Charlie turned into a blur of motion. Sam started to follow, leg raised, arm bent—
Another explosion.
A flash of light from the revolver.
A sudden vibration in the air.
Sam’s head jerked so violently that her neck cracked. Her body followed in a wild twist. She spun like a top, falling into darkness the same way Alice fell into the rabbit hole.
Do you know how pretty you are?
Sam’s feet hit the ground. She felt her knees absorb the shock.
She looked down.
Her toes were spread flat against a water-soaked hardwood floor.
She looked up to find her reflection staring back from a mirror.
Inexplicably, Sam was at the farmhouse standing at the bathroom sink.
Gamma stood behind her, strong arms wrapped around Sam’s waist. Her mother looked younger, softer, in the mirror. Her eyebrow was arched up as if she’d heard something dubious. This was the woman who’d explained the difference between fission and fusion to a stranger at the grocery store. Who’d devised complicated scavenger hunts that took up all of their Easters.
What were the clues now?
“Tell me,” Sam asked her mother’s reflection. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Gamma’s mouth opened, but she did not speak. Her face began to age. Sam felt a longing for the mother she would never see grow old. Fine lines spread out from Gamma’s mouth. Crow’s feet around her eyes. The wrinkles deepened. Streaks of gray salted her dark hair. Her jawline grew fuller.
Her skin began to peel away.
White teeth showed through an open hole in her cheek. Her hair turned into greasy white twine. Her eyes grew desiccated. She wasn’t aging.
She was decomposing.
Sam struggled to get away. The smell of death enveloped her: wet earth, fresh maggots burrowing underneath her skin. Gamma’s hands clamped around her face. She made Sam turn around. Fingers reduced to dry bone. Black teeth honed into razor blades as Gamma opened her mouth and screamed, “I told you to get out!”
Sam gasped awake.
Her eyes slit open onto an impenetrable blackness.
Dirt filled her mouth. Wet soil. Pine needles. Her hands were in front of her face. Hot breath bounced against her palms. There was a sound—
Shsh. Shsh. Shsh.
A broom sweeping.
An ax swinging.
A shovel dropping dirt into a grave.
Sam’s grave.
She was being buried alive. The weight of the soil on top of her was like a metal plate.
“I’m sorry.” Hightop’s voice caught around the words. “Please, God, please forgive me.”
The dirt kept coming, the weight turning into a vise that threatened to press the breath right out of her.
Did you know that Giles Corey was the only defendant in the Salem witch trials who was pressed to death?
Tears filled Sam’s eyes, slid down her face. A scream got trapped inside her throat. She couldn’t panic. She couldn’t start yelling or flailing because they would not help her. They would shoot her again. Begging for her life would only speed up the taking of her life.
“Don’t be silly,” Gamma said. “I thought you were past that teenager stage.”
Sam inhaled a shaky breath.
She startled as she realized that air was entering her lungs.
She could breathe!
Her hands were cupped to her face, creating an air pocket inside the dirt. Sam tightened the seal between her palms. She forced her breaths to slow in order to preserve what precious air she had left.
Charlie had told her to do this. Years ago. Sam could picture her sister in her Brownie uniform. Arms and legs like tiny sticks. Her creased yellow shirt and brown vest with all the patches she had earned. She had read aloud from her Adventure handbook at the breakfast table.
“‘If you find yourself caught in an avalanche, do not cry out or open your mouth,’” Charlie had read. “‘Put your hands in front of your face and try to create an airspace as you are coming to a stop.’”
Sam stuck out her tongue, trying to see how far away her hands were. She guessed a quarter of an inch. She flexed her fingers, trying to elongate the pocket of air. There was nothing to move into. The dirt was packed tightly around her hands, almost like cement.
She tried to glean the position of her body. She wasn’t flat on her back. Her left shoulder was pressed to the ground, but she wasn’t fully lying on her side, either. Her hips were turned at an angle to her shoulders. Cold seeped into the back of her running shorts. Her right knee was bent, her left leg was straight.
Torso twist.
A runner’s stretch. Her body had fallen into a familiar position.
Sam tried to shift her weight. She couldn’t move her legs. She tried her toes. Her calf muscles. Her hamstrings.
Nothing.
Sam closed her eyes. She was paralyzed. She would never walk again, run again, move again without assistance. Panic rushed into her chest like a swarm of mosquitos. Running was all that she had. It was who she was. What was the point of trying to survive if she could never use her legs again?
She pressed her face into her hands so that she wouldn’t cry out.
Charlie could still run. Sam had watched her sister bolt toward the forest. It was the last thing she’d seen before the revolver went off. Sam conjured into her mind the image of Charlie sprinting, her spindly legs moving impossibly fast as she flew forward, away, never hesitating, never stopping to look back.
Don’t think about me, Sam begged, the same thing she had told her sister a million times before. Just concentrate on yourself and keep running.
Had Charlie made it? Had she found help? Or had she looked over her shoulder to see if Sam was following and instead found Zachariah Culpepper’s shotgun jammed into her face?
Or worse.
Sam forced the thought from her mind. She saw Charlie running free, getting help, bringing the police back to the grave because she had their mother’s sense of direction and she never got lost and she would remember where her sister was buried.
Sam counted out the beats of her heart until she felt them slow to a less frantic pace.
And then she felt a tickle in her throat.
Everything was filled with dirt—her ears, nose, mouth, lungs. She couldn’t stop the cough that wanted to come out of her mouth. Her lips opened. The reflexive intake of air pulled more dirt into her nose. She coughed again, then again. The third time was so hard that she felt her stomach cramp as her body strained to pull itself into a ball.
Sam felt a jolt in her heart.
Her legs had twitched.
Panic and fear had cut off the vital connections between her brain and her musculature. She had not been paralyzed; she had been terrified, some ancient fight or flight mechanism pushing her out of her own body until she could understand what was happening. Sam felt elation as sensation slowly returned to her lower body. It was as if she was walking into a pool of water. At first, she could feel her toes spreading through the thick earth. Then her ankles were able to bend. Then she felt the tiniest amount of movement in her ankles.
If she could move her feet, what else could she move?
Sam flexed her calves, warming them up. Her quads started to fire. Her knees tensed. She concentrated on her legs, telling herself that they could move until her body sent back the message that yes, her legs could move.
She was not paralyzed. She had a chance.
Gamma always said that Sam had learned how to run before she’d learned how to walk. Her legs were the strongest part of her body.