Chapter 66 The Dress

Chapter 66 The Dress
POV: Zara

I slammed my closet door shut, then opened it again, like the dress might disappear if I gave it a second chance.

It didn't. It was still hanging there, exactly where I'd shoved it two years ago, way in the back behind hoodies and old jackets I never wore but never threw out either. I hadn't touched it since the night I wore it last, the night everything with my dad fell apart, the night I decided dresses were for girls who still believed good things could happen to them.

My phone sat on my bed behind me, screen still lit from the last text I'd read four times already. If you go to the police, the next photo I send won't be of a girl tied to a chair. Mom had taken a screenshot before bed, promised me we'd still go in this morning no matter what the message said, but I hadn't slept more than an hour, my mind looping through every terrible version of what that sentence could mean.

I stood there in front of the closet anyway, because somewhere underneath all that fear, today was still the day of the bonfire. The day everyone would be watching. The day Jade's whole little campaign of cruelty would either win completely or lose for good, depending on what I did with the next twelve hours.

I reached past the dress at first, my fingers brushing an old gray hoodie instead, the soft, safe armor I'd worn almost every day this whole summer. Two sizes too big, sleeves long enough to hide my hands, a hood I could pull up whenever the world got to be too much. It would be so easy. Nobody would blink twice if I showed up tonight wrapped in cotton, invisible, exactly the way I'd trained myself to be for years before Eli ever walked into that kitchen.

My hand stopped on the hanger.

Mom's voice from last night drifted back through my head, steady and certain even with that horrible text still glowing on her screen. You have never once let them win before. Don't start now. She'd said it so plainly, like it wasn't even a question, like the version of me who fought back was simply who I was, no debate necessary.

But that wasn't completely true, was it? I'd let people win plenty of times. I'd let Jade's first video make me feel small. I'd let strangers online decide what kind of girl I was based on eleven seconds of footage. I'd spent two years letting one absent father convince me that needing people was dangerous, that loving anyone out loud just meant handing them a knife.

I looked at the dress again.

It still had the tag tucked into the collar, I noticed, the one I'd never bothered to cut off because some stubborn, hopeful part of seventeen-year-old me back then had thought she'd wear it again someday for something good. I hadn't known back then that someday would arrive wrapped in threats and stolen photos and a missing best friend slowly finding her way back.

I thought about Jade standing outside the vice-principal's office, pale and scared, mouthing words at me through glass. He has both of them. I thought about Eli's voice cracking on the phone before the line went dead. I thought about Naomi's one-word text, hey, and the secret she was still holding onto somewhere underneath it. I thought about my own empty bedroom window, somebody standing close enough to see straight through it.

So much had already gone wrong this summer. So much was still actively, dangerously wrong right now, tonight, with hours left before that bonfire even started.

And still, somehow, none of it had actually beaten me yet. I was still standing here. Still breathing. Still capable of deciding what I wore on a night that might end up changing everything, one way or another.

I took the dress off the hanger.

It felt strange in my hands, lighter than I remembered, the fabric soft and a little cool against my fingers. I held it up in front of me, looking at the girl reflected faintly in my closet mirror, the one with red, sleepless eyes and a stomach full of dread and fear that hadn't fully let go since midnight.

That girl had survived a video that tried to humiliate her. She'd survived her best friend going silent. She'd survived threats sent straight to her phone and pictures of people she loved tied up and terrified. She'd built a file good enough to get a vice-principal's full attention without flinching once.

That girl could survive one bonfire.

I changed quickly, before I could talk myself back into the hoodie, and stood in front of the mirror a long moment afterward, barely recognizing the shape of myself in something other than oversized cotton. My hands trembled a little, smoothing the fabric down, half expecting some old, familiar shame to come rushing back the second I really looked at myself.

It didn't come. Something steadier sat there instead, something close to ready.

My phone buzzed on the bed.

I crossed the room and picked it up, half expecting another threat, my whole body braced for it.

It was Naomi.

I'm coming tonight. To the bonfire. I have to tell you something before it happens, and I need you to hear it from me before anyone else gets the chance to twist it first.

Before I could even type a reply, a second message landed right under the first, and my stomach dropped clean through the floor.

It's about who's really been sending you those messages. And Zara, I think they're going to be there tonight too.