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The cheap plastic chair won’t turn with me so I half-spin and half-stumble out of it, staggering to my feet as the decrepit hotel room’s walls shrink in. The bright copper of adrenaline saturates the back of my throat. My mouth is open but I’m not screaming, I don’t have the air to scream. Gravity has come unhinged, and I’m wobbling one way and another to stay on my feet.
Deke grabs my shoulders. “Billie!”
Father’s last words keep rupturing forth from my heart. His final jump is burned into my brain, somehow looping over and over and every frame frozen front and center in my mind, simultaneously leaping and dropping and snapping with his head ricocheting back as his spine breaks, limp body spinning away piñata-style, one moment alive and a flash fraction of a second later three hundr
