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Yeah. I’m fucking proud of my gift. It’s fucking amazing, if I do say so myself.

I shake the box enticingly at my mom, my smile growing by the second.

“Is she still up?”

“Who?” Mom asks, but I’m too excited to fully hear her.

“It’s only ten. Iv! Ivy get your ass up!” I yell up the stairs, my anticipation bubbling to see my sister after months of just texts and quick video chats.

“Shhh! Your father’s watching the news in bed,” she hisses.

I can’t quite explain it. During my bouncing excitement, the chill of the cold frappe seeping through my leggings, and the deep line that creases my mother’s brow, realization tries tapping against my stubborn skull.

But I ignore it.

Just like I did the night I came home. And no one noticed I’d been missing for nearly a year. I’d vanished from their lives, but they... hadn’t noticed.

That scar on my cheek? Just ignore it? The night terrors that haunted me every. Single. Night? Just ignore it. The special diet of sleeping pills Mom and my therapist both agreed on...

Ignore it. That’s what my family is good at.

I guess it’s still what I’m doing. Right now.

“Bella!” My dad’s cheery smile is oblivious to my twisting emotions and my mother’s panicked concern.

He always is. Sometimes to be oblivious is the only way to keep a hold of that faltering happiness in our lives.

But he never treated me like I was fragile. Not like my mother does. Years of missed sports and sitting on the bleachers have made me bitter at my own fragile heart.

Which might be why I started dancing.

“Where the hell is Iv! Is she at her friend’s house tonight? I know I’m late. She knew I was coming though. We had plans. We were going to watch SNL and TikToks until the sun came up.” Because, ya know, Pete Davidson.

My stream of words only causes that etching line to seep deeper between her pale brows. I know that look of confused worry. It’s the one she’d give me when I spoke of monsters under my bed and Sand Man that would come back to get me.

I wasn’t a little girl though. I was sixteen.

That terrified look in a mother’s features never gets easier to face. Knots eat up my stomach, and it’s almost like I know before she ever speaks.

Fuck.

“Who are you talking about, Bell? Who’s Ivy? What’s tick tock?” she enunciates.

I ignore her poor pronunciation of the app as the breath punches from my lungs. The gift drops to the carpet with a heavy thud. Her arms pull me in as I stand stiffly in her embrace and listen to the words she coos in my ear.

“It’ll be alright, hunny. It’ll be alright. You’re alright.”

But it’s not alright. Nothing is.

Because the Sand Man did come back.

Just not for me.

Chapter Two

Bella

A storm that thunders through my heart flashes with lightening outside the painted glass windows. Shining, crimson eyes watch me from the shadows of the Great Hall. I’m at the center of the event. Their waiting attention presses down on me in a frantic feeling of breathlessness.


Tags: A.K. Koonce Paranormal