Amanda screams as she hits the pillars, acid burning away at the wood until the air curdles with the sick smell of the fumes. The wood comes back into existence almost hesitantly, just to be destroyed by the next pass of the paintbrush. She goes at it for half an hour while I clutch the pillow, trying to feel a more personal grief. We don't interrupt each other, but I can almost hear the blood rushing in her ears. The paintbrush falls to the floor, where she kicks it away, and her fist tightens. The pillar doesn't shatter beneath the inevitable punch, and the newly reformed wood is battered until Amanda's hands give out. She flexesher fingers, her knuckles an angry purple, and her arms shake. She yells again, her voice high but guttural, and she brings her hands to her eyes as she slumps against the pole.

"It's not fair," she says. "It's not."

I scooch over, pillow still tight between my arms. "Do you want to-"

"No. I want to strangle someone." Amanda mutters, her arms crossed. "Is that bad?"

"Not unless you actually do it." I say, placing an arm around her shoulder. "Don't cite me on that. I'm not a psychologist."

"Will?"

I lift my head. "Yeah?"

Amanda throws her arms around me. Her head is right above my shoulder, so I can hear every muffled sob, and I'm not sure if I'm dizzy from how close she is or from my circulation effectively being cut off. I reach one beanpole arm out and around her back, closing my eyes, and lean into her.

"She would have loved this. She would have-" Amanda lets out a harsh laugh, which disintegrates into more sobbing. "We always joked about it, you know? Which one of us would be the first to die in the zombie apocalypse, if we were magical girls, if we were anything besides ourselves. We would relay, between kisses, the tragic deaths we could have had in as much detail as two seventh graders could know... I... I died in her arms all the time."

I hold her a little tighter. One tear hits my shoulder blade, and I squeeze my eyes shut to find they're moist as well.

"We would never die in something mundane as-as-- a fucking car incident. Just a pedestrian being run over." Amanda pulls herself away from me. "It doesn't make sense."

"Sometimes terrible things just happen," I say. Car accident. No way I try to imagine it seems right. My head's still spinning.

"I know what you're thinking, but no. Nothing in our lives is like that anymore. Ever since this started..." Her fists clench. "It can't just be chance." Her voice is desperately hopeful.

"Amanda, please don't do anything reckless." I beg, holding onto one shaking hand, trying to grasp unbruised skin.

Amanda rolls back up onto her feet, her face hidden from view by her mask and her tangled hair. She stands in an almost offensive posture, drawing herself up to her fullest extent, and wipes a stream of water off the surface of her mask and her hot, red cheeks. "I wasn't going to. I'm going home." She looks towards the entrance of the lair, drawing her fingers up, and the portal appears. Shiloh, who is still silent, even aghast at the events unfolding before him.

My own saliva dries up in my throat. "Hey. I-"

The brush hits the wall again, this time paintless, accompanied by a sound that most resembles hissing, like a thin sheet of water boiling on a pan mixed with the desperate gargling of a human being drowning. Amanda wipes her face again, drops the brush, and leaves. The brush disappears as she withdraws into the real world.

I turn back to Shiloh. "How much do you know about this?"

"Nothing." Shiloh sounds flabbergasted, as if he can't believe the admission himself.

"We both know that's not true. We also both know that- that I can't stop you from saying whatever you want, doing whatever you want, because this is your mission, and I'm just your best pawn. I'm holding out, Shiloh, because I want to believe so badly that there's something genuine inside of you, that I'm not projecting onto that sunny veneer. I want to believe we're all a team, and that you care about us enough to tell us the truth."

Shiloh's ears drop, and his dark eyes swell with desperation. Defeated, he whispers, "I want to."

"And what would be stopping you?"

The room goes still. Silence here is different from silence in the 'real world'. There are no outside noises, no machines whirring like there would be in a house, just the faint, distant breath of a beast too large for the human mind to comprehend and the uneasy sensation that you have become detached from space- that despite everything around you being tangible, you aren't really there at all.

I step back into my father's office. During the week, it's the room that gets the least use, and I'm at least thankful to be able to leave and enter the Veins without having to make constant alibis. My mother's working downstairs, in the family room, and if I had to guess, Adam's upstairs. I breathe in the scent of cologne and laundered work clothes, of old books. It's distinctly my father, but being here brings me closer to him than his physical presence. It's the same with my mom- sometimes I step into their room at night when I'm not sure if I'm dreaming- because I want to relive moments from the life of a different child, who could go to his parents about nightmares.

I flick tears off of my face. If Megan didn't warrant this kind of reaction, there's no way I can waste it on myself.

The door to our room moans as it creaks open, and I feel smaller. My brother's presence dominates the area, stress emanating off him in waves. If there was ever a time I believed in twin ESP, it would be now... but in that case, twin ESP is the worst. "Adam?"

He's still watching the ceiling.

I press my fingers together, trying to remember what kind of question I really needed to ask. It can't just be chance... "What were you doing when she..."  I pause. It's too accusatory. I'm going off a hunch based on faint hope based on who knows what, deluding myself. "How much of that night do you remember?"

He mumbles something under his breath, which might be profanity but doesn't sound like any curse I've ever heard.

"What?" I ask meekly. "I couldn't... didn't get that." Oh shoot that sounds so sassy. He thinks I'm mocking him. I wasn't mocking him. What if he gets up? What if he gets angry? My heart beats like that of a cornered mouse in a house full of cats.

His eyes rise, dead in their sockets. "Pretty standard car incident. She was a pedestrian, someone mowed her over." Every word is said as if he's trying to bend it sideways and crumple it into an incomprehensible ball. "Wasn't there. Hell, I'm probably responsible for letting her walk home alone, for not objecting, and now I get to live with that for the rest of my life. Someone blow my brains out."

"Her parents don't hate you." I chide.
    "They should. I was three steps short of saving their daughter."

"But you just said you weren't there... what the hell really happened?"

"It's a metaphor." Adam drums his fingers on his arm. "Maybe I just don't want to talk about it."

"Adam," I say.

"You don't know what I'm going through, Will."

"I might. I might be able to help you- help us both-"
"No, you fucking can't." Adam sits upright in the bed, hands flexed, and I hold the back of my bedframe. Is that a threat? A warning? How do I get to him? I try to form words but my mouth is moving faster than my vocal chords, which are tangled together, and I end up with my eyes half-closed like I'm bracing for impact. Am I?

The air is still between us. With the same stilted voice, he asks, "Can I be the victim for once in my life? Cool. I'm the victim. Traumatized teenager right here. My brother is assaulting me with questions." Adam's eyes fix mine. "Fuck off."

(A/N: A car crash? Someone's bad at alibis. Anthem, you could have stood to be a *little* more creative... also, before you comment, keep in mind most things are answered in future chapters so I either can't tell you because spoilers or I can't fix them because they just don't make sense *yet*. This is being updated in a serial format but it is very much still meant to be read like a normal novel. It's just more advantageous for me to keep posting chapters like this ^^")