Excerpt from I'm the Girl by Courtney Summers, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The funeral's soon.

"How are you?"

She gives me a withering look and I wonder what my mother would make of the two of us in a car together. She was no fan of the Jameses, especially Justin, who, like every cop at the sheriff 's department, is welcome to enjoy Aspera's golf course as thanks for doing his job. They only care about their own, and that's not us. But that's what my mom felt about anyone higher up the food chain—which to her eye was everyone. And it wasn't always true.

Because when I was thirteen, Nora invited me to her birthday party.

I almost want to remind her about that now, tell her how circular all this is, how fated it's starting to feel, but I don't think she'd want to hear it.

I turn to the window and the closer we get to familiar things, the more my body rebels against this whole idea. My pulse races and my palms sweat, my throat tightening, my lungs constricting. I try to remind myself I won't—can't—discover Ashley there a second time, but the moment we step out of the car and face the woods, I feel like I could. I look up at the sky, wincing at the glare, and hope against a headache because every day since, there's been one, bad ones. Doc Abrams said it's normal—the consequence of bashing my skull off the ground. If Nora's noting these little signs of my distress, she doesn't care. Unlike her sister, I'm here to feel them.

I point down the road behind us.

"Back there. That's where I got hit."

"You see the license plate? The driver?"

I shake my head. "I blacked out."

"And then what?"

"When I woke up, my bike was gone. And there were footprints around me."

"He do anything to you?"

"... What do you mean?"

I know what she means.

"You know what I mean."

"He just took my bike," I say. "I got up, walked, and then I got here and I saw—"

The woods there, empty now. The sun seems to stop at the edge of the road, marked by a pile of withering bouquets and water-soaked votives set in front of that small cross, a pink ribbon tied around it. Pink. I stare past it, into the darkness, and I have no idea how I ever saw that flash of color in the first place, and again, I have that thought about the way the universe is working, but I still don't say it aloud.

"What did you see?"

"Well—Ashley."

"Show me."

"Nora, I don't—"

"Show me."

I lead her down the ditch and into the woods. It's an easier trip this time. At first, the sameness of the area, the lack of Ashley as its marker, makes me worried I won't find the exact spot she lay, but that moment of discovery is burned in me and it stops me in my tracks. I let out a slow breath.

"Was it there?" She nods a little off center to where her sister was.

I shake my head, pointing.

"There."

"Show me."

"Nora—"

"Please."

When I turn to her, there are tears in her eyes. A light breeze pulls my hair from my face and rustles the leaves in the trees. And then, the faint trilling of birds I can't see, singing their sweet songs to one another. I think of Ashley out here alone, the world moving around her, without her, and it makes me dizzy enough that I sit down where she lay in the end anyway. I stare at the gaps of sky through the trees. A whole world in front of her wide-open eyes, as unreachable to her as she to it.

"Just like that?"

"No."

"Show me how it looked."

"Jesus, Nora."

"I need to see it."

"Why?"

She presses her hands against her eyes.

"Just do it, okay? Maybe you'll remember something."

I do as she's asked. I lie on the ground, tilting my head back, my chin pointed stiffly upward. I turn my right leg toward my left and I pin my right arm beside myself, realizing how uncomfortable a position it all actually is. My sore body protests it. Nora makes her way to me, standing over me while I complete the pose. I rest my left arm against my chest, feeling the added weight of my cast, and let my fingers reach for my throat. I swallow, feel the jump of movement there, and it's suddenly obscene, to have all this.

Excerpted from I'm the Girl by Courtney Summers. Copyright © 2022 by Courtney Summers. Excerpted by permission of Wednesday Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.