Chapter 1

The shovel strikes the dirt above me.

It' s a dull, wet thud. The sound travels through six feet of earth, through the wood of my coffin, and vibrates against my bones.

I' m floating above my own grave, watching.

A cold drizzle slicks the grass of Blackwood Cemetery, making the headstones gleam in the harsh, artificial light of a portable flood lamp. The light is for the camera.

My girlfriend, Ava, is holding the camera. Or, she was my girlfriend.

"We' re doing this, guys," she says, her voice tight and breathless. She' s not talking to me. She' s talking to the thousands of people watching her live stream. Her phone is mounted on a tripod, its little red light blinking, capturing everything.

"We' re doing this for Liam. We' re doing this for everyone Daniel Hayes ever hurt."

My name. She says my name like it' s a curse.

Behind her, a man I used to call my best friend, Liam Davis, drives the shovel into the mud again. He grunts with the effort, his face a mask of righteous fury. He' s performing for the camera, for Ava. For the audience.

"Five years," Ava says to her phone, her eyes wide and shining with unshed tears. "For five years, Liam has had nightmares. He wakes up screaming, seeing Daniel' s face. He says Daniel won' t let him rest. That he' s tethered to him, cursed."

A lie. I' m not tethered to him. I' m tethered here. To this spot. To her.

On the screen of her phone, I can see the comments scrolling by at a dizzying speed.

user_h8s_bullies: GET HIM AVA!

LiamIsAnAngel: Finally, justice for Liam!

TrueCrimeJunkie22: This is insane! I' m so here for it.

SpookyGurl666: You have to scatter his ashes. It' s the only way to break the curse.

Ava nods, reading the comments. "You see? They get it. We have to set Liam free." She looks over at him, her expression softening. "It' s the only way."

Liam pauses his digging, leaning on the shovel. He walks over to Ava and pulls her into a hug, burying his face in her hair. He' s careful to keep his face angled toward the camera.

"Thank you, Ava," he whispers, his voice thick with fake emotion. "Thank you for believing me."

I want to scream. I want to tell her he' s lying. He was never my friend. He was the one who bullied. He was the one who stole. The scholarship he claims I took from him? He never even qualified. I helped him with his application. I wrote his recommendation letter.

But I have no voice. I' m just a whisper on the wind, a cold spot in the drizzling rain.

They work for another hour. The hole gets deeper. The pile of mud beside it grows. My mother' s carefully tended patch of grass is a ruin. I remember her planting the flowers here last spring, her tears watering the soil.

"She' ll never forgive you for this, Ava," I try to say, but the words don' t form.

Finally, the shovel hits something hard. A hollow, wooden sound.

"We' re there," Liam pants, a triumphant smirk on his face.

He and Ava work together now, clearing the last of the dirt from the top of my coffin. It' s plain pine. Simple. All my parents could afford after the legal fees from the "accident" and the settlement they were forced to pay Liam. Another one of his lies.

They attach ropes, and with a great heave, they haul the coffin out of the earth. It lands on the muddy grass with a heavy thud.

"Okay, guys," Ava says, her camera now focused tightly on the lid. "This is it. The moment of truth. We' re going to open it, and we' re going to end this. For good."

Liam picks up a crowbar. He wedges it into the seam of the lid. The wood groans and splinters. With a final, violent jerk, the lid pops open.

A collective gasp comes from Ava. Even Liam, for all his bravado, takes a step back.

The online comments explode.

WTFisTHAT??

OMG

those are... scratches?

They are. The inside of the coffin lid is shredded. Deep, frantic claw marks tear through the wood, splinters jutting out everywhere. My own fingernails are broken and bloody, even in death.

But that' s not the only thing in there with me.

Lying next to my skeletal hand, protected from the damp by a plastic sleeve, is a small, black, leather-bound book.

My diary.

Ava leans forward, her face pale in the floodlight. Her eyes are fixed on the claw marks, a horrified understanding dawning on her face. Then, her gaze drops to the diary.

Her hand trembles as she reaches into the coffin. She hesitates, her fingers hovering just over my remains.

I watch her, a forgotten ache echoing in the space where my heart used to be. I see the girl I fell in love with in high school, the one who used to steal my hoodies and doodle our initials in the margins of her notebooks. The girl I planned a future with.

That girl is still in there, somewhere, buried under five years of lies.

"What is it?" Liam asks, his voice sharp with an edge of panic.

Ava doesn' t answer. She just stares at the diary. She knows my handwriting. She knows the little star I used to draw after my name.

"He haunted me," Liam insists, stepping closer to her, trying to pull her back into his narrative. "He was a monster, Ava. Remember what he did. Remember the scholarship. Remember how he pushed me."

Ava flinches, but she doesn' t look away from the diary. Her hand, shaking, finally closes around it. She pulls it from the coffin.

"For you, Liam," she says, but her voice is a hollow echo of its earlier conviction. "I' m doing this for you."

She holds the diary up to the camera, then looks at it herself. The certainty in her eyes is gone, replaced by a flicker of doubt. A single, terrible question.

It' s a start.