I always held my breath while I ducked behind the great rosebush.

     Sure, it'd be better to find a less obvious hiding spot, but the garden wasn't exactly massive. The only places I hadn't yet tried were Oli's garage – off-limits, at least in a 'don't let me catch you in there' kind of way – and the old oak tree that stretched out over the back fence. That thing was huge, and Faith would freak out if she caught me at her eye level while she was cleaning the loft. Besides, climbing up that high was more Cadence's gig than mine.

     "Gotcha!" Right on cue, there she was. Before I could even open my eyes (because I also kept them closed while hiding, for some reason), a hollow snap rang out, and a solid pellet-like lump struck against my back. It wasn't long before a clammy hold found my wrist, and my best friend yanked me clear of the bushes.

     It had been hard to appreciate from inside the foliage, but it was a beautiful day. One breath took in the first breaths of spring blossom, so sweet and freshly infused with life's zest. Wisps of a mild breeze swatted away the harshest heat of the sunlight's glow, leaving a pleasant warmth under the tender eye of the clear blue sky. Even after all our stomping around, the green grass lawn rose with unwavering enthusiasm.

     All I wanted to watch, however, was the laughing smile that flourished on Cadence's face. Though she was only a little taller than me, her self-assured air and broad, powerful stance gave her the confidence of someone closer to eighteen than thirteen. She'd dressed bolder too – after years of resisting hand-me-down dresses from her cousin, Cadence finally persuaded Faith to buy her the loose t-shirts and skinny jeans that the neighbourhood boys wore. Today's pairing was olive up top, dark grey lower down.

     "The bushes again? Really?" Cadence asked, waving her well-loved toy six-shooter as she spoke. Its orange-tipped barrel didn't quite line up straight, yet that never seemed to stop her from nailing me with most of, if not all, her shots. "You'll never make sheriff if you don't get a little more adventurous with your hiding places, Tex."

     "Fine by me. I think I'll stick to tending the horses while you round up all the bandits," I said as I rubbed at the sore spot on my back. I wasn't anti-skirts like Cadence was, but with her, shorts and grippy trainers were basically essential gear, as the cool dirt and water spattered over my legs proved. "What time is it? Think we can make it out to the bay before tea?"

     Cadence checked her watch, though we both knew that it'd stopped ticking weeks ago. After concluding that it was, as ever, just gone half past four in Cadence Meridian Time, she shuffled closer to steal a glance at my timepiece. A mischievous smirk glossed over her lips, and she ran her fingers through the free chestnut brown locks of her shoulder-length hair. "We can definitely try. Feel like making it a race?"

     My stomach churned. When Cadence went for a race, she went hard. So hard, in fact, that she'd leave the safe, sensible streets behind and tear down back alleys, rocky streams, and dense woodlands in search of a radical new route to victory. She even made it to the end sometimes.

     Despite my best efforts, my reticence must've made it to my face, because Cadence leaned close and poked my shoulder with her pistol. "What? Is the reigning champ of the Tour de Bosmouth scared of a little challenge?"

     I pressed her gun back into her chest. It was hard work playing the responsible sidekick to a relentless troublemaker, but someone had to do it. "More like I'm scared of having to drag your butt out of the brook after you wipe out again."

     "That was one time! How was I supposed to know the drainage pipes didn't extend all the way out?"

     "Cadence!" From the house's sliding kitchen door, Faith emerged clutching a ragged dish sponge, soap suds dripping from its sopping sides down her fingers and arm. "Can I borrow you for a minute, love?"

     I'd known Cadence's mum for as long as I'd known Cadence herself, and while my best friend and I had changed plenty, Faith resembled a near-perfect picture of how she'd looked a decade ago. Her blond hair was shorter, but still kept in a neat bob, and her cerulean eyes sparkled behind her round-framed glasses with the same soothing comfort that had put me at ease from the first minute. My mum was my hero, yet for me, Faith was second only to her.

     As cheerful as ever, she tucked the sponge into the pocket of her blue and sandy brown-striped apron and held her arms out towards me. The refreshing scents of amber and sea salt that enveloped my senses reminded me why I never turned down one of Faith's hugs, not that I needed a reason.

     "Hi, Ellie. Sorry to be a boring old person, but Oli's on his way back, and you see..." Faith effortlessly won the pistol from Cadence's grasp, much to her daughter's bewilderment. Before Cadence could speak, Faith smiled and dinked her on the head with its grip. "Someone needs to get her junk off the kitchen table so her brothers and sisters have room to work."

     "Can't they just do their homework in their rooms?" Cadence asked, taking my hand as a mark of protest against mild inconvenience. "That's what we always do."

     Classic Cadence. She never hesitated to rope me into her defence, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that loved the devilish delight that lit up her face when she did.

     After years of hearing such arguments, however, Faith was more than sharp enough to handle her daughter's resistance. "You mean that's what Ellie always does," she retorted, flicking a fan of soapy bubbles over Cadence's hair. It wasn't hard to see where Cadence picked up her taste for mischief – the two of them even shared the same wicked smile. "As for you, you won't even open a textbook without her dragging you down the hallway."

     "What the hell? I literally –"

     "Language, missy! And if you've got time to argue, you've got time to clear up your stuff." Like many kind, loving individuals, Faith didn't raise her voice often, so when she did, it stung. Neither me nor Cadence could find the words to answer as Faith turned to return to the kitchen. "I'll be starting on tea in a bit, so make sure to let Ellie's parents know if she's staying or not, too."

     Cadence's bullishness had abandoned her, though there was more than a hint of admiration in the corner of her hazel eyes. "Yes, Mum. I'm on it," she said, linking our fingers as her shoulders sagged with petulant resignation. "Back in a minute, bud. Don't have too much fun without me."

     Moments like this reminded me just how comforting Cadence's presence was, even at her brattiest. I'd often wondered if she felt the same reluctance to part that I did, though I'd halted any train of thought that steered towards what that reluctance meant. Cadence was my best friend, that was all. My thrilling, supportive, dizzyingly gorgeous best friend.

     That was when it hit me. It began as a string of dull pangs, yet as soon as Cadence's touch left my fingers, it was like a thousand invisible daggers pierced the backs of my eyes. I couldn't see, I couldn't think, and the only feelings I had were of pain and sheer embarrassment for getting a migraine right in front of Cadence like this. Even for a migraine, though, this sucked, and I was sure I was going to pass out. I floated, and I drifted, and I fell all at once.

     Waves of grogginess sloshed around Elise's head as she fell back into consciousness. The air was cold and crushing. Clutter amassed in every corner of the small room.

     "Stop..." I didn't know how long I'd blacked out for, but when my sight returned, I was somehow still on my feet. Cadence dragged her heels towards the house, its sunlit red bricks flaring against my dry eyes. With every step she took, the shocks bolted harder through my brain, and the feeling of plummeting into nothingness returned with greater vigour.

     A thick layer of dust claimed everything, coating each rickety floorboard, the worn plaid carpet, up to the length of her black jeans. Save for snatches of storm-lashed light through the windows, the room sank in pooled shadow. Nothing moved.

     "Stop!"

     Like clockwork, my cry brought both the agony and my best friend to a halt. "Okay...I'll wait," Cadence said as she scratched the back of her head. Her confusion didn't last long, though, wiping away the second her eyes met my face. "Woah. Your nose, dude."

     I raised my hand to my face. Sure enough, my fingers came back smeared with streaks of vivid red blood. I'd had my fair share of nosebleeds here and there, but that didn't make the sight any less unsettling. Luckily, it had stopped already.

     Though she tried to hide it, I could tell Cadence was more than a little shaken. We'd both seen and suffered worse than a nosebleed with each other, but whatever bizarre episode I'd just had right in front of her was definitely new. "You feeling okay now?" she asked, unbothered by the blood that painted her fingers as she took my hand. "Thank god Mum didn't see that. She'd have freaked out like crazy and refused to let you out of her sight for the rest of the day. You can bet she'd bite my head off while she was at it, too."

     "At least it really wouldn't be your fault for once." It was a little harsh. I wouldn't pick up so many scrapes and bruises if I didn't indulge her mischief, after all. Still, being able to join in her banter was a good sign that I was over the worst of the pain. "I think I'm fine now. Sorry."

     "Don't be sorry, pal. If you're good, I'm good," Cadence said, a slight hitch dragging her voice down before her own 'good'. She squeezed my hand and winked, clearly keen to haul the moment back to some kind of normality. "Anyway, I'd better go take care of this before Mum yanks me in. Sit tight, and I'll try not to miss you too much."

     Slow, warm droplets steadily leaked over her face. Around her wrists and ankles, tight bonds – tough, unmoving – ground her cartilage together, pinching, pulling, and chafing over her flesh without mercy. Left on too long, they would keep shearing further until they unearthed her scarred bones.

     It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Shocks of white-hot pain flared through my every nerve, yet any heat cowered from my skin's ice-cold surface. A numb, thundering pressure quaked behind my eyes, and a nauseous drought rose from my gut to raze my throat. Each of Cadence's steps pounded against my skull, pressing and pressing and pressing until I couldn't think straight.

     I tasted blood again. Deeper, slicker, heavier.

     I had to get inside, only my body had different plans. As soon as I put a hint of extra weight on my left foot, a whole new pulse of pain screamed through my ankle. It'd been a while since I ate dirt like I did when I collapsed face-first into the lawn, and the tightness around my ribs that crushed the life from my lungs didn't help. I was stuck on the floor, and apparently stuck in this single framed picture of a moment too, according to my brain's total meltdowns.

     "Ellie? Ellie!" I lifted my face to see Cadence kneeled over me. Whether it was the blood loss or the warm sunlight that haloed around her face, seeing her brought on an extra rush of comfort. It was the kind of joy that you'd expect from reuniting with someone you hadn't seen in years, not for someone who'd just left. Clearly, Cadence didn't share it. "Finally! What's going on here, Ellie? Because you're starting to scare the hell out of me."

     "I don't know..." I began, rubbing my eyes only to find the sky was still bursting with orange flares and soft purple seas. Was it really so close to dusk already? "I swear, for a second it was...it was like I was in a totally different place." I must've sounded nuts, sure, but this was no time to bottle things up. I'd rather sound crazy than live through another second of crazy waking nightmares without my best friend. "It was awful, Cade. I couldn't find you anywhere."

     Her eyebrow shot up. "'Cade'? Is that a nickname I hear from Little Miss Government Names Only?" she asked, wiping the fresh blood from my nose onto the grass. With a shake of her head, she pivoted to my side and slid her hands under my shoulders. "Come on, get on up, bud. I think you need to chill inside and sit out whatever...this is."

     I agreed, but the relentless pains that shot through every part of me at the slightest thought of approaching the house kept me rooted to the spot. Despite her efforts, Cade – and my brain insisted on calling her Cade, though neither of us had given her that name before – couldn't coax me to move without all but hauling me over the now-crushed lawn. Faith was going to lose it later, I just knew it.

     Cadence. Cadence was nowhere to be seen, yet the shadows around the room were stirring, breathing, living. Somebody was somewhere, and they would find her.

     "I'm so scared," I suddenly said, stopping the pair of us halfway across the grass. It didn't matter that Cade couldn't see the scenes that haunted my mind, feel the tremors that quaked through my bones, or taste the desperation on my tongue. Some small part reassured me that she'd understand what I meant regardless. "I can't do this."

     "You can't really think that." It was definitely Cade speaking, but there was something different about her voice. She sounded less confused and more determined, maybe even older. She looked older, too, when she seized me by the shoulders and focused her gold-touched eyes right on mine. "You might not know it, but you're unstoppable, sister. You'll figure this out no problem, with or without me."

     "Without you? No way, I can't. I need you!"

     "No, Ellie, you don't, and don't think you do." She took my face in her hands, her touch so familiar, yet so different, so much fonder. "Whatever happens, don't stop for me. Don't hold yourself back."

     She took my face in her hands. With the touch of her thumb against my cheek, I knew what to say. "I love you, Cade."

     And I could sense Cade's answer before she even parted her lips, like it was imprinted on my heart a long, long time ago. "I love you too, killer."

     I found the strength to smile at her through the throbbing pain. Then, cushioned by her soothing voice, I slipped into the darkness for the last time.