After my best friend Lily Warren was assaulted, she took her own life.

I was the only person who knew who had done it.

And I was the one who helped cover for him.

When Lily's mother knelt at my feet, begging me to tell the truth, I turned away with a cold face.

When the people in town called me heartless and smashed my door, I let my dog, Buddy, attack them without hesitation.

Ten years later, I was dying.

My long-lost best friend, Claire Sutton, returned as the wealthiest woman in the country. The first thing she did was drag me onto the memory-trial platform normally reserved for death-row prisoners.

"Rachel Vale, you disgusting animal. You protected a rapist. Lily and I were blind to ever call you our friend!

"Lily has been dead for ten years, and you let her attacker walk free for ten years!

"Today, I'm going to use the memory extractor I developed to see exactly who you've been protecting!"

But when the real culprit appeared before everyone, Claire Sutton collapsed on the spot.

She could barely stay on her knees.

The day Claire Sutton put me on trial, she made sure the entire town could watch.

The square was packed shoulder to shoulder. Reporters crowded behind barricades with cameras raised, and livestreams from every major platform carried my face across the country.

I was already dying. Multiple organs were failing. Medication and IV nutrition were the only things keeping my body from shutting down. Still, I was dragged onto the platform like a convicted criminal.

A man lunged at me before the guards could stop him. His hands closed around my throat.

"Rachel Vale, why did you protect him?

"You animal! You destroyed my family! Why are you still alive?"

I could not breathe. Black spots swarmed my vision.

The crowd erupted around us.

"That's her! The heartless one! Her friend was assaulted, and she knew who did it but kept quiet!

"Lily killed herself, and when Lily's mother begged at her door until her forehead bled, Rachel would not even open up.

"She even set her dog on people. She's disgusting."

Their hatred crashed over me from every direction.

Claire stood a few feet away, her brows drawn tight as if someone had knotted them there.

In this world, aside from Lily's family, no one hated me more than Claire Sutton.

Ten years ago, Lily Warren, Claire, and I had been inseparable. Then Lily was found dead after being violated in the woods near my house, and everything between Claire and me shattered.

Because Lily's final note said I had seen the man.

I became his accomplice in the eyes of the town.

And the worst part was, they were not entirely wrong.

I had protected the attacker.

Claire stopped in front of me. Her voice was cold enough to cut.

"Rachel, I am giving you one last chance.

"Say his name. Turn yourself in for covering for him. You can still choose that.

"Because once the memory extractor starts, the high-frequency pulses will make every bone in your body feel like it has been crushed a thousand times over. After that, you will not get another chance to explain yourself."

My face went white. I thrashed against the hands holding me.

"Claire, no!

"You cannot extract my memories!"

Claire seized my wrist, her teeth clenched.

"Now you're afraid?

"Too bad.

"I have to get justice for Lily."

Tears blurred my vision.

"Claire, please listen to me. My memories cannot be shown. You will regret this."

Claire laughed once, sharp and bitter. Her eyes were bloodshot when she leaned closer.

"Regret?

"The thing I regret most is ever calling you my sister."

Two guards forced me into the iron chair. Cold metal cuffs locked around my wrists and ankles.

No matter how hard I fought, they held me down. A helmet descended over my head.

Needles burst through my scalp all at once, thin and freezing, burrowing into my skull like ice picks.

Pain detonated through me.

I screamed until my throat tore. My body convulsed so violently the chair rattled beneath me. It felt as if my soul were being ripped out through the top of my head.

Even then, the crowd only grew louder.

Rotten vegetables and eggs struck the platform. Someone shouted, "Traitor! Parasite! Rot in hell!"

Behind me, the giant screen flickered.

My memories began to rewind.

The first scene appeared before everyone.

It was the third day after Lily's death.

I was dragged to the front of her memorial, where everyone demanded the attacker's name.

They spat on me. They threw stones. Hands clamped around my arms, and someone yanked my hair hard enough to tear it loose.

Fists came down from every direction. My face swelled. Blood filled my mouth. Bruises bloomed across my skin.

I stumbled away from the memorial with the villagers chasing me.

Then came fire.

My house, the only place I had left in the world, burned bright against the night.

I stood there helpless as flames swallowed everything I owned.

Homeless, I fled into the mountains with Buddy.

He was a yellow mutt. After my parents died, he was all I had.

The town found us anyway.

They held me down and killed Buddy in front of me. Then they skinned him, cooked him, and laughed while the pot boiled.

I clutched one of his bones and screamed until my voice disappeared.

That year, I was sixteen.

On the platform, Claire watched my tear-streaked teenage face on the screen and sneered.

"Rachel, after what you did, did you expect anything else?

"If you had not protected him, would people have treated you that way? You do not get to feel wronged. You brought all of it on yourself."

The crowd agreed at once.

"Shameless. She's trying to make us pity her.

"Protecting a rapist makes you no better than one. She deserved hell.

"Lily's family was destroyed. Lily died, and her mother lost her mind. Rachel has no right to play victim."

Then a bright laugh rang out from the screen.

"Lily, slow down!"

Lily's young face appeared in the snow. She was running toward me across a white hillside, cheeks flushed, eyes curved with laughter.

"Incoming!" she shouted, and threw a snowball at me.

"My daughter!" Mr. Warren sobbed, collapsing toward the screen.

He stared at Lily's smiling face and broke down.

After Lily died, that once cheerful man had gone gray almost overnight. For ten years he had gone to the police station again and again, asking the same question: had they found the killer?

Every time, the answer had been no.

There had been no cameras in our rural town back then. My house stood alone near the woods. No one knew who had followed Lily that night.

No one except me.

The memory changed. After the snowball fight, I knelt before a weathered stone angel at the lookout and folded my hands.

"Please keep my friends healthy and happy," my younger self whispered. "Let our friendship last forever."

Claire could not contain herself.

"Rachel Vale, you fake little liar!"

She stormed forward, pointing at me with a shaking hand.

"How dare you show us our childhood? Who are you trying to disgust?

"Ten years. For ten years, you never told the truth. What right do you have to remember us as your friends?"

As if answering her, the next image showed me quietly throwing away a mango Lily had given me.

The crowd exploded.

"Look at that. Acting grateful to her face, then throwing it away behind her back.

"Claire and Lily were so good to her, and this is how she treated them? Cold-blooded from the start."

Claire knew I was severely allergic to mango.

But she said nothing.

She let them mock me.

"I bet she never imagined Claire would become one of the richest women in the country and come back to settle the score.

"Claire, keep going. We want to see the attacker's face."

The crowd shouted for the machine to continue.

Then the screen shifted again.

Claire's younger voice tore through the square.

"Lily! Don't die!"

It was the day Lily's body was pulled from the river.

Rain fell in thin gray sheets. Claire and I collapsed beside Lily's body, sobbing until we could barely breathe.

The water had swollen her. Her skin was cold and pale. She looked nothing like the beautiful, laughing girl in my memories.

I stumbled home that day and curled into the corner of my room.

I hit my own chest again and again as grief tore through me.

"Lily!" my memory screamed. "Why did you die? Why did you leave us?"

On the platform, my present self sat with my eyes shut, tears slipping down my face.

The crowd grew uneasy.

"Wait. Why does she look so devastated?

"If she really protected the attacker, why would she cry like that?"

Mr. Warren roared over them.

"Crocodile tears!"

He pointed at me, shaking with rage.

"My wife knelt outside her door until her forehead split open, and Rachel would not open it!

"She set that dog on us! How could someone like her be good?

"Lily grew up with her, and this is how she treated the mother of her dead friend!"

At that moment Mrs. Warren appeared near the front of the crowd, hair loose and tangled, clutching a worn doll to her chest.

"Lily's good," she murmured. "Lily's not scared. Mommy's here."

The crowd's anger flared again.

Claire's face turned ugly. She rushed up the platform and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me hard.

"Look at them, Rachel!

"This is what your silence did!

"You had no parents. Lily and I pitied you when you were seven and alone. We treated you like family, and this is how you repaid us?"

She slapped me across the face.

"Do you think these memories will soften me?

"Lily is dead!

"And the person who helped kill her was you, Rachel Vale!"

Her hatred was wild enough to tear me apart. Yet beneath it, I saw grief so deep it had never healed.

Lily's death had been a tidal wave to Claire. After the wave passed, everything inside her stayed soaked and ruined.

Then Claire straightened. She wiped her tears upward with the heel of her hand, and her sorrow turned back into ice.

"Rachel, hear me clearly. I will not stop until I find him.

"And when I do, I will send both of you to hell."

She ordered the technicians to widen the extraction range.

They adjusted the console. The red needle on the monitor jumped.

Inside the helmet, the probes drove deeper into my skull.

I screamed.

Electric current ripped through my brain. White light burst behind my eyes. My body thrashed against the restraints until the iron cuffs cut my skin.

Blood ran down my hairline and dripped onto the metal chair.

The screen flickered wildly.

Classrooms. Creeks. Mountain paths.

Memory after memory of Claire, Lily, and me together.

But not the night Lily was attacked.

The crowd stirred.

"Why isn't it showing that night?

"Didn't Lily's note say Rachel knew who did it?"

Claire turned to the technician.

"What is going on?

"Why can't you find the memory with the attacker?"

The technician wiped sweat from his forehead.