the last minute just to stay here with me.
Jordan agrees with the theory that Emma's trying to make me look insane. As soon as a reasonable amount of time has passed after my parents leave for work, I take the pills and Emma's driver's license to the hospital so Jordan can have a look.
While I scour the internet trying to figure out what they are, Jordan cups the tablets in her palm and stares them down with leery eyes. "Any luck?"
"Maybe. Let me see them again." I lean from the chair and gaze into her hand, comparing what's there with the images on my phone. "They could be ecstasy? Or maybe LSD?"
"Can I have a look?"
I turn the screen to face her. The bandage above her eye crinkles as she studies the different pictures. "It's hard to say. But they both cause hallucinations, don't they?"
I shrug and sit back, my knowledge of illegal substances too limited to form an intelligent opinion.
"Do they look like the pills you took last night?" she asks.
My brain circles back to when I took them. The bottles were almost empty, which struck me as odd. But I didn't notice anything else out of the ordinary. "I guess I was preoccupied. She must have access to a variety of drugs because whatever was in those bottles definitely wasn't mine."
