Stop it. There’s no reason to think you’re gonna screw this up. You’re doing fine. Everything’s fine.

So why does it feel like a painful shift is inevitable?

One possible explanation arrives later that night, when I go to pee before bed. I am always more emotionally sensitive when I get my period, and with everything going on, I completely forgot to keep track of my cycle. Turns out even being regular can’t help you if your brain is a mess.

But it takes me two minutes of frantic searching to realize the bigger problem: I forgot to pack pads and tampons. It all comes back to me in a rush that of course Sierra and I were on the same cycle, and of course she finished them, promised to pick up more before I left, and never did. And now it’s been a month and I’m in an all-boys dorm after curfew, and I am so deeply screwed. Staining my sheets would be bad enough, but staining them and then having to use the washing machines at Rumson to clean them? Hell no.

It’s fine. I’m just gonna stay awake all night. Or sleep in the shower. Sure, that makes sense. God, how I wish I had a tub.

Ugh, and Lockwood is so close. I bet it’s filled with tampons and pads—nothing but period protection as far as the eye can see! But of course, it’s locked at this hour, and so is Rumson, and am I seriously considering jumping out the window and running to Sabrina’s so I can yell up for her to toss me down a tampon?

I think forlornly of the rope ladder, curled up and safely hidden in the confines of Matt and Salem’s room. I could ask them to send it down, but I do not want to explain why, and ugh it doesn’t matter because I have to change my underwear and go back to the bathroom anyway before I turn my pajamas into a crime scene.

I grab my phone and tap out a quick text to Sabrina, just in case she can somehow sneak out and save me, and am relieved when she immediately responds with a thumbs-up. I have no idea what she has planned, but I’m not wasting time having her answer my text questions when I need her here ASAP, so I just wad up some tissues and wait. Finally, I hear a tapping on the glass, but it doesn’t sound like a pebble, more like—

“Aah!” I jump twenty feet in the air (I’m pretty sure) at the sight of Salem Grayson, standing on the rope ladder, a fist poised right by the window he’d rapped on. “No,” I mutter. “No, she did not.”