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But the feeling passed almost immediately. Was Miranda telling the truth? Maybe. Maybe not. Because after all these months of hanging out with Miranda, there were only two things I knew for
sure. Two things that threw everything else into doubt.

‘You,’ I said, ‘are a liar. And a manipulative bitch.’

I knew that Miranda wasn’t likely to let that pass by. But when she hit me, her hand cracking like a whip on my face, I was shocked.

‘You’re the liar!’ she spat. ‘You tricked me into thinking you liked Dallas!’

I watched her face, how her anger twisted it. I heard how pathetic she sounded, and felt amazed that she’d ever had any power over me. I reached out for the door handle again, and this
time I turned it, pushing the door open. My face was tingling from the slap and I imagined the marks of her fingers glowing on my face. ‘I’m going to find a phone,’ I said.
‘Dallas needs an ambulance.’

The hallway was pitch-black and I felt a sudden wave of hopelessness. The phone could be anywhere. That’s if germ freaks even
had
phones.

‘Wait. Please, Olive. My phone’s not in here. I’ll take you to it.’

Maybe I turned back because something in her voice had changed. Softened. Or maybe I turned because I didn’t know what else to do.

Miranda glided past me, out of her room and into the hallway. ‘This way.’

We went upstairs. It was hard to imagine it could’ve been darker than down below but somehow it was. Stuffier too. I peered around in the gloom but couldn’t see a
phone anywhere. Miranda reached up her hand and pulled a chain that was dangling from the roof. A square of grey appeared in the roof above us – a trapdoor. There was a clunking sound and
then a set of stairs slid out, leading up into the roof.

‘Up
there
?’ I said. Why did my voice have to squeak like that? I told myself I was just worried about Dallas.

Without bothering to reply Miranda began climbing the ladder. I watched her climb, feeling the cold air from the attic fall and settle across me.

The thing that always bothered me about scary movies was how stupid the victims always seem, and how they never act on their instincts. They might say something like
I’ve got a bad
feeling about this,
while they dither about opening the cellar door. When we showed movies like that at the Mercury, someone in the audience would occasionally call out a warning. But of course
the characters always opened the door or pushed the button.

If anyone had been watching me, hesitating at the bottom of a ladder that led up into a dark roof, they would’ve yelled, ‘Don’t do it!’

But I did it anyway.

The attic was the only place in Oona’s house that didn’t reek of disinfectant, and after my eyes adjusted I saw why. The two small attic windows – the only
windows in the entire place without grilles – had been pushed open. A breeze was blowing and I could smell the sea mixed with a whiff of chlorine from the pool down below. Miranda was
standing in front of one of the windows, a dark, still shape. Can you radiate darkness? She seemed to. There was a pause. And then the dark figure disappeared through the window frame.

‘Miranda?’ I called, moving as quickly as I could across the uneven floor, stepping over the roof beams and around the taped-up boxes. I felt unstable and foggy-brained. When I got
to the window I looked down. There was the swimming pool, glimmering way down below. But I couldn’t see Miranda. There was a noise on the roof, to my left. Hunched there, close to the edge,
was a dark shape.

‘Funny place to keep a phone,’ I muttered.

‘We need to talk,’ Miranda said. ‘You’re so strange now, Olive. Heartless.’

I
was heartless? Dallas was lying on the floor of her bedroom, unconscious, and she didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned.

‘I don’t want to talk,’ I said. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet and maybe Miranda thought I was about to walk away because she quickly pulled something out of her
pocket. Her phone.

‘Here,’ she said, holding it up. ‘I’ve got it here. Join me – just for a moment? There’s something I want to show you. After that, you can call a thousand
ambulances and whoever else you want.’

The smell of the pool wafted up. Off in the distance I heard cars.
I could just run out to the street,
I thought.
Flag someone down.
But that would mean leaving Dallas here alone
with Miranda. I looked at her again, sitting on the roof, hand outstretched. Maybe if I just went out for a moment. And then I’d take the phone. It wasn’t like her words had any sway
over me now.

That’s what I was thinking. I guess it sounds stupid.

‘OK, OK,’ I muttered. ‘I’m coming.’ The zombie juice rumbled and rolled in my stomach.

I climbed out of the narrow window and into the orchestra of night noises. The whirr of insects. The ocean. The distant traffic. The loudest sound of all was my own breathing.
Don’t
look down.
Once I’d made it onto the roof, I shuffled across the sloping surface on my bum, inch by inch. Miranda was only a metre away but it seemed to take forever to get to her.

I finally stopped, panting and clammy, at what I felt was a safe distance away from her.

‘What did you want to show me?’

Miranda had placed the phone down on the other side of her, away from me. She pointed out into the night. ‘That,’ she said. ‘All that darkness, stretching on forever.
Doesn’t it make you feel small? Like a worthless little speck?’

‘It’s not so dark,’ I said, partly because I felt like disagreeing with everything Miranda said – but also because it was true. Maybe it looked dark at first, but if you
waited a little bit, then you started to notice things. The stars. The moon. The glow of the city. Headlights working their way up the hill. The longer I sat there the more light there seemed to
be.

The moonlight on Miranda’s face had turned her skin and hair silvery-white. ‘We’ve got a lot in common,’ she said. ‘And I know you’ve had fun hanging out with
me. Admit it.’

Far away there was the sound of a car alarm going off.

I shrugged. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It was fun. At first.’

Miranda looked at me, eyes shining. ‘We can still have fun, you know,’ she said. She sounded excited. Hopeful. ‘How about we make a deal? I won’t tell anyone about Ami or
your “history” if you don’t leave me
.
’

‘I’d rather have no friends than agree to that,’ I retorted. ‘You really have no idea, do you?’

And then I saw that this was true. Miranda knew how to manipulate and twist people, how to drive them to the edge – even over the edge – but she knew nothing about being a
friend.

It was a long time before Miranda spoke again, and when she did her voice was subdued. ‘I don’t belong around here.’ She laughed flatly. ‘That’s stating the
obvious, huh? But let’s be honest. I’ll never belong anywhere.’

She hunched over herself, arms tucked under her legs, chin resting on her knees. The breeze was blowing her hair into her eyes and mouth. ‘You don’t know how exhausting it is,’
she said. ‘Being me. I’m so tired of it.’ Miranda rose to her feet. ‘I’m going,’ she said, stretching her arms out theatrically. ‘Out there.’

‘I’ve had enough of these stupid nerve tests,’ I said, furious that she was trying this again. ‘Get away from there.’

She looked at me, a strange, sad smile on her mouth. ‘Would you be sad if I jumped?’ she asked softly. ‘Or relieved?’

‘I’d be pissed off,’ I snapped, ‘because I’d be the one left behind to deal with the mess.’

Miranda’s smile vanished. I never saw it again. She took a step closer to the edge.

‘Miranda!’

I don’t remember stretching out my arm towards her but I must have, because quick as a flash, Miranda took hold of my wrist. Her fingers dug into my flesh.

‘Come with me then,’ she said unevenly. ‘We can merge with the darkness. Together.’

She shuffled up next to me, her grip strengthening, until she was right beside me, her voice in my ear, making the buzz in my head return. Or maybe it had never gone.

‘Be honest with yourself, Olive. People like us are too much hard work. We wear everyone down. We’d be doing everyone a favour by ending it all.’ Her words stabbed into me.
‘What difference does it make if you die tonight or in a few years?’ she said. ‘It’s not like your dad will care. Your brother’s just a kid – he’ll forget
you pretty quickly. Your mum? Maybe. But you’ve caused her plenty of grief already. She might be less cut up than you think.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said, teeth gritted.

‘So who does that leave?’ said Miranda, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘Lachlan?’ She snorted. ‘He won’t grieve for long.’

If I shook my head hard enough, maybe I could keep the words out. ‘No.’

Miranda’s face darkened. ‘I’m tired of you saying no to me, Olive. If you won’t do it on your own then I’ll
make
you jump.’

She stood, yanking me up so that I too was standing. I was right on the edge of the roof now, and Miranda positioned herself behind me. We must have triggered one of Oona’s security lights
because suddenly everything down below was dazzlingly bright. The grass shimmered. The trees pulsed. The swimming pool was the biggest, bluest eye you ever saw, staring right at me.
This is
it.
The only thing I could hope for was to land in the pool and not on the concrete. I tensed up, waiting for the push. But it didn’t come. Miranda started to make this strange, choking
noise, and a moment later she let go of my wrist.

I stepped back from the edge, turning towards her. Her shoulders were shuddering.

‘Miranda? Are you
crying
?’

Even though I was desperate to get away from her and the edge of that roof, I felt a tiny twinge of something. I knew about being sad and alone and how much it could wreck your life. Watching
her, I felt a weird mess of things churning inside me. Anger and hate, of course. Fear. But something else too.

‘Poor Miranda. You’re so screwed up, aren’t you?’ I said.

Instantly she turned on me, wild with fury. ‘Don’t you dare say that! Not
ever
!’ she snarled, her arm sticking out blindly to push me away.

At first I had the strange sensation that the roof was tilting away from me. Then I realised what was happening.

Falling.

I was falling.

Grabbing hold of something as you fall is an automatic response. Another one of those reflexes. But when I grabbed on to Miranda as I fell off the roof, it felt way more deliberate.

Like I was thinking,
If I fall, then you’re coming too.

Did either of us scream? I’m not sure. Maybe there wasn’t time. Then the surface of the pool slammed against us, resisting us for only a moment before we plunged
through.

Cold. It was so cold in there. But the moment I was in the water, I felt all the tightness in my body dissolve. I can remember how Miranda looked, I think. Her hair swirling, the bubbles
streaming from her nose. The wide, fearful eyes. But how could I have seen so much detail? It was crazy and chaotic in the water. I do remember one thing for sure, though – the feeling of
Miranda’s fingers curled like tentacles around my neck.