There were several lingering seconds, and then Nava spoke. “It would be best if she were taken to a hospital and checked out thoroughly. The ambulance is on the way.” There was a silence so abrupt and thick Summer had trouble keeping still. And then she heard it: the sound of the siren, so beautiful. It would take her out of this place.

20

Now

After she checked into her room, Rainy FaceTimed with Grant.

She was jarred when she saw his unshaven face.

“Do you like it?” he asked, stroking a week’s worth of facial hair. She knew that he shaved every day, but she’d had no idea he could grow a beard that quickly. It made her wonder what else she didn’t know about him.

“It’s different,” she said. In truth, she hated it. It reminded her of Taured.

His eyes were laughing as he fingered his chin. “Don’t worry, it’ll be gone by the time I get home. The guys here wanted me to do it because they didn’t believe I could grow a full beard in a week.” And then he showed her the view outside of his hotel and Rainy oohed and aahed. When he sat back down and they settled into their chat, she lost the will to describe the trip. She kept him busy, talking about things on his end, but finally he asked the dreaded question: “So how did it go, huh? Did you have fun or what, party girl?”

“As much fun as a party girl would have in...the library.”

She was choosing her words carefully. She’d also chosen to sit against a white wall while she FaceTimed him so he wouldn’t know she wasn’t home. She hoped the news hadn’t reached him yet. She didn’t feel like explaining. She couldn’t even explain to herself what she thought she was still doing here.

His laugh was infectious, and she missed him fiercely. “Eight more days,” she said.

“Eight more days,” he repeated in the low drawl that meant intimate things only they understood. They hung up and Rainy wrestled with the guilt of her dishonesty. First, she’d insisted that she didn’t want to go on the trip, and then she’d extended said trip—which reminded her that she hadn’t booked her flight back yet. Now that she was here, somehow the drive to go back to the place where the nightmare had started had felt natural, unavoidable. She’d needed to go, that’s all she knew, and she hadn’t even made it to the compound—just skirted Friendship’s shitty main street. Now she was in a single room at the same hotel she’d shared with the Tiger Mountain girls, curled on top of the covers like a shrimp. What ending was she looking for?