Chapter 24

Neve

The light is the first thing.

White and flat and too bright, pressing against my eyelids before I can open them. Then the smell: rubbing alcohol and something bitter and green, and clean sheets that crackle when I move.

I know that smell.

I open my eyes.

A white ceiling. A narrow bed with metal rails. A thin cotton gown instead of my clothes. And in the crook of my left arm, taped down flat, a needle, a clear tube running up from it to a bag hanging from a metal pole beside my head.

My heart stops.

Then it starts again, too fast, slamming against my ribs, and I’m not here anymore.

I’m sixteen.

I woke up just like this, the first time. In a white room, in a white bed, in a gown someone else had put on me while I slept. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know how long I’d been there. I tried to sit up, and I couldn’t, because there were straps across my wrists and my ankles, padded leather buckled tight to the rails of