Page 68 of Kiss Slay Replay

He’s interrupted by the first blow. Beak against glass.

“Willa…” I hate the way that Tanya says my name. I hate that she’s here. I hate that her beautiful face is warping with rot, with that inky feather-like rash. I hate how she’s looking at me, like she wants something from me. I hate that whatever it is, I wish I could give it to her. I wish I could save her.

She erupts in another coughing fit.

“Fuck.” Cassie clenches her fists, stressed and helpless.

“Willa, what happened to Danny?” Wyatt asks.

“He’s…he’s dead.”

“No!” Evan kicks the back of my seat. “No. Wyatt, you’re not dying. You can’t die. Not happening.”

“Danny didn’t die because of…It was the man in the top hat. He got to us. Danny was too weak to run.”

“So you left him?” Cassie asks.

“I…There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop it.”

The raven hits the windshield again, and it cracks.

“Luke!” Cassie screams. “Try the engine!”

He presses the start button, but nothing happens. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

Without warning, Tanya opens her door and spills out onto the gravel. She turns back, about to say something when the ravens descend.

All the screaming doesn’t drown out the spew of violence—a vicious, sopping disassembly. Blood and black goo spatter onto the passenger door, the seat.

“Let’s go,” Luke says, climbing in the back and grabbing Cassie’s hand. He opens the side door, and they’re running, making toward the road.

“Close the doors,” Evan says. “Wyatt can’t run. We’ll hide in here.”

“I can try,” Wyatt says.

“Don’t be stupid. Save your strength. Willa! The doors!”

“But…” I stare out into the fog, past where Tanya’s limp body is getting picked apart by the ravens. We’re dead if we stay here. We should follow Cass and Luke. We need to go. We need to run. We need to try.

“Willa! Close the fucking doors.” There’s such urgency in Evan’s voice, it should spring me into action, but instead it drags me back to last night, when the three of us were in the field and I left them to be killed by the Eyeball Man.

I should stay with them now, no matter what. I shouldn’t repeat that mistake.

So you left him?

Cassie knows the truth about me. She sees me.

I see you.

I leave. I abandon ship when things get hard. I’m selfish. I’m a failure. I want too much.

Ravi’s face floats before me, an apparition.

It all goes by so fast—blinking away the days, the weeks, the months, years vanishing, rotting as quickly as beautiful ripe fruit, just gone, over, disappearing into that mysterious outer space beyond the reach of memory so it’s like they never even happened. I was terrified of wasting any more of my life being unhappy, of postponing the same sad conclusion, but maybe I should have tried harder, compromised more, endured. Maybe I should have given it more time.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick.

I shut the back side door, then climb up front, reach for the passenger side handle.