Prologue
I'm going to die.
It's the accident all over again, blood and darkness and screaming.
God, the screaming.
Anna is crying, I hold her to me and cry into her hair, breathing heavily in the cold. Alice, where are you?
I wipe the tears away with the back of my hand, smearing blood and grime over my face. I'm hysterical.
A strange noise permeates the silence. It's weird and distorted, like I'm underwater, it takes me a minute but I recognise it.
My phone.
"Daddy?" I whimper into the cell. Anna flinches but I quiet her, she rests her head on my thigh, dirty gold on torn jeans. I feel her age again, a five year old crying down the phone to my father, miles away.
"Bells?" His voice is urgent, full of concern he's in cop mode, but he's still my dad.
He's called me to ask about Thanksgiving, or to catch up, tell me about the latest College football match or how big his latest catch was, out on the lake with Billy. Things that would seem so important if I were back in my apartment. But I wasn't. I was sitting in a rain soaked gutter, bloody and beaten with someone else's child holding on to me for dear life.
"Dad, I'm in trouble," my voice wavers, I press a fist to my forehead and try to hold myself together.
"Bella," A scared voice calls out. I freeze, Anna's little eyes go wide and I press a finger to my lips, covering the mouthpiece of the phone. I peer around the edge of the dumpster, graffiti-ed and smelling god awful, but I barely notice.
"Alice," I whisper, my voice broken from screaming. She's standing there, still in her waitress uniform that's barely recognisable beneath the crimson and dirt. Her foot is bent at an unnatural angle and she limps towards me, I run to her, tennis shoes slapping against the wet tarmac. We barely know each other, but I hold her tight and tell her everything's going to be okay.
"Bella!" My dad calls. I hold the phone to my ear as Anna clings to her mother. Tears of relief flood my face, and I take a shaky breath.
"I'm here dad, we're all here,"