wn front door, frozen so

dow of my mountain cabin. He was warm. He was eating my food. He watche

t, had laughed. His mother, a woman whose passive aggression could cut glass, just adjusted t

me to die.

jolted

ton. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, showing the pristine, gr

. Not the pigsty the Sc

room, a NOAA weather alert banner scr

OUNTAIN REGION IN TEN DAYS. RESIDENTS ARE ADVISED TO PREPARE

da

k. I had

he memory of starvation was so real I could feel my stomach eating itself. The mem

-mogul parents were always too busy for me, but they made sure I never wanted for anything. Th

y got me killed. This tim

n and pulled a bottle of expensive, filtered water from the fridge. I drank the whole thing in o

my pho

t of pure fear through me. It was a Pavlovian response, a left

his call from

razy storm coming, I was thinking, why don't we all come up to your

n remembered asking him how he knew about the cabin' s rem

" he'd said casually. "She said

ke I was doing something with my life. Molly, who listened to all my problems. Molly,

ne kept

, replaced by somethi

y face into a mask of sweet, sim