Chapter 27

27

"I hate you!" Khloe screamed.

I blinked, trying to focus. I had no idea where I was or how long I'd been there. My head was swimming and not just from Khloe's ranting. I'd been in and out of consciousness. But at no point had I regained the use of my extremities and it was getting harder and harder to swallow.

"You don't even look like me," she went on with her crazy rant.

"All my life I heard Sophie-this, Sophie-that. One day you'll meet her, Khloe, and we'll be a family."

A family?

Was I hallucinating?

"You should've eaten the muffins!"

Move.

I begged my brain.

Move.

Move.

Move.

Khloe was losing it. Every time she paced in front of me I saw the knife she was waving around.

The crazy bitch was going to kill me.

I should've called my mother. Now she'd never know I'd pieced together some things and I'd started to understand why she was the way she was. And I still loved her, even though she was bossy and complicated.

"Do you know how long it takes to find the right kind of mushrooms?" she asked.

I hoped she didn't expect me to answer, because she'd rendered me mute and unable to move.

Good God, this was torture. I wanted to move, to yell, to breathe without it feeling like something heavy was sitting on my chest.

"I picked those fucking mushrooms and dried them and ground them perfectly just like the instructions said, and all that happened was you got a stomachache. Hayden said you were a coffee fiend. You should've drank the whole pot, you stupid bitch."

Poor Hayden was never going to forgive himself for bringing this psycho home.

"I didn't want to do it this way."

I didn't want her to do this at all.

She stopped in front of me and bent down to look me in the eyes.

"You don't look like me," she told me something I was well aware of, in an ominous tone that scared me more than anything else she'd done. "Dad was wrong."

Her hand plunged forward and searing pain tore through my abdomen.

My mouth opened to scream but nothing came out.