HAZEL
My alarm didn't wake me.
That alone should have told me something was wrong. I am a deep sleeper, the kind who needs three alarms set at five-minute intervals and still hits snooze twice.
Waking up on my own, naturally, without any electronic intervention, simply does not happen.
I stretched, my eyes still closed, registering the unfamiliar softness of the mattress beneath me. Then I opened my eyes.
A thirty-two-inch television hung on the wall across the room. I sat up slowly.
I did not own a thirty-two-inch television. I did not own a bed this high off the ground, or a room this size, the morning light coming through curtains that probably cost more than my monthly rent.
This was not Betty's house.
I sat with that information for a moment.
Okay, think.
I remember the s
