I can’t survive alone. I won’t survive alone.
She can’t leave me like this.
“Willow…”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
I whimper while blinking away tears. “No, you’re just…”
“You need to start caring for yourself first before others. Can’t you see that’s what you need to do?”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
She takes a deep breath, exhaling into the microphone and creating static in my ear. It’s a welcome change to the strange silence that surrounds me this high above the city.
She’s right. I’m isolated. I have nowhere to go.
But I have my phone. That’s got to count for something, right?
“You should have taken the job offer,” she pushes. “You should have done things differently.”
“It’s a little late to talk about changing the past, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she grunts. “I know.”
“So, why are you harping on it?”
“You ever think maybe I have feelings about this too? That maybe I care about you?”
I frown. “No, I guess not.”
“I hate that my best friend is being kept against her will by some murdering, power-hungry weirdo in the middle of NYC and I can’t do shit about it.”
“You can talk to me. You can be there for me.”
She concedes with a huff. “Yeah, I can talk to you. All the time, right? You can text me?”
“Yes, I can text you as far as I know.”
“The moment he takes your phone, Liya,” Willow says. “Run and don’t look back.”
I laugh bitterly. “I wish I could do that, Willow, but I think I’m going to be stuck here for a very long time.”
“Does he have cameras?” Her voice takes on an edge of worry as she whispers, “Is he watching you? Areother peoplewatching you?”
“My best guess is yes—to everything.”
“Ugh.” She gags. “Fucking perverts.”
“You know, I’m starting to think Dmitri wasn’t so bad.”
“Liya, don’t say that. All perverts are bad. Put that on a sticker.”
Nostalgia grips me. “We used to make stickers all the time.”
“And slap them everywhere.”
“And get into trouble for it.”