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“One more surprise left.”
That’s the first and last time Emma listens to Noah’s podcast; she doesn’t even listen to her own interview, much later. It makes her nauseous, just that, the sound of Noah’s voice jauntily repeating the low-throated threat that has yet to manifest.
“Oh, come on, Emma,” Audrey says, her voice tinny and distracted over the psychiatric ward’s landline. Emma almost wants to ask her what she’s doing, so she can picture Audrey in her room doing something normal and peaceful with her hands, so Emma can relax just a little bit imagining it. But every time she’s tried so far, she’s gotten a nothing, I’m talking to you. Full attention. “Don’t tell me you’re actually listening to that shit. I figured you’d be on a twenty-four hour Mozart lockdown in there or something.”
“Yeah, well,” Emma says. “Symphony No. 40 was driving me nuts. I wanted a change of pace.”
Audrey snorts. “So you decided to tune in to Noah’s murder fetish frequency? I need to have words with whoever’s in charge over there.”
Emma fidgets with the lock on her window. It’s standard, or so they tell her. The room she has is nicer than standard, though; probably because of her mom, or notoriety. There’s bookshelves, and a heavy quilt, and drawers and thin-stringed decorations hanging on her wall. It still feels like suffocation. “Do you listen to it?”
“Uh, yeah, I have to,” Audrey says. “He fuckin’ grills me about my input or whatever after it goes live. Doesn’t mean it’s a healthy or fun thing to be doing. Especially when you’re where you are.”
Now Emma’s the one to laugh. It scratches her throat. “In the looney bin.”
“Trying to get better,” Audrey says, sharply, and there’s a clank on the other end of the line. Emma wants to ask what it was, but Audrey keeps talking. “And don’t call it the looney bin. It’s not a looney bin.”
It sure is one, but Emma refrains. Instead she says, “Well, it’s not working. The getting better part.”
There’s silence on the other end for a moment, then the soft sound of Audrey exhaling. Emma hates this, that she can’t see the expression Audrey’s making and react accordingly. “Well,” Audrey says, “I can tell you for sure listening to Noah’s death-theme jack-off session isn’t gonna help. I love him, but he really isn’t the best with bedside manner.”
Bedside manner. Emma almost laughs, almost cracks a joke that would certainly be tasteless. “Yeah. Okay. Mozart it is.”
“Mozart it is,” Audrey agrees, then pauses. “You don’t owe Lakewood shit, Emma. If I were you, I’d delete all our numbers and never come back.”
It’s something Emma’s thought about for maybe half a second. It’s definitely something easier said than done. “Why haven’t you, then?”
Silence on the other end. Then Audrey says, “Look, the point is, I miss you. We all really miss you, but you’re not hurting anyone’s feelings by not listening to Noah’s podcasts or not texting Brooke back or anything. We get it if you just need to completely cut off for a while.”
That’s probably exactly what she needs; it’s what the orderlies are suggesting, definitely, and it’s why she’s only getting an hour of phone time a day. “Thanks, Audrey. Can I call you again tomorrow?”
Audrey huffs. “You don’t have to keep asking. Yeah.”
They both pause, and it’s like it always is, like they’re waiting for the other to say something but neither of them know what to say or even what they want to hear.
“Bye, Emma,” Audrey ends up saying. Just that.
“Bye, Audrey,” Emma says back. Just that.
Another moment of silence. Then Audrey hangs up.
One more surprise left keeps her awake, every night, every night. Sometimes it’s in Piper’s amused, low growl, and sometimes it’s in Noah’s light, curious tone. She thinks you’re killing me. you’re killing me.
---
She comes home. Kieran is there. Audrey is there. Noah and Brooke and Jake and the rest of the living are there. It’s still so empty.
Still, it’s nice to hear everyone’s voices without the static, and even nicer to have a glass of wine after three months without. It’s worth six dollars and tastes it, because, according to Brooke, Noah sucks at buying booze, but the point is that it’s something.
Audrey’s sprawled all over the window seat with a nasty beer in her hand, but she sits up a little when Emma approaches, shifts just enough to make room for Emma to sit down next to her. “Can’t imagine the psychiatric ward would be thrilled to find out we’re enabling substance abuse.”
Emma takes another sip of wine, crinkles her nose, and shrugs. “Yeah, well, they’re hardly thrilled with me as is.”
The beer’s halfway to Audrey’s lips, but then she puts it down again, and Emma flinches and takes another stinging gulp of wine. Audrey weighs her words for a minute, then says, “Was now a good time for you to come back?”
She considers going for the third gulp of wine, but Audrey’s gaze- hard and unbreachable, like always- holds her in place. So she cradles it in both hands instead, says, “It was the right time.”
Audrey’s eyes narrow. “Not the same thing.”
“Yeah, well,” Emma says, and this is why Audrey is a good friend and why it’s hard to be her friend, sometimes, because her bluntness cuts you right open. Sometimes that’s what you need and most of the time it just makes you feel naked. “Staying there longer wasn’t going to help. They did all that could be done, I think. And I wanted to be here again. I don’t know. I felt like being here would make me feel more normal than being in a white room would.”
That makes Audrey chuckle, and shrug, and take another swig of her beer, her eyes never leaving Emma’s face. After she swallows, she says, “Does it?”
Emma shrugs too, and looks down at her wine glass, traces the thin circle of the rim with her pinky finger. “I don’t know yet. Maybe it will when everyone stops stepping on eggshells around me.”
Audrey hesitates, only for a second, then leans back against the sill again. “Hey, we’re trying. Noah even bought you that Moscato crap you like, right?”
“Yeah, that was nice of him,” Emma says absently. “How did Noah know I liked Moscato?”
She shrugs. “I told him.”
For a second Emma isn’t going to question it. Then she remembers drinking started with Nina, not Audrey, and the two never overlapped. “How did you know?”
Twitching a little, like she’s been caught in a lie, Audrey looks away and takes another swig of beer. “I asked Brooke.”
Gratitude swells in Emma’s chest, just at this, Audrey slightly bashful and the sight of her lounging here, as she lounges everywhere, tangible and human and not just the memory of a savior with a gun in hand. “It is really good to see you. It’s good to see you doing okay.”
Finally she gets a real smile, not just an eggshells-smile, and Audrey ducks her head again and snorts. “Doing okay.”
“I mean,” Emma backpedals, because no matter how much the six of them are smiling none of them are doing okay, none of them. “It’s nice that everyone’s, like, getting along now. Like, Jake and Noah? Never would’ve thought.”
Something somber creeps into Audrey’s expression, and whatever words made it crawl in Emma desperately wants to take back but she can’t, it’s too late. “Yeah, well. You know. Friends are hard to come by, we’re taking what we can get.”
Her stomach sinks. “Audrey-”
“Brooke is cool, though,” Audrey continues, doggedly steamrolling right over her. “Way cooler than I would’ve thought. I just thought she was a Nina clone, honestly, but she’s funny.” A beat. “She probably gets it from you.”
It startles a laugh out of Emma, the idea that Brooke gets anything from her. “No way. I get it from her.”
Audrey shakes her head, grinning, one foot falling across Emma’s thigh. Her socks have an eggs-and-bacon pattern. “Nah, you were always funny. Remember when John Myers fell out of the tree in the third grade and you-”
“No!” Emma shrieks, ducking behind one hand. “Nope!”
And Audrey’s cackling, and Emma’s giggling too, because something’s funny and not just because she feels like she should, and this is probably what normal is supposed to feel like.
Then Kieran comes wandering out of the kitchen, looking lost, and it goes away. For Kieran, she has to pretend to be all right.
“Hey,” he says, half smiling, and both of their laughter fades unanimously. Audrey’s legs pull into her chest; not lounging anymore. “Lost you for a second there. Can we, uh. Can we talk?”
Emma glances at Audrey, whose gaze is fixed firmly on Kieran now, like she’s blanked out while looking at him. “Um. Well, me and Audrey-”
“It’s cool,” Audrey says abruptly, shooting up onto both feet. “I need another beer anyway. I’ll be around, Emma.” She gives her a little encouraging smile, then disappears. A cabinet bangs, then Kieran and Emma are alone.
Logically, she knows Audrey is around, but the feeling of object impermanence grows the longer Audrey stays out of the living room.
---
Kieran kisses her and his mouth is hard and hot, and his hand goes probing under her shirt like it has a right to be there, like it’s just waiting to be let in, a neighbor knocking on a dark house’s door and calling for flour. Emma doesn’t invite him in but she doesn’t call the police either, so he breaks in.
She thinks- you’re killing me. you’re killing me.
---
When they were little, she used to sneak into Audrey’s room at night, use the key under the flowerpot and creep up the stairs. Mrs. Jensen would find them all bundled under the covers the next morning, and call Maggie, and make double chocolate pancakes.
Mrs. Jensen isn’t here anymore, though, and it takes Emma twenty minutes to find the key when it isn’t under the flowerpot, and she nearly sets off a tripwire the minute she unlocks the door. Still, she knows which steps creak and where the house breathes, so she makes it to Audrey’s room relatively silently.
Audrey is lying on her back when Emma hurries into her room, closing the door behind her. She’s buried under three layers of blankets like she always was as a kid, every season, swaddled and hot. Here Emma pauses; watching Audrey sleep is the first time this break-and-enter has actually felt like an intrusion.
She tries, softly, “Audrey.”
That immediately snaps Audrey awake, sitting up, chest heaving, a knife in her hand that definitely wasn’t there before. Emma throws her hands up in the air, stunned. “Hey! Hey, it’s me! It’s just me.”
It takes a second for Audrey’s gaze to focus in the dark, then she lowers the knife, eyes narrowing, still panting. “Emma?” Then, exasperated, “What are you doing here?”
Well, it feels silly now. Emma shifts from foot to foot, still in flip-flops and dew-soaked PJ bottoms. “I- sorry. I just- I couldn’t sleep.”
Audrey put the knife back under her pillow, but she doesn’t look any less suspicious. “Kieran not home?”
He is. He’s been texting Emma all night. “His house is too big,” Emma says, evasively and probably nonsensically, and sits down on the edge of Audrey’s bed. “I’m sorry. This is weird.”
“Yeah, a little,” Audrey says. Her body’s still so tight, but she scooches over, just a little, enough to make an Emma-sized space. “Are you okay?”
It’s probably about as much of an invitation as she’s gonna get, so she kicks off her flip flops, nudges under the blankets, and settles against the pillow so she can stare at the ceiling. Slowly, Audrey lowers herself back down too. She whispers, “I don’t think I should’ve left the hospital.”
Audrey doesn’t tell her, no, it was the right time. She waits.
“I see her everywhere,” Emma says. “Piper. I know she’s dead, but. In my mind she’s still coming for me. There are still people in my life that she can kill to hurt me. I feel like I’ll never be able to not be scared as long as I have people I care about.”
They’re both looking at the ceiling. “I think everyone feels that way when they love someone, though,” Audrey says. “It’s just worse for us because we actually got targeted by a serial killer. It’s not our fault. Everyone’s scared of losing the people they care about.”
Her voice is hard, and Emma wants to say I’m sorry about Rachel, I’m sorry about everything, but the time for that has passed. “I know. It’s just- it’s even weirder, because Piper was my sister. My sister, you know? And I shot her. My mom’s daughter. I killed her.”
“I mean,” Audrey says, “we both did.”
“In the hospital, they said I couldn’t think of her as my sister,” Emma whispers. “Or I didn’t have to, anyway. They said if I did, it made me carry guilt I didn’t have to carry. They said she wasn’t my sister but she was.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Audrey says, “No offense, Emma, but who gives a shit if Piper was your sister or not? So she was. Who cares? She hurt your mom. And I mean, I kind of get that, the abandonment feel, even if I don’t get the murdery part- but she hurt you. And you never did anything to her. All you ever were was nice to her, even. She was your sister, okay, but she was also crazy and evil. You don’t have to pretend she was anything she wasn’t. There’s no reason for you to feel like you owe Piper anything. She sure as shit didn’t feel like she owed you anything.”
They’re both still on their backs. Emma turns her head, and Audrey’s glaring at the ceiling, hands clasped tightly over her stomach. She wants to ask, do you hate me, and instead says, “I heard from Noah about you stabbing that guy at the cinema.”
Audrey scowls even harder. “They all think it’s so funny. Not so funny when they’ve been shanked in the gut.”
It’s not a humorous thing to say. Emma snorts, despite herself. Audrey looks over, and a surprised grin flashes across her face before she bites down on it. Their faces are close together now, only Emma’s hair between them.
The bed was bigger when they were kids.
Emma pulls her hair to the other side of the pillow, breaking their eye contact, and Audrey looks back up at the ceiling. “Anyway. Sorry for barging in on you. Probably not super cool now that we’ve all been traumatized.”
It’s probably definitely a social boundaries breach for Audrey, who’s gay, Emma forcing herself into this tiny bed with her. Emma wonders vaguely if she’s ever had a girl who wasn’t Emma here. She wonders if she’s irredeemably self-absorbed for thinking Audrey feels anything having Emma in bed with her, considering, you know, Audrey knew Emma from her camp-bedwetting days.
“No, it’s cool,” Audrey says, interrupting Emma’s train of thought. “To be honest, I’ve been crashing at Noah’s whenever my dad isn’t here. It gets to me too.”
Emma peeks at her again. “You do?”
“Yeah,” Audrey says, and she’s already looking back at Emma. “We’re all fucked up, Emma. It’s not just you.”
It could either be a bite or a comfort. Emma isn’t sure which. She takes it as both. “Well. It’s selfish, but. At least we’re fucked up together.”
Audrey’s gaze doesn’t break. She says, “I’m glad we’re friends again, Emma. It’s screwy, but. I am.”
“Me too,” Emma whispers.
She half expects Audrey’s hand to bump against hers, the way it used to when they were kids, and maybe they brush, but it’s an accident, they don’t bump. They fall asleep not facing each other, and the double chocolate pancakes Audrey makes in the morning are terrible.
But it makes the day easier.
---
Audrey: are you okay???????
Emma’s barely pulled into her driveway when her phone dings. She checks it, and sighs. A small, childlike part of her wishes it had been her dad to text her.
Emma: Ya in fact i made it all the way home
Audrey: just checkin
She doesn’t text back for a few minutes, enough time for Emma to go upstairs, change into her pajamas, climb carefully into her bed. Then her phone dings again.
Audrey: sorry i was a dick abt ur dad
Emma: Its ok. You were right abt him
Audrey: it still wasnt a cool thing to do
But that’s just the way Audrey is, that’s the way Audrey watches out for her. Again Emma expects the conversation to be over, but her phone dings again less than a minute later.
Audrey: i kno u said i dont have to save u all the time and i wont but youd tell me if something fucked was happening right
Emma: What do u mean
Audrey: idk. if ppl were pranking u like they did me like if u were getting threats or something.
Emma’s thumbs pause over the keyscreen.
Emma: Yeah. I mean i think everyone were friends with would deserve to kno. Why?
Audrey: just wanna make sure
Emma: You would too right?
The little text bubbles hang on the screen for a long time, but Emma waits.
Audrey: come on ur the final girl between us obviously youd be the one getting set up
Emma: Ugh, i HATE when noah calls me that. IT WASNT JUST ME we’re BOTH final girls we’re ALL final girls
Audrey: yeah but ur the prettiest and therefore the finalest
Emma giggles in the dark, and the sound scratches her throat. Her eyes feel heavy, suddenly, like her body’s finally caught up with itself.
Emma: Good night Audrey
Audrey: night emma
She sleeps. No nightmares.
---
Ayahuasca is a terror of a drug, and it’s making Emma’s stomach turn and it’s making the lights too bright, and she’s fifty seconds from running into the damn woods and not coming back.
That is, if she can get on her feet. She’s stumbling everywhere, she’s totally lost sight of Brooke and she has no idea where Kieran is and her teeth are buzzing. She nearly concusses herself on a hallway frame heading sloppily towards the door, and that’s when Audrey stumbles out of the living room and crashes right into her.
Emma catches her with both arms, and it almost isn’t enough, they nearly topple over anyway. Audrey gets a grip on her forearm, then her shoulder, then looks up at Emma, hard, their faces very close, her eyes skittering in a thousand different directions. She says, “Rachel?”
For a second Emma doesn’t understand. Then she grips Audrey’s arm tighter. “No. It’s me, Audrey. It’s Emma.”
The way Audrey’s face just breaks open with relief isn’t right. “Emma,” she repeats, and her head falls forward against Emma’s clavicle, knocking against it softly. Emma would almost think she’d fainted if Audrey’s grip hadn’t stayed so tight on her forearms. Her head comes back up after a moment, and her eyes are still wild but at least they focus better. “I lost you.”
“No- no,” Emma says, and she isn’t sure it’s true but Audrey’s voice is so confused and panicked that she needs to deny it. “No, I wandered off. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No,” Audrey says, fading in and out a little but trying to sort herself out. “No. I lost you. I can’t- I can’t do that.”
Everything’s weird and psychedelic, but Emma’s able to focus enough to really look at Audrey’s face. “I’m fine, Audrey, I’m fine- are you fine?” Her lips are slightly swollen, too red. “Have you been with someone?”
Celebrating Kieran’s birthday isn’t worth this catastrophe. She’s checking Audrey’s fly when Audrey shakes her head, still looking completely out of it. “No. It’s just you. Well, Rachel and you. There’s no one else.” Her gaze gets harder. “We’re in trouble again, Emma.”
For a second, Emma gets a flash of Nina out the window, grinning bloody, but it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not. “Audrey, we’re okay. None of this is real.”
“It is,” Audrey says vehemently. “It is. Someone’s out there.”
“No one’s out there,” Emma says, and it’s almost hollow, a repetition of what the therapists told her a thousand times. “Audrey, Piper’s dead. You saved me.”
That seems to snap Audrey out of whatever weird drug hallucination she’s wrapped in, even if just for a second, and she looks and sees Emma, the real Emma. “Emma,” she says again, like she’s seeing her for the first time. “You know- you know even though I can be a bitch, and say things I don’t mean, you know I’d never hurt you on purpose, right? I’d never do that.”
And she’s like sixth grade Audrey when she says so, it’s like the gentleness from childhood has come back for just a moment. It’s like they never have hurt each other. Emma clutches her shoulders harder. “Of course I know that, Audrey. You’re- you’re my best friend. I know I haven’t been a good friend, to you. But you always have been one to me.”
Audrey searches her face one more time, her face very close, then abruptly looks away. “I need to- Noah,” she says, noncommittally, and shakes out of Emma’s grip. “Don’t do anything dangerous,” she says, sharply, then goes.
Emma doesn’t think anything of it. They were all on drugs.
It comes back to haunt her.
---
The fact is, there’s only one safe place for Emma in the world, and it’s Audrey.
Brooke could have almost been one, but even before Jake she was too much a reminder of Riley and Nina, two deaths that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Emma, and after Jake she’s too stung with grief to be anything other than another pillar to support. It’s not Brooke’s fault. It’s Emma’s fault.
Noah’s no good either- he means well, but his bluntness isn’t the same as Audrey’s. It’s not really probing, mostly it’s just thoughtlessness. Emma’s not safe with him, because he makes her hold the knife- and she’s certainly not safe with Eli, who’s a disaster and a half, who reminds her of every spiked drink Nina ever gave her after a promise it was safe. But he thinks she’s someone that she’s not, someone healthier and brave and unafraid, and she wants to be that girl, so she lets him take her into burning buildings hoping she’ll find her there.
Kieran’s his own burning building, his own disaster- what he needs from her is a warm body and a voice that will say “you weren’t wrong, you’re not wrong” whenever he needs it to. And it’s what she wants, too, so they stay together, even though his is the wrong body and the words aren’t true. She can say whatever she wants to him and he’ll tell her it doesn’t matter because it’s not her fault. Maybe it’s not what she needs, but it feels better than the alternatives. It feels like being in the white room.
Audrey says Emma’s dad is a dick, and she calls the cops when she thinks Emma’s in danger, and she answers the phone on the first ring every time, and she yells at Emma in the bathroom that not everything’s about her, when people having been telling Emma for days and weeks and months that everything is about her, that it all comes back to her. Audrey’s a house alarm system- one wrong move and she goes off with enough force to wake a neighborhood.
But she keeps Emma safe.
Emma’s afraid of that, of how absolutely Audrey protects her. Audrey’s killed for her. She hasn’t forgotten that. She’s not sure she wants to be safe like that. She’s not sure she’s ready to be the person Audrey wants her to be, which is just the real Emma, fucked up and unhealthy and needing someone who will really protect her.
She doesn’t want to be that person. She doesn’t want to need Audrey like that. Emma holds her at arm’s length.
---
They go to the fair together, and it’s like being a real teenager again, at least for an hour and a half.
“I always hated this,” Audrey says on the Ferris wheel, at the tippity top, gripping the handlebar with two white fists. “This has always been the worst part of Lakewood Day.”
Emma laughs out loud, and means it for once, leaning forward and making the cart rock. Audrey yelps and swipes at her with one hand. “You’re afraid of heights?”
“No,” Audrey says petulantly. “I’m afraid of the sound this thing makes as it goes around. The-” She makes a grinding sound with her teeth, then shrieks when Emma tilts the car forward again. “Stop!”
So Emma tilts back again, still giggling. “Well, it’s a good thing we’re both older and tougher now and it’s not nearly as scary, right?”
Audrey takes an exaggeratedly deep breath, looks over the side, then looks back at Emma. “Nope,” she says. “Sorry. Still is.”
But she gains enough momentum back to kick Emma’s ass at go karts, then at skee ball, and Emma scrapes by just enough to win over her at darts, but she’s almost a hundred percent sure that was out of pity. It also gives Audrey the ‘game loser’ excuse to buy them both funnel cake.
“This is gross,” Emma says, as she brings up an eighth bite to her mouth.
“The fact that you’re eating it with a fork and knife is gross,” Audrey says, her mouth full. There’s a smear of sugar on her left cheek and a clump on her nose. “Remember you used to do that with pizza too?”
Emma crinkles her nose at her. “Yeah, until you bullied me out of it,” she says, and Audrey swallows and laughs, and it makes Emma smile, that laugh. They fall into comfortable silence, and Audrey takes another hefty bite out of her funnel cake.
Emma makes it decidedly more uncomfortable when she says, “So did you come last year? To- to Lakewood Day.”
Audrey swallows slower this time, shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Rachel wasn’t really… part-of-the-capitalist-machine type. We watched a movie. It was bad but she liked it.” Before Emma can say I’m sorry or even what movie, she hastily continues, “Did you?”
“Yeah,” Emma says absently, “with Will. He sucked at all the games. Between the two of us, we only got one stuffed animal, and I won it.” Before Audrey can say I’m sorry or even what animal, Emma hurries into, “I’m glad they’re still doing it this year, though. The carnival.”
This time it’s Audrey who crinkles her nose, and the sugar spreads in a web across the tip of her nose. “It feels kind of fake to me,” she says. “Slapping a bandaid on a bullet wound, you know. But. I’m glad we could come together again.”
“Me too,” Emma says, affectionate, and because it’s been bothering her, she reaches forward and brushes the sugar off Audrey’s nose.
Audrey goes still, surprised, and Emma immediately retracts, feeling out of place and embarrassed, brain shrieking weird! that’s a weird thing to do-
“Sugar,” she says faintly, indicating her own nose, and Audrey watches the movement of her hand for a second before shrugging and finishing off the funnel cake.
“Whatever,” she says, and stands up. “It’s supposed to be eaten like that, Princess Duval. Come on, I’m gonna win you one of those dunk tank bears.”
Emma looks at her skeptically, not getting up. “Those are so rigged.”
“Perhaps,” Audrey says. “Or perhaps they can only be beaten by the insanely talented. I guess we’ll see.”
Audrey’s insanely talented. Emma claps, and laughs.
The moment doesn’t last any longer than that.
---
It’s the same night. The fleeting moment of laughter is gone, and it’s not coming back.
Audrey’s voice, familiar now in tinniness, in the distance of it, says, “I brought Piper to Lakewood.”
Audrey, here, all the color drained out of her face, saying, “I can explain.”
And all Emma can think, numbly, is you’re killing me. you’re killing me.
“How-” Emma says, then stops, because she knows asking how and getting an answer, a reason for ruining Emma’s life, will hurt more than not knowing. So she stands up instead. “You need to leave.”
Audrey catches her arm, the same way Eli and Kieran catch her arm, hard force. “Emma, wait- it’s not how it sounds, I didn’t-”
“All this time,” Emma says, feeling dizzy but ripping out of Audrey’s hold anyway, refusing to cave into it. “All this time, and you did this, and you- you were lying to me.”
Her eyes are so big, she looks so young, Emma wants to die. “It wasn’t my fault, and I knew you’d hate me, and I couldn’t- I was going to tell you myself, I was going to-”
“Stop,” Emma says, “stop,” and she pushes her weight against the doorframe, then against Audrey. “I want you to leave.”
“Emma-”
“Leave or I’ll call the cops, I swear I will,” Emma says, and she’s not sure she could, because they’d really put away Audrey forever, her DNA was still on the inside of the mask- Jesus. Her DNA on the inside of the mask. “Get out of my house.”
Audrey still lingers, for another second, mouth open and looking desperate. Emma lifts her phone, threateningly even if she’s tearing up, and reluctantly, slowly, Audrey goes.
Then Emma tosses her phone across the room, buries her face in a pillow, and screams.
There is no such thing as a safe place.