She reached out a hand, but not as if she wanted me to take it. As if she was fumbling blind in the dark for something to hang on to. What’s happening to me? A convulsion worked through her and she turned to the toilet to retch.

I remember thinking the blood was far too red.

I remember, later, thinking, How would you fake that?

Chapter Four

I know where I’m supposed to be going, but I stall a little longer and end up in the drive-in parking lot of Sunny Jay’s: the seedy general store slash liquor shop where all the high school kids used to buy without ID. Myself included. Across the street, what used to be a patch of scrubby land used informally as a secondary dump has been cleared out, irrigated, and converted into a public playground: a few screaming kids coast down a bright red plastic slide and pump their legs on a spanking-new swing set while their parents wilt in the shade. A big sign on the chain-link fence reads Optimal Cares! Not exactly subtle.

I shift my car into park and practically jog to the door. Inside, I head straight for the meager wine section, scanning the crappy pink zinfandel box wines and the Yellow Tail and the jugs of Carlo Rossi. I’m about to pull a decent-looking albeit dusty Malbec from the shelf—hard to go wrong there—when someone speaks up behind me.

“Need help?”

“No, thanks—” I turn and the bottle slips. I barely manage to catch it.

There are a lot of things I’ve never forgotten about Barrens—a lot of things I can’t forget. The smell of chicken farms in summertime. The feeling of being stuck in the wrong place, or in the wrong body, or both. The pitch-black night, the silence.

But I have forgotten this: you can’t go anywhere in this town without running into someone. It’s one of the first things you shed in a city, the feeling of being watched, observed, and noticed; the feeling of racketing like a pinball between familiar people and places, and no way to get out. First Misha, and now…

“You need anything, you let me know.” Dave Condor—who always went by his last name—goes back to counting money into a register. His hair half obscures his face. Something about him always set me on edge, even in high school. Maybe because he was always quiet, fluid, like he’d just yawned into being.

I slide the bottle back onto the shelf and take a couple of steps toward the door, already regretting the detour. My dad would probably say this was punishment for wanting a drink in the first place.

Before I can make it outside, he looks up. “Wine’s pretty old. Not in a good way. More of beer and liquor people around here,” he tells me. “Not from here?”

He doesn’t recognize me. It feels like an achievement. I smile. “Why do you say that?” I ask, genuinely curious. Maybe the small-town stain can be scrubbed away after all.