"What was that—"
"Hold on!" the driver shouted. Wind slapped the leather. Headlights cut the dark road into a white strip.
"Too fast," I hissed, because I always hissed at bad driving. I fumbled for my phone. Five awards in a duffel bag behind the seat. My thumb hovered over a message thread I didn't want anyone to see and then slid, deleting the last conversation like a reflex.
"Brake!" the driver banged the wheel. Tires screamed. Metal answered with a sound that was not meant to belong to any car.
Glass. A sharp smell. Lights bent and splintered into knives. I saw my own reflection in the windshield: mascara streaks, a dress ruined, a crown of red carpet glitter.
"Hold on!" someone — not the driver this time — grabbed my arm. Their breath smelled like coffee.
Then a thud. The world folded.
Silence wasn't silence. It was thick and wet, like damp fabric pressed to my face. I blinked against it and tried to breathe air that was not the right temperature. My ears filled with a ringing that matched the echo of applause from another life.
A voice said, "She's breathing!"
"I can't feel a pulse." Someone else sounded young, scared.
I thought of the fifth trophy on the seat, the speech I had never given, the way my agent had told me to smile for the cameras. I tried to sit up and my body answered with wrongness. Limbic memory, not mine. The last
