Chapter 1: The Jacket
"Don't touch that."
The clerk's voice came too late. My fingers were already on the fabric, a worn denim jacket with a ripped shoulder seam hanging between two hideous sweaters on the rack at Saint Agnes Thrift Store.
Cold hit me first. Not temperature. Something else.
Then the voice.
"I didn't kill myself."
Clear. Female. Certain.
I yanked my hand back like the jacket burned me but the voice stayed. It always stayed.
"Miss? You okay?"
The clerk was staring. I'd made a noise. A gasp maybe. Or worse.
"Yeah. Fine."
I wasn't fine. The voice was still there, looping in my head like a song I couldn't stop humming. I didn't kill myself. I didn't kill myself. I didn't kill myself.
"You need help finding anything specific today?"
"No."
I should walk away. Leave the jacket. Go home. Forget this.
I picked it up instead.
The clerk's smile tightened at the edges. She'd seen me here before, probably noticed the gloves I always wore, the way I touched things carefully like I was searching for landmines. Most people in Redwood Heights knew about me by now. The girl who drowned. The girl who came back weird.
"That's eight dollars," she said when I brought the jacket to the counter.
"Who donated it?"
Her fingers paused on the register keys. "We don't usually give out that information."
"Please."
She looked at me for a long moment. I kept my face blank, the way I'd learned to. Don't show too much. Don't let them see you're already breaking.
"Estate sale," she said finally. "Family cleaning out after a death."
"Whose death?"
"I'm not supposed to"
"Please."
The word came out desperate. She heard it.
"Rebecca Holt. It was in the papers six months ago. That poor girl who jumped off the bridge." She shook her head. "Such a tragedy. She was only sixteen."
I didn't kill myself.
The voice said it again, louder this time, like Rebecca wanted to make sure I heard. Like she knew I was the only one who could.
My mouth had gone dry. I handed over a ten dollar bill and my fingers were shaking enough that I dropped the change twice before getting it into my pocket.
"Keep the receipt," the clerk said, concern creeping into her tone. "Are you sure you're alright? You look really pale."
"Just tired."
Another lie. I'd stopped being tired two years ago when I drowned in Mercer Lake and woke up in a hospital bed with the ability to hear dead people's last words. Now I was just haunted.
I walked out of Saint Agnes with the jacket folded under my arm and Rebecca Holt's voice screaming in my skull.
My apartment smelled like the laundromat downstairs. Cheap detergent and lint. I dropped my keys on the counter and they clattered too loud in the silence.
The jacket went on my bed. I stood there looking at it for a full minute before pulling out my phone.
Google search: Rebecca Holt Redwood Heights.
The articles loaded slowly. My internet was shit. I'd stopped paying for the good plan three months ago when I quit my job at the bookstore because I couldn't handle customers asking me questions while voices screamed in my head.
The first article had a photo. Red hair. Freckles. Smiling in a softball uniform. The headline read: LOCAL TEEN DIES IN APPARENT SUICIDE.
I read the whole thing. Then the next article. Then the obituary.
Rebecca Holt, 16, beloved daughter of Michael and Diane Holt, died tragically on March 14th when she jumped from the Pinewood Bridge. She is survived by her parents and younger brother Marcus. Services were held privately. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Jumped. They all said jumped.
I didn't kill myself.
"I know," I said out loud to the empty room. "I heard you."
My walls were covered in notebook paper. Every voice I'd ever heard, written down and taped up so I could see them all at once. Mrs. Chen from the nursing home: Tell my daughter I love her.David Reeves from the car accident: I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. Little Amy Kwon who drowned like I did: Mommy where are you?
Thirty-seven voices. I knew them all.
Rebecca would be thirty-eight.
I pulled a fresh notebook from the stack by my bed and wrote her words across the top of a new page. Then I wrote everything I knew. Name. Age. Date of death. Cause of death according to the internet: suicide by bridge jump.
My phone buzzed. Text from Luca.
You home?
Yeah
Can I come over? Brought food
Not hungry
When was the last time you ate?
I couldn't remember. Yesterday maybe. Or the day before.
Fine. Come over.
Three dots appeared then disappeared then appeared again. He was typing and deleting, which meant he wanted to say something I wouldn't like.
Did you find another one?
I stared at the question. Luca knew me too well. He'd been my best friend since middle school, stayed even after the drowning when everyone else decided I was too weird, too damaged, too much work.
Maybe
Sage.
I'll explain when you get here
Be there in 10
I put the phone down and looked at Rebecca's jacket again. The voice was quieter now but still there, a steady loop underneath my thoughts. It would stay there forever unless I did something about it. That's how it worked. The voices never left until I wrote them down, spoke them out loud, acknowledged what they were telling me.
But this one was different.
This one was saying someone got away with murder.
Luca showed up with Chinese takeout and a look on his face that said he already knew this was going to be bad.
"What did you find?"
"A jacket."
"Whose?"
"Rebecca Holt. You remember her?"
He set the food on my counter and turned to look at me. Luca was solid in a way that made me feel less like I was floating. Dark curly hair always a little too long, warm brown eyes that saw too much, hands that were steady when mine weren't.
"The girl who killed herself," he said. "Yeah. That was all over the news."
"She didn't kill herself."
"Sage"
"I'm not making it up. I heard her. She said it."
He rubbed a hand over his face. "And you believe her."
"Why would she lie?"
"She's dead. You're hearing her last words. Maybe she was confused or scared or"
"She said it three times. Clear as anything. I didn't kill myself."
Luca pulled out two forks from my drawer and started opening containers. Fried rice. Orange chicken. Egg rolls. My stomach turned at the smell but I forced myself to take the plate he handed me.
"You need to eat."
"I need to figure this out."
"You need to eat first. Then we can talk about whatever theory you're building."
I shoved a bite of rice in my mouth just to make him stop looking at me like that. Like I was breaking and he couldn't figure out how to fix me.
"When's the last time you slept?" he asked.
"Last night."
"Really slept. More than two hours."
I didn't answer.
"Sage."
"I can't sleep when they're talking."
"How many are there now?"
I looked at my wall. "Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight with Rebecca."
"That's too many."
"I didn't ask for them."
"I know. But you can't keep doing this. You can't keep collecting voices like they're your job."
"What else am I supposed to do? Ignore them?"
"Yes."
The word came out harder than I expected. We both went quiet. Luca set his fork down.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just hate watching you do this to yourself. You're disappearing and I don't know how to help."
"You can help by believing me."
"I do believe you hear things. I just don't know if they're real."
That hurt more than it should have. I put my plate on the counter, appetite gone.
"Get out."
"Sage"
"I said get out."
"Come on, don't be like that."
"You think I'm crazy. You think I'm making this up or hallucinating or whatever. So just leave."
Luca stood there for a long moment looking at me like he wanted to argue. Then he grabbed his jacket and walked to the door.
He paused with his hand on the knob.
"I don't think you're crazy," he said quietly. "I think you're in pain and you don't know how to stop. And I think chasing dead people's voices is easier than dealing with the fact that you died and came back and nothing makes sense anymore."
He left before I could respond.
I stood in my apartment surrounded by voices and notebooks and the jacket of a dead girl who said she didn't jump.
My phone buzzed. Text from a number I didn't recognize.
Stop asking questions about Rebecca Holt.
My hands went cold.
Who is this?
Three dots. Then nothing. Then:
Someone who knows what you're doing. And it needs to stop.
I read the message twice. Three times.
Then I looked at Rebecca's jacket and made a decision.
"I'm going to prove it," I said out loud. "I'm going to prove you didn't jump."
The voice in my head finally went quiet.
Like she'd been waiting for me to say that all along.
I grabbed my laptop and searched for everything I could find on Rebecca Holt. School records came up first. Honor student. Softball team. Debate club. A few photos from school events showing her with friends, smiling.
Then I found her social media. Instagram was still active, frozen in time at March 14th. Her last post was from two days before she died. A sunset photo with the caption: Sometimes the best view is the one you don't expect.
The comments were full of people saying they missed her. That she was loved. That they wished they'd known she was struggling.
But under all that were older comments. From when she was alive.
Can't wait to see you Friday!
Best practice ever today. You killed it.
Love you girl.
Normal stuff. Happy stuff.
Nothing that screamed suicide.
I clicked through her followers. Two thousand people. I recognized some names from school. Then I saw it.
Dylan Rivers.
The name meant nothing to me but when I clicked his profile my screen filled with photos of the Redwood Community Pool. He was a swim coach. Thirty-something. Blonde hair. Smile that looked like it belonged in a toothpaste commercial.
I scrolled through his photos. Lots of team pictures. Awards. Kids in swimming caps giving thumbs up.
Then I found one from eight months ago. A group shot of the swim team.
Rebecca was in it. Back row. Smiling.
She didn't swim. I knew that from the articles. She played softball.
So why was she in a photo with the swim team?
I took a screenshot and opened a new tab to search Dylan Rivers.
Clean record. Coached for eight years. Volunteer work with youth athletics. Community service awards.
Too clean.
I was about to close my laptop when another text came through.
Same unknown number.
I'm not telling you again. Stop digging.
My finger hovered over the screen. I should block the number. Call the cops maybe.
Instead I typed back:
Make me.
Send.
The response came thirty seconds later.
You have no idea what you're getting into.
I stared at the words and felt something shift in my chest. Not fear exactly. Something sharper.
Anger.
Someone killed Rebecca Holt and made it look like suicide. Someone was threatening me to keep quiet. Someone thought I would just walk away.
They were wrong.
I picked up Rebecca's jacket and put it on. It smelled like thrift store dust and old perfume and underneath that, something floral. Her shampoo maybe. Or body spray.
The voice came back instantly.
I didn't kill myself.
"I know," I whispered. "And I'm going to make sure everyone else knows too."
My phone buzzed one more time.
Same number.
But this time it wasn't a message.
It was a photo.
Of me. Standing in my apartment. Wearing Rebecca's jacket.
Taken from outside my window.
Right now.
I spun around and looked at the window but the blinds were closed. I hadn't opened them today. Hadn't opened them in weeks.
Which meant someone had been watching me before. Watching long enough to know my routine. To know I kept the blinds closed.
To know where I lived and what I looked like and that I was investigating a dead girl who said she didn't kill herself.
My hands started shaking so hard I almost dropped my phone.
Another text.
Last warning, Sage.
They knew my name.
They knew everything.
And they were watching me right now.