prologue.

"Are you gonna stop me?” she asked, the words floating out of her thin lips, floating, floating so airily, as if they held no consequence, as if she was just making casual conversation. As if they wouldn’t haunt me every day for the rest of my life. “Casey…” I stammered, my voice catching in my throat. God, I can’t even begin to count how many times she’d asked me that in the ten years we’d been friends. But it wasn’t a question, really, it was a challenge, a dare- she just wanted to get in people’s heads, to see how they’d respond, to watch them squirm. It was her little way of judging their character. But my guess is as good as anyone’s at this point.

It had been the first thing she’d ever said to me, back when we were sixteen, and I’d spent the next ten years doing everything I could to “stop” her, but I never actually knew if that was what she wanted. Sometimes I wondered if she’d gone through life waiting for someone to care enough to stop her, or if she really just wanted someone to care enough to not stop her.

I guess I was both.