Across the table, Jude has his arm slung around the back of Lex’s chair. The two of them have been picking through Jude’s fruit cup, but Lex turns his attention to Val now.

“As far as it takes,” he says without hesitation, and I admire him for that certainty.

“So you’d do what Orion does?” Val asks him. “You’d give up everything? Just to be with him?”

“Yeah,” Lex answers, like he’s confused about why it’s even a question. “Of course.” He grins at me, and then at Jude. I can literally see the love coming off him like waves of heat rising off a Texas highway in the summer. And it’s beautiful. Because he obviously means it. That’s just how Lex is. He turns toward Val again. “Wouldn’t you?”

Val shrugs. Swallows a spoonful of Cheerios. “I don’t know,” she says. “I wanna say no. I mean, I don’t think I would.” She frowns. “But maybe I’ve never really been in love.”

I know she’s thinking about Chester. They’ve been on and off more times in the past week than I can count. Right now I think they’re together again, but I never know for sure. And it changes by the hour.

“What if you lost yourself along the way?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud. But the words hover over our breakfast table.

Jude grins. “Everybody gets a little lost sometimes.” He gives Lex a squeeze. “You just gotta let someone find you.”

I look around the cafeteria. I’d been expecting Cole to show up at breakfast, now that he’s living in the cabins, but he isn’t here. And after last night, I feel so weird and disconnected without him.

Unsafe.

My legs are covered in scratches from my midnight walk to the cemetery. Torn by thorns and brambles. I woke up with blood on my sheets.

All of it felt hazy.

But I can still see those tombstones, perfect and upright again in the fog.

I remember meeting myself at the edge of the ocean.

I managed to get out of bed, though. I showered.

Said good morning to Val. And Lex. Jude.

Walked to the farmhouse.

Filled my tray.

Now I’m pretending to eat my breakfast.

But everything feels different this morning. Not quite right. Like I’m climbing a familiar staircase. Counting the steps. And I know how many there should be. But there’s one extra today. Or one too few. So everything feels off. I raise my foot to take that next step and fall into nothingness.

Again and again.

Because I get it now. Cole was telling the truth. Whisper Cove is not like anywhere else I’ve ever been. Something happens here. In the fog.

Something I don’t understand.