The bug would soon eat her brain completely, until her head was just the hollow center of a coconut. And then it would move on to Ashley, crawl into her ear while she was sleeping and patiently devour her brilliant mind, destroying the memories, good and bad. And Ashley needed these memories, no matter how painful they stabbed at her heart; they were what gave her life. Every abusive moment, each night she cried herself to sleep…these were the building blocks of Ashley’s soul. Without them, she would crumble and crack, reduced to a pile of bitter nothing.

There was no way Spencer was going to let that happen.

Ashley was going to hate her, Ash’s heart shriveling up in a matter of minutes, her fists clenched into balls, beating her bedroom wall with fury until her knuckles split and bled.

This was not an act of charity. Nor an angst-ridden plight that fueled the drama Spencer needed to survive. There were no options, no far-fetched schemes to hatch. Spencer had to destroy the bug, and until that happened, she had to know Ashley was safely out of her reach.

The room felt as if it had drastically dropped in temperature, as the tiny hairs on her arms and legs had rose to attention. Underneath the inch-sized crack at the bottom of her door, she could hear her mother laughing…cackling was more like it. The clinging of glass and metal was faint, but she could detect it, knowing exactly the time, as her father was no doubt playing bartender, amusing his wife with odd anecdotes and politically incorrect jokes he picked up in the yacht club men’s room. Her mother would giggle, note her husband’s response to the volume of her amusement, and if his eyes began to squint, she would recognize her theatrics were too subtle, and would understand that her husband’s words deserved more; perhaps with a hand slap to the thigh, or a, “Darling that’s fabulous,” or, “Honey stop now, you’re merciless!” Validation would then be achieved, both parties balancing their end of the seesaw, and as long as both followed set instructions, their marriage would remain immortal.

Spencer closed her eyes, the voices morphing into someone else, people she had never met and never would, but the presence was comforting, an unspoken rush of love would creep silently up the stairs, past the bathroom, and under Spencer’s door, where it would engulf her body and mind, warm skin pressing up against her, bold kisses to her head and cheek, repeating a thousand times over.