My thoughts returned to all that had happened with Calla, the awkward Promise Ball, Sarabeth, Krista, then finding and losing James. These thoughts crashed through my mind in a loop until I worked to filter out the extraneous ones. My focus became a pinpoint on James and his rough behavior at The House.

He was not the boy I knew.

The James I had encountered at The House had been tricked into forgetting me, forced to live in the wild. Tonight, I would get a taste of what daily life was like for him. My heart was heavy and at the same time, afraid. As much as I loved James, I didn’t know if it would be enough to bring him back to me.

A breeze passed through my pitiful shelter, triggering shivers that would stay with me throughout the night. I tucked the pocketknife into my front jeans pocket, then wrapped the blanket around me like a sleeping bag. Digging further into the sack, I found the spare pair of socks and tugged them over my hands. Keeping the flashlight close at hand, I curled up against the fold in the tarp. The events of this impossibly long day combined with the cold night air caught up to me, and it only took a few minutes before I was asleep.

That was the first night since leaving Woodvine that I dreamed of James. Unlike the hundreds of other dreams he and I had shared since we were small children, this one was dark and disturbing.

In my dream, I was back at the Promise Ball. I had just returned to my table after dancing with one of the nicer boys. The music started up again, and the next boy came to collect me. He didn’t speak. He grabbed my upper arm, and yanked me out to the dance floor. When we got there, he spun me around to face him.

“I really don’t remember you this way,” the boy said. “In my dreams, you were always so much prettier.” The music stopped. The boy dropped to one knee, then removed his mask.

James.

“Don’t tell me you believed all that crap I told you back in Woodvine,” he said. “That was just all part of the game. I only said I loved you to get you to come back with me. And, here you are, ready to marry me.” Laughing, he shook his head. “You girls get dumber every year.”

The dream shifted to me sitting on my bed, flipping through the pages of the Bound Book. I turned once again to where James’s name was recorded, and followed the line across the page. This time, my name wasn’t there; just a smudge where someone had tried to erase whatever had been written.