At the top of the steps, she peered into the shadowy doorway at the end of the hall. Her feet inched across the carpet. She clutched Sutton’s thin pajama pants and tried to slow her breathing as she stepped into the darkness of Sutton’s room. Goose bumps rose on her bare arms as a cool breeze swirled around her body.

The window was wide open.

Moonlight spilled across Sutton’s light blue sheets and the glossy magazine next to her bed. Emma took a small step backward and thudded into something warm and hard. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled against the hand that suddenly wrapped over her mouth. Another hand was on her waist, pulling her body tight and holding her still no matter how hard she tried to break free.

“Shhhh.” Warm breath tickled her ear. “It’s me,” a low voice growled.

The guy’s voice resonated through me like an electric shock. From it cascaded a series of images, disjointed and brief. Sneaking away from a party and kissing in the desert. Finding a letter in my locker that was so heartfelt it made my knees weak. And then, yet again, that memory in the courtyard: him saying something to me, and me shouting back, As if I’d ever want to be with you? You’re nothing but a loser!

And then a final memory wriggled to the surface, so short and sharp it was nothing more than a synapse: car headlights shining on his face. His eyes widening with fear, his arms thrashing in front of his body. And then . . . boom. Contact.

The hands loosened their grip and spun Emma. Her body went rigid. She took a second to process the hulking boy with dark hair, blinking, deep-set hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and deep Cupid’s bow lips. That face. She knew that face. She saw a secretive boy in the pictures in Madeline’s house. A smirking boy whose face was plastered on bulletin boards across town and haunted all those Have you seen him? Facebook posts. And now, here he was, smiling a strange, jagged smile, the kind of smile that hinted that he knew absolutely everything about her—including exactly who she wasn’t.

“Thayer,” Emma whispered.

Epilogue - A Moment in Time

Epilogue
A Moment in Time

As I stood in my old bedroom, staring at the boy who’d just climbed through my window, time just . . . stopped. The wind quit gusting outside. The birds fell silent. Emma and Thayer froze in their places, too, immobile as statues. Only I continued to move and flutter and think, getting my bearings and collecting my thoughts.