Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3)

by Penelope Douglas

What did Winter feel when she thought about me? Was the anger so thick that was all there was? He asked her to dance for him. He asked her to dance like I’d asked Winter to dance for me. He watched my mother as I watched Winter. Was that it then? Did I do to Winter in high school what my father did to my mother? Did I groom her? I looked up, meeting my own black eyes in the mirror. The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We thought we were the first. No one has been through what I’ve been through. No one else is feeling this. No one knows what it’s like to be me. This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve endured, right? They’re lies we tell ourselves, because we think we’re special. Because it would lessen the entitlement to suffer to know what we’re going through is not uncommon. It was a secret I never forgot and was able to use to keep things in perspective, so I could get through the shit in my head, but now... Now I wished I could forget it. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to know that I was like him or he was like me or that life followed patterns and history repeated itself. I wasn’t him, and Winter wasn’t my mother, and no one has been where we were. This is special. It’s different. It’s unique and all mine. She and I…we’re alone in the universe. No one was us.