“I don’t know what to think.” Harper opens her door. “And it doesn’t matter, does it? We hit him and just drove away. Whatever the circumstances, we can’t ignore that. Let’s go in.”

Josh and Harper are already heading that way, but my body tenses looking at the neon sign.

“I’m not twenty-one,” I say quietly.

Kayla laughs. “Hell, they’re not going to check ID. Merry Christmas, Mira. You’re stranded in the middle of Hellhole, Pennsylvania, but hey—you can probably get drunk.”

She leaves with her strange, wispy laugh trailing behind her, and I feel suddenly terribly alone. I don’t like to get drunk. They don’t know this—no one knows this, other than Zari and Phoebe. Zari knows because she was the one who held back my hair when we snuck into her mom’s liquor cabinet and drank most of a bottle of some awful peach nightmare. I cried and puked and confessed the next morning to Phoebe, who washed my clothes and fed me some weird herbal tea that eased my hangover. Kayla doesn’t know any of that, but her comment makes me hate being here. I don’t want to be with these strangers. I want my mom. My best friend. I want to go home.

Maybe this bar will help us get there. But as I watch Kayla’s thin body wobble-sway across the snowy parking lot, I can’t help but feeling like it’s a step in the wrong direction.

August 30

Mira,

You post that you’re single and searching—you make jokes with your friends like you think love is a myth. What we have is sacred, but you treat it like trash. Who do you think you’re fooling?

You belong with me.

You know it in your bones.

You paint it on every canvas.

The student gallery. What a surprise to find you’re only in high school. But the rest was no surprise at all. Another clock with the same time. All is dark except for me. White shirt. Dark pants.

I’m the one turned away in the painting, but you’re the one who turned your back on me.

You can’t keep running from this, Mira.

I will make you see.

Yours

Chapter Eighteen

At the bar door, Kayla pauses, her reflection illuminated in the glass. Her eyes and mouth are dark blue smears of shadow in her pale face. It’s unnerving.

“Are you staying outside?” she asks with a smirk.

I slip in behind Kayla, and Harper doubles back to the door. She stops to hold it open for Brecken, but for a split second I don’t see him. Maybe he decided to wait in the car. But then, he’s there, loping across the lot with his chin up and eyes glittering.