2. Maeve

Iwoke with a start, my eyes flying open. The wheel. The fire. My parents!

My whole body tensed, ready to leap out of the way of the wall of fire barreling toward me. But as my eyes took in what was around me, and my body registered smell and light and something soft beneath me –not the hard-packed dirt of the fairground – I realized I was no longer at the fair.

There were no flames, no heat torching my skin, no soft emerald eyes of Mr. British as he tried to shield me with his body and ended up burning alive before my eyes. I was in my bed back at the Crawford house, my whole body drenched in sweat.

It was a dream, thank God. My parents hadn’t really burned alive on a Ferris wheel. I should have known. Only in my dreams would a guy like Mr. British be interested in me.

I rubbed my arms, still feeling the heat of the fire in my skin. I sucked in a deep breath, and the back of my throat recoiled in agony, sending me into a violent coughing fit. It was as though I could still feel the smoke in my lungs.

It feels so real.

For as long as I could remember, I’d had incredibly vivid dreams. Lucid dreams were the strangest – I was frequently aware that I was dreaming, and I could make my own decisions and choose what happened next (I usually chose to drop everything and float through space or land on Mars. Those were my favorite dreams).

But this… this was the worst nightmare I’d ever had.

That’s all it is – a nightmare.

Sunlight streamed through my open windows, the pale blue curtains flapping in the breeze. Between the windows, Kelly sprawled out on my blue daybed, a pile of fashion magazines and an open bottle of bourbon spread out around her. Her golden hair hung limply over her eyes.

“Welcome to the land of the living,” she said, her voice dull and throaty. “You look like shit.”

“Nice to see you, too.” The words stung my raw throat. Maybe I’d been yelling in my sleep. I did that sometimes, too. I rubbed my head, which was pounding. “I just had the most horrible nightmare. Where’d you get that bottle from? Mom’ll kill you if she smells alcohol in here.” Our parents never let us have even a drop of alcohol in the house, and you could forget about horror films or Harry Potter books or premarital sex. We weren’t even allowed to have Facebook accounts (we did all of these things anyway, but what they didn’t know wouldn’t get us grounded).

Kelly shook her head. Tears pooled in her eyes. Unease stabbed at my gut. Kelly was the strongest person I knew. She never cried. If she was breaking down now… something must’ve happened.

“You okay, sis? Did we run out of bacon or something?” Kelly always begged for bacon for breakfast.

Kelly shook her head. “Maeve… it’s about Mom and Dad. They…” she choked on her next word as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

The uneasy feeling intensified.

“What happened to Mom and Dad?” I demanded. “Are they okay?”

“Maeve…” Kelly’s voice trailed off. She blinked, but the tears kept on coming. “Mom and Dad are?—”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. I could read my adoptive sister like a star chart. I knew.

My dream wasn’t a dream after all.

The Crawfords were dead.