Katie didn’t want to lie to him, but she was afraid if she was honest he would think she was a freak, so she settled for half the truth. “Six months, but I kind of refused to leave my room because I hated them, and then it made me kind of depressed, and then I didn’t want to,” she said.

“So you didn’t leave your room at all?”

“I went to school and church, and I had to eat meals with my family, but besides that, no.” She could feel him looking at her but stared forward, afraid she’d see pity in his eyes.

“What did you do in your room?”

“Read a little, listened to music, but mostly nothing. The first couple months I didn’t have a phone or Internet, and by the time they gave them back to me, I didn’t care.”

“What made you start caring again?”

Katie looked at him then and was surprised to see only interest in his eyes. “They made me go to a psychiatrist, and he…” She wasn’t sure what Dr. Drayton had done exactly. “He listened to me, I guess. I sound like I’m crazy or something and I’m not.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. Things better now?”

“Yeah. This is probably going to sound weird, but when I talk about it, I feel like I’m describing someone else. At the time I just didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.”

“I get that. After my mom died I had to live with my dad for a while. It sucked. He has a wife and little kids and this whole life that has nothing to do with me. I felt like I was in this alternate universe where my mom had never existed. I only lasted three weeks. I stayed with a friend until I finished the school year and then found my grandma.”

“What did your dad do?”

“Nothing. He knew it wasn’t working. I hadn’t even seen him for ten years when she died. I barely remembered him. He was like a stranger.”

“That sucks.”

He shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck about him.”

The conversation turned lighter then as Matt talked about the job he’d recently gotten at a lumberyard, which would hopefully turn full-time after the summer hires went back to school. “I could make some pretty decent money,” he said.

“You’re not going to college?” Katie thought everyone went to college.

“I just want to make music. College isn’t going to help me do that.”

Katie was thinking about how to respond when she saw the blonde from the first night she’d met Matt approaching. He was going to leave, and she’d completely forgotten to get his birth date or a few strands of his hair. “There’s something in your hair,” she thought to say.

“What?”

“I don’t know—just something.” Katie reached out and gripped several pieces of his hair before yanking hard.

“Ow.” His hand immediately went to his head, his eyebrows pulled together in a frown.