Something contracts in my chest. The air shifts, grows heavy and dense as mud. Alexa twists her hair around her finger and whispers, "Didn't you even try to escape, Charlotte?

My Keeper's house. Right there. Brown shingles, dark red shutters, yellow-and-black police tape wrapped around the massive tree trunks. The attic window looks out over the yard and the world narrows until that attic window is the only thing I can see.

Alexa's face whitens. The coil of hair loosens itself from her finger. "You did it for me. You never fought back. Because you thought you were keeping me safe."
I pull up my gaze to meet hers. "Yeah."
"I--" It's a strangled, high-pitched sound, laced with shock and grief. Then she bites her lips shut. Her chin trembles, just once, before she turns away.

My sister has never not told me something before. We used to share every secret, every thought. While I was in the attic, it felt like we were forever far away. Now I'm with her again. We're so close that we're touching, but there's still a distance between us.

The only thing that gave me comfort in the attic was thinking about my family. Now I'm home, but it's not the home I imagined. Not the family I imagined. I'd convinced myself that they'd continued on with their happy, carefree lives without me, that they were doing it double, because I couldn't do it at all.
I was wrong.

Each second of my four years, two months, and seven days in the attic dragged on forever, and nothing ever changed. But outside the attic, everything changed, and so violently fast. Destruction and devastation for all of us, whether we were in the attic or out.