‘Not fair. I never go into bars.’ I wouldn’t be allowed in one at my age, anyway. ‘My fights are always in the parking lots. Get it right.’

‘Idiot.’

‘That’s the best you’ve got, Gothika? Because I expect quality insults from you, and that’s not really measuring up.’

‘Look, Steroid Brain—’

‘Okay, that’s better, but work on it.’

‘You are such a tool! I love you, you know, right?’

‘Right,’ I said softly. ‘Scary girl.’

She blew me a kiss and turned away so I wouldn’t see her cry. I glanced at Mikey, who was waiting near the door with my bag.

One last look around at the Glass House, my house … at the couch where I’d played countless hours of video games, at the kitchen where we’d yelled at each other over whose turn it was to do dishes and trash duty, at the carpet we always said we’d steam clean one of these days. At the scars on the walls from battles that had almost cost us our lives.

One last look at home.

‘I’ll be back,’ I promised them, and myself, and then Michael and I walked out the doorway and into the cold, vast world beyond.

On the way down the steps I checked my phone, again. Nothing from Claire. It was late now. Maybe she hadn’t seen my video. Maybe she’d seen it, and hadn’t cared. Maybe she was angrier than I’d ever thought.

Maybe she was out having fun and had already forgotten all about me. That was the scariest thought of all. Sure, I might be charming by Morganville standards, but she wasn’t locked into the shallow end of the pool now, and there were plenty more to choose from. Genuinely smart college boys.

Thinking about that made me stupid. I knew better than to check my phone and forget my surroundings – we lived in Morganville, after all, and one thing you didn’t do was get distracted in public, at night.

And as Michael headed for the car with my backpack, and I fumbled with the phone and tried to see if I’d missed a call, it cost me, because a dark shape rushed at me from the darkness, and I was unprepared.