Page 106 of Molt

My stomach drops. “What?”

“Behind it.”

“Whose?”

He doesn’t answer.

The answer grows into place. Pressure fills the hollow. A second eye slides forward through blood. My vision returns in a nauseating burst. Except everything looks wrong.

Sharper. Colors colder.

August’s face...familiar. Too familiar.

He stumbles backward.

I see why.

His left eye is cloudy. Color draining. Mine isn’t green anymore.

I turn looking into the mirror.

One green eye. One dark gray. August’s eye. “No.”

I turn.

His left iris is fading toward white.

“Give it back.”

He almost laughs. “How?”

“I don’t fucking know. Give it back!”

“I would if I could.”

I look down at the green eye in my palm. My eye. The one I was born with.

Something is written across the back. Not ink. Tiny dark markings beneath the tissue. Letters. I bring it closer. A name.

SARAH.

I stop breathing. “August.”

He sees it. “What the fuck?”

“This isn’t my name.”

“No.”

“Who is Sarah?”

“I don’t know.”

The eyeball twitches in my palm. I drop it. It hits the tile with a wet sound. Then another memory rips through me.

Not August’s.

Not mine.