In a couple hours, the sun would set, and another day will have escaped me. Time was fleeting, the sands of my hourglass slipping through my fingers, and I was no closer to freeing myself from the curse.

Noon is too soon to get existential.

I shook my head, pulling the bleach off a shelf in the local grocery store.

Gran would think of something. She wouldn't let me die. There was nobody in world brighter than her.

We would break the curse, I'd graduate and go to an Ivy League, become a scholar like her. Maybe get a cat too.

A black cat, I thought, pushing my cart to the register and starting to set my items on the conveyor belt. I'll adopt it as a kitten. I'll call it Sir Mortem, even if it's a girl.

My daydream about my imaginary cat grew more intricate as I waited in line, and even more as I walked home afterwards, grocery bags up to my forearms. The one weighing down on my rotting arm brought a whole other level of discomfort, but my fantasy-future made it a little less bothersome.

Gran and Amanda weren't home when I got there, and there was something dreadful about being alone. I left the groceries of the kitchen and left again, as if being out in the streets would make me feel less alone.

Loneliness was strange, horrid thing. A horror I was unaccustomed to. It pulled every terrible thought I'd ever conceived from the depths of my mind and tossed them around in my head over and over until I was left dizzy. Until I felt less than human, nothing more than the sum of all those bad thoughts. It made me feel more like a zombie than my rotting flesh did.

Even my imaginary cat couldn't make me feel better.

Somehow, I found myself on Jake's porch. Sitting. Waiting.

"Neith?"

I looked up, saw the boy striding toward the porch.

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know."

Jake hesitated. "I... Stay here. I'll be right back." He went into the house and returned a few moments later with a jacket clutched in one hand and a small box in the other.

I didn't say anything.

Jake pulled the jacket around my shoulders. "It's cold out," he huffed. "You'll get sick."

"Thanks."

He sat down next to me, looking down at the little box.

"What's that?"

"I was supposed to give this to you on that night you disappeared." He handed it over, and watched me as I lifted the top.

I went a little breathless at the sight of the necklace inside. A delicate N hung from a gold chain. "Oh."

"I've been lying to you."

I tore my gaze from the necklace. "About what?"

"I saw you that night. We had a date. Do you remember?"

"No."

"You came here. We argued about something stupid. It went bad, Neith. I pushed you. Hard. You bumped into the wall and the shelf tilted. And a trophy hit you on the head."

My hands shook, so I set the box down between us and wrapped my arms around myself, hoping my unease would go unnoticed. "And then?"

"I got you to wake up, but you were off. Confused. Your head was bleeding bad. I left to get my mom, but then you were gone."

It was hard to keep the skepticism out of my voice. "Gone?"

"You ran off, Neith. I thought you were going to the cops or the hospital or your grandmother. But you never turned up anywhere, not until I saw you that day at the park. And you... you didn't remember what happened."

My mouth was bitter - the taste like that of a pill that had begun to dissolve before it was swallowed. "So you never told me? You just lied."

And here he was, lying again about how I just happened to disappear after I was injured. But why bother to come clean at all? Did he have some inkling that I knew? That I remembered? Maybe he was hoping I'd let something slip, something about how I could be sitting beside him after he'd stuck me in the ground.

Jake swallowed. "It was like a second chance."

"What did we fight about?"

"One of the boys on the team made comment."

"Ian?"

Jake was relatively well-liked, but he did have those he didn't get along with on occasion. Ian was one of the few.

"He said you were getting cozy with Beck. And I didn't believe it, but then Beck back him up."

"And you bought it? That I got cozy? What does that even mean? Like, sexual? I've never even kissed you, and you thought I would get cozy with Beck?"

"I didn't believe them, okay? But you were getting text from him and you were being weird about it-"

"Because he was being a little shit and I didn't want you to worry!"

"I didn't mean to upse-"

"No. You just accused you me of cheating because you were insecure. And then you cracked my head open."

"You can hate me. You can go to the police about me hurting you. I won't deny it. But Neith, I never meant to hurt you. I just meant to shake you off. The last thing I wanted was for you to... Neith, you have to believe me."

I did. Sort of. I didn't believe that he didn't kill me, but I did believe it was an accident. Still, it didn't put a damper on my anger. If anything, it made me angrier. The bloodthirst, the hunger that afflicted me was only growing stronger in his presence.

I left Jake on the porch with the necklace in my hands and his jacket still around my shoulders, going off to God-knew-where without so much as a farewell, trying to distance myself from the boy who killed me before I could kill him.