For the next two days, everything is quiet.

Alyssa barely talks, only to make fun of Light at breakfast, or to pass on rude comments about some of the teachers at school. She misses Mr. Dark – or whoever he is. I haven't had the chance to find a computer to search for a name. Alyssa said he'd want it to be something meaningful, something profound. A little difficult given that I only met him once, during which he scared me half to death.

Dr. Light – Bo – doesn't talk to me much either, except in our scheduled lying – sorry Therapy – sessions. The only people I can talk to are my mother and Emma and Noah.

Noah's sister's classmates are signing a petition to help raise awareness at her school. Noah asked Emma and I to sign it yesterday. It makes me want to scream; the way people deny others of being who they are. I should know. But then I don't who I am. I don't think I ever have, even before the coma when I lost most of my memories.

'Do you always have to be so dramatic? Honestly, you're just too much for a Thursday morning,' groans Alyssa.

We're standing in the parking lot, waving at Mum as she drives away. She helped me with my History last night, reading flashcards out to test my knowledge on the French Revolution. It was a mess, that's what we decided.

The Academy is swarming with students, all carrying boulders on their backs, hauling folders from room to room like fraying coats of arms. The glassy structure used to be so imposing, almost as if it a Sultan had been reincarnated in the beams that shoulder the doorway. Now I'm sure not what it is. Not to me.

P.E. has been especially difficult since Miss Kirby, or Miranda Kellan. Since we were forced to walk into the gym and listen to a supply teacher choking out a lie that Miss Kirby had been called away on urgent business.

A lump rises in our throat, but Alyssa shoves it back. She keeps telling me Miranda was a bad person, she threatened us, she joined an organisation that had us tortured for years. All the same, her words can't stop the guilt. She had a daughter and no amount of truth will change the fact that I still feel like a monster for letting her die.

I tried to tell Alyssa that it wasn't her fault, because it was mine. I should have been there. Should have done something.

As I walk into the hallway, teeming with lockers, I almost choke a laugh. Done something. I can't do anything. Alyssa is the power. I'm just the psychological lodger who sits around, brooding. Always in a dressing gown because I know it's not worth going outside. Into a world where I'm a label in a Doctor's surgery.

I'm the body double in a magic show, the nameless, faceless twin.

It's been this way for so long I'm not sure if I exist anymore.

If I have anymore right to be here than Alyssa does.

Shaking my head, as if I force the thoughts from my ears, I spot Emma in the hall. She's laughing, trying to rally younger students to participate in German Club. They seem as enthralled by her smile and her energy as I am. When she catches my eye, she jumps up, waving frantically. Part of me hesitates. I don't deserve to be her friend. I don't deserve any of this.

As my feet plant themselves in the floor, Emma darts over to me instead. Decides, for some unknown reason, that I'm worthy.

"Hey, what's up?" she asks. I'm about to reply, to tell her the truth. To tell her everything. In the end, my conscience retreats and I'm left smiling with rubber lips.

"Nothing. Just tired. The French Revolution really kept me up last night," I say.

"Ah yes. Very noisy, that guillotine". We smile and head to Math class, swept away by the river of students as they chat and gossip. This time, my smile finally feels real. This is my life now. I'm going to school, I'm doing the subjects I love with people I admire. I have a life. I am alive at last.

The corridor, paler, yet somehow more welcoming that the walls of the facility I woke up in, is starting to seem familiar. Like I belong here. Really, truly belong here.

'Oh please,' Alyssa mutters as we turn a corner. 'You're the only student who actually thinks school is where they belong'. But my smile remains. Because there's this lilt – I can't believe I haven't noticed it before – in her voice. Amusement. Reluctant affection.

Emma starts gushing about a party, then the ski trip she's going on this Christmas. She asks if I want to come. I don't reply.

"It'll be fun. France is especially beautiful in the winter," she says. I've never been to France. I've never been anywhere. Suddenly, Alyssa perks up. I can sense her longing as clearly as I can see our classroom door.

"I'll talk to my Mum about it," I answer in the end. Not knowing if I will. Maybe she'll let me.

"Thank you, though". Eager to change the subject, I say,

"Have you seen Noah this morning? He wasn't in homeroom with us". Emma chuckles.

"He's running late again. Hopefully, we'll see him by break". I'm quite after that, a thousand worries churning in my head. The Foundation. Could they have taken Noah? Would he be caught in the crossfire? As we file into the classroom, and my back meets with the black plastic chair, I hold my breath.

Halfway through Math, when I'd brain-deep in an equation, Emma nudges my shoulder.

"He's here. His Mothers' car broke down," she says. I release the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. He's safe. I let my shoulders slump. I am seeing shadows moving everywhere, seeing splinters in the walls. People in white peering around corners. The paranoia.

Everything is fine. Bo – Dr. Light – has been lying to the Foundation for us. They don't suspect a thing.

But the car crash... Had they assumed I – or rather Alyssa – was the passenger? Had they found the operatives Mr. Dark killed? Killed. The word makes bile rise in my stomach. He killed for Alyssa yes, but he did kill. He is a murderer.

'And what are we? An after school special?' Alyssa defends him constantly now, as if she is his own personal lawyer.

'We have to be above the killing, no matter what they did to us,' I tell her. The black biro in my hand starts to shake.

'Yes, because they rose above the whole 'killing thing''. Acid drips from her voice. Sulphuric. Hellfire.

'Look, we find a way to take them down, but no more killing. Please'. Begging. Sometimes, I feel like I'll always be begging her.

Rubbing my hands, I set the pen down. The slight click at it hits the desk is a marching band, filled to the brim with clashing symbols. I hold my breath. Since it comes to me so naturally, I wonder if that's all I've been doing. Trying to hold my breath. To avoid another panic attack, I make myself think of Mum, think of her smile and the warmth in her eyes as she told me she was proud. Think of Emma, who is staring at me with a worried expression. Even her frown is beautiful.

"You okay?" she asks. I frown as the words desert me. People might not agree, but I think it's a very difficult question. Almost impossible to answer.

"I mean, you're not. But it helps to ask first. What's on your mind?" she asks again. My lips part, but no sound comes out. Nothing. I'm broken. I'm shattered and I cannot piece myself together. Or, at least, I thought I couldn't. Until I met you and Noah and rediscovered my demons. Because they are not all bad. I raised my head and loosen the skin around my mouth.

A smile. Small. Almost invisible. But visible enough.

"Actually, I think I am okay." Emma beams: her eyes are solar flares.

"Somehow, I knew you would be." Perhaps she'd always known. That I would pull through. Endure normalcy until I began to adjust. To live rather than check for monsters behind every corner. To go school with a smile. To eat lunch in a canteen. To queue. To hand in assignments. To read textbooks. It might not seem like anything worth doing, especially not to Alyssa, but it is a life. A life and a sense of reality which I will cling even with my shaking fingers. A life which no one will be able to pry me away from.

We meet up with Noah at break before being rushed off our feet to our following classes. I don't see Emma again until lunch where she waves me over. Presses a finger to her lips. Points. I look over and Noah is leaning against a tree, dead asleep.

"It's like having a small child," Emma whispers. I hide a laugh. Sit beside her against the greying wall. Once, the yard reminded me of a shooting range with its colourless walls. Cleaved grass combed within an inch of its life. It is no longer a shooting range, but rather an opera house for all, with beckoning glass and a neatly trimmed lawn. It is almost impossible the difference a few months has made.

Emma slides open her lunch box, offering me a slab of chocolate.

Shaking my head, I produce my own lunch. Mum had packed it this morning, a grin on her face. Telling me she was proud.

A gemstone lodges itself in my chest. So am I, I realise. I am proud. Proud of us.

'Jesus, you big sap,' comes Alyssa's drawl. 'Eat your damn lunch'.

Emma watches us for a moment, smiling.

"I'm glad I met you. You seemed so hurt and broken. But you never were. You healed yourself. I wish I could do the same," she adds, almost automatically. Her eyes widen. She never meant the words to slip from her mouth. But they have and I am staring at her with a frown.

"Neither of us are broken," I tell her. I'm not sure if I'm saying that for Alyssa's benefit, Emma's, or my own. We eat the majority of our lunch in silence, until Noah starts to snore.

"He sounds like a bloodhound," I giggle. Emma bites her lip to stop the laughter. All the same, Noah is a heavy sleeper.

"He's been pretty ragged these past few days. Worrying about his Mums and his Sister. You. Me. I don't think he has any room left to worry about himself," says Emma softly. I stare at Noah's sleeping form, at the steady rise of his chest. The jagged fall. His breath arrives in short bursts, like a shotgun.

"Hey". Emma rights herself on the bench, packing away her lunch. Her hair is glossy, while her lips spark of ambition.

"When exams are done, I was going to volunteer at Camp America," she tells me. I glance up.

"Not exactly what I wanted, but there were no slots left for Charity Work in Nigeria. I was wondering if you'd want to come. Or week could meet up the year after. Take a holiday. Noah could come. Or not."

I rock forward. In my mind, I can imagine Alyssa blinking in disbelief.

"You'd want me to come with you?" I ask. Part of me fears I'm hallucinating the offer. Emma smiles.

"It's not obligatory. I was just wondering if you wanted to, or if you had plans already". I'd barely thought about Christmas, let alone next summer.

"I'll ask my Mum," I say. But of course, she'll say yes. My face falls. She might insist on coming with us. Tailing me in the car with a pair of tartan binoculars. Unwilling to let me go. Or was I unwilling to let slip away a second time?

"You're lucky," Emma remarks. "To have a mother who understands you". I'd never realised that before. I glanced at her.

"But your Dad..." I trail off. I don't know who my father is, and, judging by the fragments of my past, I don't think he cares about me. I can't tell her anything about her Dad.

"He is wonderful and he dotes on me like there's no tomorrow. But I can barely talk to him about how I feel, or tell me about my time with my biological parents," she says, and my thoughts short-circuit. It makes sense, in a small way.

"It was for the best. My real Mother and Father... Even when there were at their best, my Dad was angry, but he was passive too. My Mother walked all over him. And me," she adds. As the words slip past, I can see her pressing a hand to her ribcage. Phantom pain. A ghost of the past.

I let out an inaudible gasp.

"I'm not as strong as I look, Alice. I get hurt. I feel pain. I feel enough pain to hate the memory of my parents, but not enough to hate them. Isn't that pathetic? That I actually wouldn't mind seeing them again".

"No". I place my hand on her shoulder. "It isn't pathetic at all".

I think of Mr. Dark, of the people he's killed. He's killed for Alyssa, yes, but that doesn't make it right. I think of Dr. Steele and his caressing tone. His hands, all over me. My stomach snarls. Nausea creeps up my throat. I swallow it down.

Emma shakes her head and breathes in the scent of winter. Sharp air. Sharp enough to slice our lips.

"I'm sorry. A little bit deep for a lunch break," she laughs to herself. But I'm not laughing. Instead, I grasp her hand.

"If ever want to us, we're here".

"Us?" She frowns. My heart stutters.

"Me. Or my Mother. I think even my grumpy psychiatrist is available".

'Talk about a Freudian slip,' Alyssa giggles inside my head.

'Shut up,' I think back.

"Thanks Alice," Emma sniffs and a second later, she is herself again. No. She is always Emma. It is as if the war paint she wore to school has melted away and she is all the more beautiful and all the fiercer for showing her scars.

A snore crashes through us, followed by a groan.

"I wasn't asleep, was I?" Noah. He's sitting up. Cracking his neck in a way which makes me wince.

"Of course not. Just resting your eyes for a long, long time," Emma laughs. I join in. Noah swats at us and digs out his lunch.

"What did I miss?" he asks.

"Just your snoring".

"I don't snore," he tells Emma.

"Hey, I believe you," she grins. We sit together and lounge in the winter-sun until the bell goes.

Math. With Emma. Sat next to her, I'm floating. Somewhere else, and yet sitting in a classroom. A capsule to my future. And I have one, I realise. I have a future and a life and a hope and a dream. I harbour two dreams. One for me. And one for her. I will always have a place in my mind for her, for Alyssa. Just as she will always have a place for me. A smile on my face, I bend over a textbook. Giggle as Emma remarks that if I lean any closer, the teacher might think I'm making out with an equation.

"Although, algebra is pretty hot," she says. I laugh and bump her shoulder.

We're almost halfway through the lesson when everything stops.

One second, I'm sitting. Sitting and working and smiling. Smiling at my friend, my future, my mind. The next, Alyssa is invading my thoughts.

Alyssa, who is forcing me to look up from the textbook and watch as Dr. Light bursts through the door.

His clothes are torn and sweat-ridden. As if he's crashed his car into a tree and run the rest of the way to the school. His blonde-white hair looks as if he's dunked his head in a vat of acid. His face is flushed, but his eyes tell me everything.

They tell me that we need to go.

They tell me that my future is gone, and my friends are in danger and my mind is broken. That we are broken. Or, maybe I am. Maybe I was always broken and I'm the one who will never be fixed.

The teacher is almost as shocked as I am.

"Excuse me, sir. Why are you here?" Light ignores him.

"Alice. We need to go. Now". He's panting and his eyes are the eyes of a rabbit in a snare. But as I move to stand, my body won't obey. My feet weld themselves to the chair, my eyes to the whiteboard.

I don't want to go.

Please, I don't want to go. I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready.

"Alice?" Emma grabs my hand. I shake her away and stand.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. Glancing at the teacher, the room of goldfish eyes, I make a note to memorise all their faces. To memories the date on the board and the equation of the month the wall. My world is breaking, crumbling, shattering. I want to shatter with it. But I can't. I made a promise.

'Move,' screams Alyssa inside my head.

"Let's go," Light hisses and I'm surging for the door. Leaving my bag behind.

I don't look back at Emma as I leave.