Chapter 06

Valarie's POV

The garage light snapped on, and I watched from the ceiling as they walked back into the place where my body lay.

Elle was the first through the door. She had already turned the live stream back on, holding her phone high in one hand and lifting the skirt of the white tulle dress with the other, spinning slowly so the fabric floated around her legs.

"Hi again, everyone!" she sang into the camera. "I told you I would be back. Look at this dress. Isn't it perfect? I have wanted a dress like this for so long, you have no idea."

She turned toward my brothers with a bright, grateful smile. "Thank you so much, Osborne, Gerald, Caspian. You gave me something so special. I love you guys."

Osborne smiled back at her, warm and soft. Caspian raised his phone and took another picture. Gerald stood a little behind them with his hands in his pockets, quiet.

*That dress was mine,* I thought, hovering above them. *Gerald measured me for it. He hummed while he pinned it. I cried because nobody had ever made me anything before.*

Elle walked slowly toward the glass coffin, and the light from her phone fell across my face.

"Now, look at this," she said, tilting the camera down. "Look at my sister. She is wearing her burial clothes, and I am wearing my beautiful white dress. Which one of us do you think looks better tonight?"

She giggled. The comments were already pouring in, so fast the screen could hardly keep up.

"And guess what? She is still in there, and she is still pretending. She fell asleep in the middle of her own prank!" Elle shook her head as if I were a child who had made a silly mistake. "So dramatic. Valarie, wake up. Your fans are waiting."

My brothers laughed. Caspian even snorted. Osborne shook his head with a small, tired smile, the kind he wore when he thought I was being ridiculous.

They still believed it. Every one of them still believed I was only pretending to be unconscious, lying there with my eyes wide open and my lips gone black, just to make Elle look bad.

*I'm right here,* I screamed, though no sound came out. *I'm right above you. I'm not pretending. I'm not sleeping. Please, look at me.*

Elle kept reading the comments out loud, laughing at some of them, ignoring others. Then she slowed down. Her eyes moved over one comment, and her smile stiffened just a little.

"Oh, this one is interesting," she said. "Someone says the girl in the coffin looks strangely familiar. They say she looks like their long-lost sister."

She laughed, a short, sharp laugh, and waved her hand.

"A long-lost sister? Please. Valarie does not have anyone. Trust me, you guys. She came to us with nothing. We took her in because she had nowhere else to go. She has no important family, no big secret, nobody looking for her." She rolled her eyes at the camera. "Everyone wants to be part of a story these days."

The brothers did not even look at the screen. Caspian was busy fixing the angle of his phone. Osborne only shrugged, like the comment was a fly buzzing past his ear.

But I stared at that comment, floating right above Elle's shoulder, and something strange stirred inside my chest, the place where my heart used to be. A long-lost sister. Someone, somewhere, had looked at my face through a tiny screen and thought that maybe they knew me.

I did not remember having a sister. I did not remember having anyone. But for one small moment, that single line of text felt warmer than everything my brothers had said to me all night.

Nobody else cared. The comment slid up the screen and disappeared under a hundred more.

Only one person in that garage had stopped laughing.

Gerald stood a few steps away from the others, and he was not looking at the phone. He was looking at me.

*Gerald?*

He had acted strangely twice tonight already. Once when he saw the blood on the glass and reached for the key. Once when he noticed how pale I was. Both times Elle had talked him out of it, and both times he had let her. But the feeling had not gone away. I could see it now, crawling across his face like a shadow he could not name.

He stepped closer to the coffin, slowly, until he was standing right beside the glass.

"Gerald, come on," Caspian called. "You're missing the show."

Gerald did not answer.

He bent down a little and looked at me through the glass. He looked at my face first, at the bluish color spreading across my skin, at my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then his gaze dropped lower, to the burial clothes he had sewn with his own two hands.

To my chest.

*Please,* I thought. *Please see it. Please really see it this time.*

At first, Gerald only frowned. Maybe he thought he had missed something. Maybe he told himself that people who sleep breathe softly, so softly you can barely see it. He kept watching, waiting for the faint rise and fall of the fabric over my ribs.

Behind him, Elle was still talking to her followers, her voice light and playful. Osborne and Caspian were laughing at something. The garage was full of noise.

But around Gerald, everything had gone quiet.

One second passed. Then three. Then five.

The smile that had been sitting on his face all night slowly slid away. His hands came out of his pockets. He leaned in closer, until his breath fogged a small circle on the glass, and then he looked again, harder this time.

Nothing.

No rise. No fall. Not even the smallest movement. The white fabric lay perfectly flat over a chest that would never lift again.

His lips parted. His throat moved as if he wanted to speak but could not find the words.

I hovered right above him, so close I could almost feel the fear starting to grow in him, and for the first time that night, I did not feel alone.

Gerald pressed his hand flat against the glass, right over my heart, and stared at me, waiting for any sign that I was alive.

But nothing happened.