Chapter 1
It had been three days since I died. I was Wynne Ashford.
My family didn't even buy a decent urn. They dumped my ashes into a cheap container and tossed it onto the living room coffee table. It sat right in front of our huge family portrait.
In the picture, my mom, my dad, and my older brother crowded around my "sister," Sienna Ashford. They treated her like total royalty, smiling so widely.
Then there was me, shoved to the very edge like some creepy photobomber.
My soul was stuck inside that stupid container. I couldn't escape. But it gave me a perfect view of Sienna—the fraud who had stolen my life for twenty years.
At that moment, she pulled out my secret diary.
A sick, twisted smile crept onto her face as she flipped through the pages. Then, the thief grabbed a pen and started forging my handwriting in a brand-new notebook.
The girl had no idea that those pages were my final goodbye, written over the last hundred days of my life. More importantly, she didn't know I was still "writing" a new one.
It was a death diary. My soul acted as the pen, and my very own ashes served as the ink.
*****
The doctor slid the stark medical report across his desk. He tapped the wood twice. The dull thud sounded like a hammer nailing a coffin shut.
"Terminal bone cancer. It's aggressive," he announced.
His voice was completely dead, like he was reading off a grocery list instead of handing me a death sentence. "Best case, you have three months. Spend the time doing whatever you want."
I snatched the paper. My grip tightened until my fingernails dug deep half-moons into the edges.
When I stepped out of the hospital, the late afternoon sun hit me, blindingly bright. The glare made my eyes sting.
A sudden, vicious spike of pain tore through my right knee.
It felt like someone had poured shattered glass into the joint. Every step sent a sick, grinding crunch through my bones.
I finally dragged myself home. The second I pushed open the front door, a burst of confetti and screaming cheers hit me right in the face.
"Surprise!" someone called out.
It was Julian Ashford, my older brother, shaking a bottle of champagne. Sticky foam splattered straight onto my jeans.
Sticky foam splattered straight onto my jeans. He didn't even glance my way, though.
He didn't even spare me a glance before turning back to Sienna with a wide grin. "Your college acceptance letter came in, Sienna. You got in. We're celebrating tonight."
A giant banner was strung across the living room, spelling out "Congratulations, Sienna" in huge letters.
Sienna was wearing the white Dior dress I'd been eyeing for ages but never got. To top it off, a dazzling ruby necklace lay against her collarbone.
My mom had promised me both for my eighteenth birthday.
But one day, Sienna threw a dramatic tantrum over her SAT prep, and just like that, my gifts were no longer mine.
She strutted over to me and did a little twirl, making the white skirt flare out like a blooming rose. "Oh, hey. Wynne, you're back. I'm so sorry. We got so caught up in my big news that...
"Oops. I guess we all forgot it was your birthday today, too."
She was laying it on thick, all sweet and innocent, while her eyes practically danced with cruel delight.
Swallowing down the sickening pain in my leg, I leaned hard against the entryway table to keep from collapsing.
Right on cue, Mom walked out of the kitchen carrying Sienna's favorite cheesecake. The moment she saw me, her face twisted into a furious scowl.
"Christ, Wynne, we're trying to have a good time here. What's with the funeral face?" she snapped, slamming the cake plate down onto the table. "Are you trying to ruin the mood?
"Go sulk in your room. I can't even look at you right now."
I opened my mouth. I almost blurted out that I was literally dying.
The words sat heavy on my tongue, but I swallowed them back down along with the metallic taste of blood.
Defeated, I dragged my dead-weight right leg behind me as I slowly limped up the stairs to my dark, cramped bedroom.
Late at night, I huddled under my blankets and unlocked the secret diary I'd bought.
Downstairs, the noise of the family party still hummed through the floorboards.
My fingers shook as I pressed my pen to the first page.
It read, "Cancer is gnawing my bones to dust. But the cold, dead silence of my own family hurts a million times worse."
The final hundred days had begun. Even brushing my hair became a nightmare. Clumps of dry, brittle hair slid from my scalp, leaving it bare, cold, and exposed.
My stomach was in constant knots. Even a sip of water made me throw up bitter bile. I kept all those awful details locked inside the diary, right beside my empty bottles of ridiculously expensive painkillers.
Around that time, Sienna started acting weird.
She started slipping into my room while I was out.
Half the time, her heavy perfume lingered thick in the air when I walked in.
Other times, my pens had been shifted just enough to prove someone had been messing with them.
One afternoon, a brutal wave of nausea forced me to clock out early at my part-time job.
I dragged myself home. The second I pushed open my bedroom door, I froze dead in my tracks.
Sienna was sitting at my desk, my private diary spread wide open in front of her.
She held a plastic ruler, glaring down at the pages with a crazy, intense stare.
The creep was actually measuring the spacing of my handwriting and checking the slant of my letters.
An identical blank notebook rested near her elbow. The pages were covered in messy attempts to forge the signature "Wynne Ashford".
"What are you doing?" I asked.
My throat was raw, scraping like sandpaper with rage and weakness.
Sienna jumped out of her skin. The plastic ruler smacked against the hardwood floor.
She panicked, slamming the notebook shut and shoving it behind her back. In a split second, she plastered on her wide, innocent puppy-dog eyes.
"Wynne," she stammered. "I... I was just trying to tidy up in here. Your room was a disaster, so I figured I'd help you out."
"Give it to me," I screamed, lunging across the room to snatch my diary.
My bad leg folded under my weight. A violent cramp ripped through my knee, sending me crashing face-first to the floor.
"What is all that noise?" Julian shouted from the hallway.
He stormed inside and planted himself in front of Sienna, shielding her like a bodyguard.
Right on cue, Sienna's eyes welled up. Tears started spilling down her cheeks.
"Julian, Wynne walked in and totally blew up at me," she sobbed. "I was wiping down her desk. Is she really still holding a grudge over that Dior dress?"
A look of pure disgust crossed Julian's face before he roughly shoved me back.
I slammed into the sharp corner of my bed frame, and the pain hit so hard that the room went dark for a second.
"Are you sick in the head, Wynne?" he barked. "Sienna is the sweetest person ever, always going out of her way for you. Meanwhile, you just act like a jealous, paranoid freak."
I slowly tilted my head up, staring at the brother who used to sneak me candy as a kid.
Forcing a twisted, painful smile, I met his eyes. "You know what, Julian? You're right. I really am sick."
He let out a disgusted scoff. "Yeah, sick and twisted. You just want to make everyone around you miserable."
The bedroom door slammed shut. Left alone on the floor, I caught a glimpse of my wasted, skeletal body in the mirror.
"Yeah, I am sick," I whispered to the empty room. "My bones are rotting from the inside out."