Chapter 1

When I was five, I begged my sister to fly a kite. The wind took it from me. Then, the string cut her throat.

At the funeral, my parents' grief turned on me.

"I just wanted to play with her," I sobbed, struggling to explain. "I didn't know it would happen."

From that day on, my parents despised me.

Years later, when my school announced a kite festival, my mother snapped.

"You killer! My daughter is dead because of your kites! You love them so much? Fine. Fly one. Fly it until you break!"

She drove me twenty miles into the empty, wind-whipped fields outside the city and thrust the kite into my hands.

But she forgot. The forecast had issued a severe storm warning for today.

Mom's car disappeared from my sight.

I stood alone, the kite in my hands, and began to run.

The wind wasn't strong enough. It would catch the kite, only to let it fall, sending it crashing to the ground again and again.

On the seventh try, it finally caught a steady current and lurched into the sky.

II anchored the spool under a heavy stone, then sat on the hard ground, drew my knees to my chest, and looked up.

The kite danced on the wind.

"Fly high," I whispered, my voice lost in the gathering gale. "If you see Lily... tell her I miss her."

After Lily's death, the word "kite" became a taboo in our house.

A mere shadow of one on TV was enough. My mother would seize up, then explode, shoving me toward the door. "Out! Go fly your kite, you family-wrecker!"

In her eyes, I wasn't her daughter. I was the sin. Lily's killer.

The wind's howl deepened into a roar. The sky cracked open, releasing a barrage of fat, icy raindrops.

The kite string sang a high, desperate note as it strained. The stone anchoring the spool tumbled away.

"No!"

I dove for it, a raw instinct to obey overriding all sense.

If I lost the kite, Mom would be even angrier with me!

Just as my fingertips were about to touch it, a searing, blinding pain exploded.

"Ah!"

Seconds later, warm, sticky liquid gushed out, quickly coating half my face.

The world in my left eye turned blood-red and blurry.

Clutching my eye, I trembled with pain, my voice torn to shreds by the wind and rain.

"It hurts... Help me..."

I stumbled through the mud, blind and disoriented. Rain mixed with blood flowed into my mouth, tasting salty and metallic.

My hands clawed. At nothing. There was nothing to hold.

Then my back connected with something unyielding with a sickening crunch. The world jolted to a halt.

Then, a sharp, piercing pain, so intense it swallowed all the agony I'd felt before, erupted through me.

I don't know how much time passed, but I found myself floating, light as a feather, out of that broken, lifeless body.

I looked down at the body on the ground. My body.

So, I was dead.

The downpour continued, washing over my small body and the bloodstains on the rock.

It's good to be dead. I won't have to walk home, tired and slow, anymore.

As soon as I floated home, I saw Mom and Dad eating dinner.

First, I heard Mom's shrill voice.

"Pick her up? Let her die! Doesn't she love flying kites in this kind of weather?"

Dad hesitated. "But the rain is too heavy."

"Heavy?" Mom slammed her forks down. "If she hadn't insisted on taking Lily to fly a kite, my Lily wouldn't be dead! She's a murderer! Why couldn't it have been her who died instead?"

I wanted to tell Mom that I didn't know the wind would get so strong.

If I had known, I would never have dragged Lily there...

But Mom couldn't hear me.

Her gaze flickered to my school uniform, which had fallen from the couch to the floor. Her pupils constricted, as if she'd seen something filthy.

She rushed over, grabbed the uniform, and furiously threw it to the ground, stomping on it like a madwoman.

"You curse! Why didn't you die instead?!"

Dad quickly went to pull her back.

"Alright, alright, don't get yourself sick over her. She's not worth it."

"The weather forecast said a storm today. You stay home, I'll go pick her up."

Mom gasped, her chest heaving violently. She looked at the uniform on the floor, her eyes filled with chilling hatred.

"Go get her? Absolutely not! I forbid it! She managed to crawl back once, didn't she? Let her find her own way this time!"

"If she dies out there... it's justice. A life for a life. Let it be her atonement."

Dad's gaze shifted from Mom to the window. A slow, defeated nod was his only answer.

"Okay, I won't go."

Curled in my corner, I heard them. And a new kind of pain bloomed in whatever was left of me-a pain sharper than the kite string, deeper than the steel bar.

Mom.

You got your wish.

I really did die out there.

Is the debt paid now? Is Lily avenged?