Chapter 2: Worst Decisions, Ranked

The car behind her honked.

Once. Twice. Then a long, furious blast that could have woken the dead.

Vanessa didn't move. The light had already gone green, yellow and red again while she stared at Miriam's message.

I know who did it. Don't tell Dad.

Who did what?

She typed Who? and hit send.

Delivered. Not read.

She called. Straight to voicemail.

"Miriam," she told the beep, "if this is one of your dramatic science things, I swear..."

The honking started again.

Vanessa rolled down her window and held up one very polite finger. Then she drove.

***

By midnight, she was parked outside a 24-hour ATM with a bag of gas station pretzels and a plan.

The plan had three steps.

One: money.

Two: supplies.

Three: do not think about Ethan.

She started with step one.

Her savings sat behind a password she'd set two years ago and never told anyone. Especially not Ethan. Some instinct had whispered to keep something back. It sounded suspiciously like her father.

She had rolled her eyes at it then. Now she wanted to hug it.

She withdrew the daily limit. Then she opened the banking app and moved everything else somewhere Ethan's clever little fingers could never reach.

Next, the cards.

She cancelled the extra card Ethan carried for "business dinners," of which there had been zero. She cancelled Clara's salon account. She cancelled the phone plan, the second phone plan, and the streaming service Ethan swore was "for work."

Each confirmation email arrived with a tiny, beautiful ding.

By the fifth one, she was smiling.

By the tenth, she was laughing like a villain in a low-budget movie.

The man at the next ATM edged away.

"Sorry," Vanessa said. "Long day."

***

She didn't sleep. She sat in the car until dawn with a pen and a crumpled receipt from the glove box, and she did something she'd been avoiding for two years.

She made a list.

VANESSA'S WORST DECISIONS, RANKED

.Cutting her own bangs. Age sixteen. Never again.

.Gas station sushi in Prague.

.Trusting a partner who said, "I know a shortcut."

.Paying for Clara's "medication" without once asking what it was.

Ethan Cole.

She underlined number one. Then again. Then a third time, hard enough to tear the paper.

Then she added a footnote.

. Not slapping him a fourth time.

Better.

She tucked the receipt into the visor. Her stomach growled. Fine. Apocalypse first, breakfast second.

***

The Grand Meridian Mall opened at ten. Vanessa was at the doors at 9:52, in yesterday's clothes, holding a list that had its own list.

The security guard unlocking the entrance looked at her, then at the list, then back at her.

"Big sale?"

"Something like that."

She grabbed a cart. Then, after a moment of thought, a second one, and nested them together like a woman with a mission.

Her father's rules echoed in her head. Water first. Food that needs no kitchen. Medicine. Never buy what you can't carry.

She had hated those lessons.

She was now extremely grateful for them.

The supermarket took twenty minutes.

Rice went in first, in sacks big enough to sleep on. Then beans. Then more beans. Then so many cans of beans that a teenager stocking the shelf whispered, "Ma'am, are you okay?"

"I'm great," Vanessa said, and added two more cases.

Water followed. Then purification tablets. Then salt, sugar, oil and a can opener. Three can openers. Nobody ever plans for the can opener, and Vanessa had learned that the hard way in Bulgaria.

At the pharmacy, she loaded up on painkillers, bandages, antiseptic and enough gauze to wrap a small mummy.

The pharmacist watched the pile grow. "Training for a marathon?"

"Sort of," Vanessa said. "A long one."

The hardware store on the second floor was where things got awkward.

She set twelve crowbars on the counter.

The clerk stared at them. Then at her. "Twelve?"

"Home renovations."

"That's... a lot of renovations."

"It's a big house."

"Do you want a bag?"

"I want a bigger cart."

She added rope, tape, a hatchet, two machetes "for gardening," and the biggest flashlight in the store. The clerk quietly stopped asking questions.

Next came the camping store, where a cheerful guy in a fleece vest lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Preparing for a trip?"

"Sort of."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely."

He stopped smiling. Then he slowly reached behind the counter and handed her a discount code. "For the cold," he said. "Just in case."

Vanessa took it. She left with sleeping bags, thermal blankets, a camp stove, six fuel canisters and one very rattled employee.

In the corridor, she called a fuel depot and ordered forty jerrycans for pickup. The dispatcher asked if she owned a farm.

"Something like that."

Somewhere around her fourth trip to the parking lot, she ate a granola bar standing in the middle of the corridor and realized something strange.

She was enjoying herself.

For two years, every spare minute had belonged to someone else. Clara's errands. Ethan's moods. Now she had a list, a purpose and twelve crowbars. She felt like herself again.

On her way back in, she passed an electronics shop where a wall of TVs all played the same news anchor.

"...health officials say there is no cause for concern regarding reports of illness in the northern region."

Vanessa's cart slowed.

No cause for concern. She had spent her whole childhood around officials, and she knew exactly what that sentence meant.

It meant there was cause for concern.

She checked her phone. Nothing from Miriam. She tightened her grip on the cart and kept moving.

***

Two hours later, she had six loaded carts, two aching arms and one item left on her list.

Batteries. Every kind. All of them.

Aisle fourteen.

She turned the corner, spotted a wall of them in red and gold packaging, and let out a breath. Almost done. She grabbed two packs, then two more.

Then she heard it.

A laugh.

A low, lazy laugh she had once found charming.

Vanessa went still.

"...told you, babe. She's never going to show her face again."

"Then why are you whispering?" a woman's voice asked.

"I'm not whispering."

"You are."

Vanessa's grip on the batteries tightened until the packaging crackled.

No. Not here. Not today. Out of all the malls in the whole city.

She leaned around the shelf, very slowly.

There, at a self-checkout kiosk at the end of the next aisle, stood Ethan Cole and Isabella, beside a cart piled with designer sunglasses, a portable speaker and a family-size bag of chips.

The machine beeped.

A harsh, mechanical tone chimed through the aisle.

BEEP.

TRANSACTION DECLINED.

Ethan frowned, shaking the card as if it were a faulty remote control. "Wait. Glitch. Try it again."

He swiped the magnetic strip with an irritated flourish.

BEEP.

CARD SUSPENDED. CONTACT ISSUER.

Isabella crossed her arms, shifting her weight onto one hip. "Ethan. I thought you said you handled the limit."

Vanessa stepped out from behind the shelving unit.

She didn't shout. She didn't hide. She just stood there in the center of the polished linoleum aisle, resting one hand casually on the handle of cart loaded with dry beans, trauma bandages, and twelve crowbars.

And then she smiled.

Ethan turned his head, his mouth opening to deliver another excuse to Isabella—and his gaze cut straight through the open air.

Straight into Vanessa’s eyes.