There's a rapping against my door. I open my eyes to find myself in my bed, my room shrouded in a foggy, gray light like that which comes after rain, or when a chill has crept into the weather. The knocking resumes, four taps that slightly rattle the door against the doorframe. I pull my comforter tighter around me.

"Madelyn?" Mom's voice carries from the other side of the door. She must've put me in bed last night.

"What?" I groggily reach for my phone. It's the next morning, ten a.m.

"Are you up? You have a visitor."

Panic washes through me. The events from the previous day return, crash into me with full force.

The date.

The body.

The cash.

My head whirls, and my eyes snap to the door. The lock is horizontal — open, not bolted shut.

Oh no, oh no, no! I slip from the covers and tiptoe across the room. My fingers twist the lock.

"I'm tired," I say. Fear courses through my veins, and I frantically glance around the room. No one can see me. No one can be around me. Who knows what I'll do next?

"Zoe wants to talk to you."

"She can't see me."

"I'm so sorry about what happened, Madelyn," a new, slightly higher-pitched voice says. "Really, I am. Please don't shut me out though." That's Zoe's voice. She's upstairs, behind the door with my mom. The door jiggles, but remains shut.

"Madelyn, open the door. Everything is alright, you're alright," Mom says.

"No. I'm not," I croak.

"Madelyn, open the door right now."

"I can't. I can't let anyone else get hurt."

"What do you mean?" Zoe asks.

Tears drip down my cheeks. There's a slight shuffling outside, and panic wells in my chest. I can lock the door all I want, but that won't stop Mom from pulling out a spare key. I sit on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest, clasping my fingers tightly so they won't lash out.

Minutes later, the lock clicks and the door opens. I glance up as Zoe enters. Mom stands by the door, key in hand.

"Please don't get any closer," I say.

"Why?"

"I-I don't want you to get hurt."

Zoe looks between me and my mom. "I don't understand. Why—"

"Let's go downstairs for a minute," Mom says. She shuts the door, and I leave my bed only to lock it again.

I cry on my bed as anxiety courses through me. Visions of Mom and Zoe lying on the floor, blood leaking out of their heads, consume my head. I blink, and the carpet is stained red. I blink, and the carpet is light beige.

All I can do is hope that the monster won't harm anyone when Mom and Zoe return.

Then the door opens again, and Zoe enters alone. She kicks the door shut and sets down two plates of baked goods. The smell of steaming-hot blueberries and cinnamon reaches my nose, though it does little to calm me like Mom's baking normally does.

"Keep back," I say.

"Madelyn, I had no idea." Zoe's voice cracks, and I know that Mom told her. She told her my secret, about my mental challenges.

What does she think of me now?

What does she think, knowing that she's friends with a killer?

"Blueberry muffins won't solve anything," I say. Two sit on the plate with golden domes peeking over the sides of the muffin liner, dotted with blue circles. Beside it are triangular scones and a croissant with cheese oozing from the bottom and ham sticking out the sides.

"But you need to eat. And as you eat, you can tell me why you think you are the killer." Zoe sits on the floor by my desk, a decent distance away from the bed. The plates are halfway between us, a midpoint to both connect and separate us. The tension in my muscles releases only slightly since she is further away.

The muffin's aroma makes my mouth water even though I hardly feel like eating. Slowly, my feet find the floor, and I walk to the plate. Scooping the plate up, I return to the safety of my Island of bedding and nibble on the muffin. Warm blueberries burst in my mouth amidst the sweet, warm pastry.

I tell Zoe everything. I tell her about how I can sense when someone dies, and how since I'm the only person around, it feels like there is no other explanation for the killer. From the cash and xanax in my purse, both of which were missing from the victims, to the text messages I found on my phone from Will, leading him to be at the Arboretum, everything points to me being the killer.

Zoe's brow furrows. "But you lost your phone on Wednesday."

I swallow. "I don't know anymore. There's no other explanation for those messages."

Zoe looks down, taking another bite of her croissant. "Where did you find your phone?"

"I found it the next day in my English folder."

"What day was that?" I pull up the calendar on my phone and tell her the date. Zoe pulls out her own phone. A minute later, she exclaims, "we had homework that night!"

"Huh?"

"You have Miss Garfeld for English right?" I nod. "We had homework that night. You would've pulled out your folder, right?"

"I-I don't know."

"Well, let's see." Zoe's thumbs move across her screen. "Yes, it's right here in the online classroom. She said that we need to read the short story she handed out during class, highlight it, and then answer the questions she had on the back."

Miss Garfeld isn't that into technology. She's one of the oldest teachers at the school, knowing most of the students who were a part of the first graduating classes. She hands out almost everything via paper and only has us turn essays in online.

"You would've found your phone that night if it had been in your bag the whole time," Zoe says.

"That doesn't mean anything." I rub my runny nose against the back of my hand. "Someone had to have written those text messages on my phone."

"Madelyn, someone stole your phone and put it back in your bag the next day," Zoe says. "Look, when did you notice your phone was missing?"

"During P.E."

"Exactly. Someone from one of your earlier classes must've taken it from your bag."

"Who?"

"The real killer, of course! Someone is trying to frame you." Zoe sets her phone down, taking another crackling bite of croissant. "Look, the person we're dealing with has mega tech skills. They hacked into your phone, as well as the dating app. They must've also kept turning the auto-match feature on on your phone so you kept getting matches."

The wheels in my head process this new information. Zoe makes a good point. If someone really did take my phone, then maybe I'm not the killer...

"But we have no proof." My heart feels fragile, like it's near shattering. I can't take it being pulled this way and that. One moment, there's hope. The next, it's almost certain I am the killer.

"Just give it a little more time, please, Madelyn," Zoe pleads. "Please. You aren't the killer. We can figure this out. We can piece this together. Let me prove it to you. Just give it a few more days."

"Three days?" I raise an eyebrow at Zoe. "Three days to prove I'm not the killer?"

"Absolutely. But I'll need your help. And you can't distance yourself or lock yourself away from the world. We have to communicate. And for the record, I feel awful about what happened. I'm sorry I talked you into the setup on the third date. I thought for sure we'd catch the killer, but we missed something. We won't make the same mistake this time."

I stare at her. Tears blur my vision again and stain my comforters.

"Please." Zoe's eyes beg me to say yes.

"Alright," I concede with a sigh. "Three days."

"Yes!" Zoe exclaims. "And I know exactly where to start. Did you notice that Drake works at the buffet?" I nod. "He works at the same time, when Evan was killed. We need to go back to the restaurant and find out if he has an alibi for that day. Maybe he didn't show up at work."

"Fine," I say, though anxiety makes my fingers twitch against my bedding. I hope Zoe is right. But if she's wrong, we could both be making a huge mistake — a mistake that could end in yet another death.