“Noelle, I—”

“Remember that time we talked about Wuthering Heights in the library? I even read the book because you asked me to. You couldn’t remember that it was actually set in Yorkshire.”

“I remember,” I whispered. My heart felt like it was lodged in my throat, pounding frantically.

“That was funny,” she rasped. The male voice said something else and her breathing hitched. “Evelyn, I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk to you or . . . or see you again. But I want you to know that I’ll be all right. Please don’t try to look for me. Don’t do anything stupid. Just . . . can you promise me that you’ll be fine?”

It was only then that I realized what she was doing. She wasn’t calling to tell us how to help her; she was calling to say good-bye. The tears I had been able to keep at bay until then finally spilled. “I can’t,” I sobbed. “I don’t think I will be. Please, tell me what to do to help—”

“There’s nothing you could do.” Noelle inhaled shakily. “Just . . . just know that if I could have, I would’ve stayed. I really wish I could’ve.”

“N-no,” I said. “Noelle, I won’t accept that. I’ll find a way, I promise. This isn’t—”

Before I could finish my sentence, the line went dead. I was left staring at my phone, my shoulders shaking as tears kept pouring down my cheeks, dripping down my chin and onto the black screen. This might have been the last time I would hear Noelle’s voice. The same voice that had told me not to be ashamed of who I was, that had woken me up from nightmares, that had whispered against my lips and neck and wrist.

The same voice that had told me she used to have bad dreams every night, too, that had shaken as she had spoken to her mother on the phone, You’re sure it was him? , the voice that had promised she would try to open up to me, just not about this one thing, I’ve always been better at running away.

I was pulled back into the present when Seth suddenly said,

“I think I’ve got him.”

“What?” I whispered. Looking up, I saw him sitting next to me with his phone in hand, the other at his mouth as he nervously chewed on his thumbnail.

“God, we’re lucky. The bloody idiot let her call from a landline.”

Jasper sank down on the mattress next to him with a frown.

“What does that mean?”

“With a mobile phone, it would’ve been pretty much impossible for us to legally track him, but this was so simple. Ever heard of reverse phone number search? All I had to do was google the phone number and, because it wasn’t listed as private, this address came up.”

I leaned over to see what he had pulled up on the screen. It was a website with the slogan Find out who cal ed you, right now, online and for free at the top and a box below it in which Seth had typed the number Noelle had called from.