Imagine Me (Shatter Me, #6)

by Tahereh Mafi

White birds, white with streaks of gold,

I shiver, suddenly, at the unexpected sensation of a warm hand on my back, fingers trailing lightly along my spine.

“Love,” he says, “are you all right?”

AARONS HOMEEEEEEEE

Disappointment lodges in my throat, a cold stone I’m unable to swallow. And then again I feel it

Aaron pulls me closer, holds me tighter against his chest. “Breathe,” he whispers. “I’m right here, love. I’ll be right here.”

And my dead mother refuses to be silenced.

“Little bird,” she whispers, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. “It’s time for you to fly away now.”

Mum doesn’t yell. She’s never yelled.

she’s never raised a hand to me, never shouted or called me names. Not like Aaron’s dad. But Mum doesn’t need to yell.

Because something is changing.

Every new memory is delivered with an emotional violence that drives into me, reorders my mind.

I was full of cake. Warner smelled like sugar, like decadence. I felt drunk on joy.

I don’t want to wait, he said, taking my hand. Squeezing it. Let’s not wait. I blinked up at him. For what?

For what? For what? How did I forget what had happened just hours earlier? How did I forget the mom...

Even now, even with the noise in my head, I feel it. Here. This. My bones against his bones. This is my home.

can’t see much of him in this perfect darkness, but I feel the delicate rise of goose bumps along his arms when he says, “What are you thinking about?”

“It’s hard to describe. It’s a pleasure so close to pain I sometimes can’t tell the two apart.” “That sounds awful.” “No,” he says. “It’s exquisite.” “I love you.”

Images of my sister fill my mind: bones and melted skin, webbed fingers, sodden mouth, no eyes.

She’s been looking for me, all this time.

In these last couple of days Emmaline has been searching the conscious world for my mind, trying to find safe harbor, a place to rest.

A place to die. Emmaline, I say. Pl...

I’m screaming, I realize. Someone is touching me and I’m screaming.

Stop, I scream. Please, Emmaline— Please don’t do this— Lonely, she says. l o n e l y

And with a sudden, ferocious agony— I...

Nazeera and I had been out of bed for a while, racing through the dark in an attempt at murdering one another.

In the end it all turned out to be a complicated misunderstanding,

If my night had gone differently, I might’ve had that chance.

If my night had gone differently, I might’ve enjoyed, for the first time in my life, a romantic sunrise and an overdue reconciliation with a beautiful girl.

I had a plan for today: take it easy.

I don’t know how J and Warner made it this far without being spotted.

The two of them look like they were literally dragged through the dirt; I have no idea how they escaped notice.

I feel her step closer, and I breathe a sigh of relief as her hand slips into mine. She squeezes my fingers. I return the pressure.

I would’ve missed the tremble in my friend’s voice as she cried out, begging for mercy.

I’ve never been so hopeful to cease existing.

Something snaps. My head. My mind. My neck.

My eyes are wide, my breathing panicked. I’m on my knees, my forehead pressed into the dirt, my hands buried in wet earth.

I was digging my own grave.

what in the world...

Slithering, terrifying horror moves through my body as I understand: Emmaline was in my head. She wanted to see if she could get me to kill myself.

And even as I think it—even as I look down at the miserable attempt I made to bury myself alive—I feel a dull,...

Because I felt her pain, and it wasn’t cruel. I...

Like she was hoping that if I killed myself while she was in my head, somehow I’d ...

J is vibrating with power, and Warner is only barely hanging on to her.

it’s only because of Warner that Emmaline hasn’t succeeded. I have no idea how he’s doing it.

J’s skin has gone translucent, veins bright and freakish in her pale face. She’s nearly blue, ready to crack.

I grab on to her arm and in the half second Warner shifts to distribute her weight between us, the t...

She’s finally stopped screaming, but now she’s convulsing, her body seizing uncontrollably, and Warner looks like he’s hanging on to his sanity by a single, fraying thread.

I don’t know how any of us are going to survive this.

Me either man

And I don’t really understand everything that happens next.

I hear an inhuman cry, and Stephan is suddenly rushing toward us. Stephan.

He’s suddenly in front of us, suddenly between us. He picks J up and into his arms like she might be a rag doll,

how'd he pick her up