The scent of popcorn and spun sugar was suffocating. Laughter rang through the night air, rides whirred and clattered, and neon lights flickered over the crowded fairground. But all I could hear was my own heartbeat.
Fast. Uneven. Drowning me.
I didn’t want to be here.
But Dottie had insisted.
She had clutched my arm with that same bright-eyed innocence I used to love and said, “Come on, Ava! It’ll be fun. We never do things together anymore.”
Like she hadn’t just ripped me apart.
Like she wasn’t the reason my chest felt like it had been hollowed out and filled with broken glass.
Like she wasn’t holding hands with the one person I couldn’t breathe without.
And now I was standing here, trapped in some cruel, twisted joke, forced to watch them together while the rest of the world car
