“I think she tried to tell me the other night,” I choke. I’m remembering that last, strange conversation with Glory in the amphitheater. “But she couldn’t.”

“She wanted you to know.” Cole’s voice cuts through the fog. “That’s why she gave you that green notebook. Why she let you find the second one at her place.” He pauses. Reaches for me in the dark. I let him pull me away from Lex and hold me close. Because I know he needs that physical anchor to keep him from drifting. He needs me. “That’s why she left you the lavender. She was trying to trigger those memories. Hoping you’d figure it out.”

“Why?” Val wants to know. “Why would she want anyone to figure out what she did?”

Cole’s answer is so simple. So honest. “Because she was tired.”

“But Glory was—she is—was—Fuck.” Jude rubs at his eyes in frustration. “She was so sweet. You know? How could she—” He stops. Shakes his head. “How could she do something like that?”

“She became,” Val says. “Whatever happened that last night, between her and Avril’s mom, she let it turn her into someone else. Someone we wouldn’t be able to recognize. Someone she probably didn’t even recognize herself.”

I think of that quote from Hamlet. Willa’s favorite. A line from a girl who’s doomed to drown. Our theme for the summer.

We know who we are, but not who we may be.

How had it never occurred to me that sometimes people become something dark and twisted and secret. Something that’s nothing but a shadow of who they once were.

“I still don’t understand exactly what happened that night.” Jude’s voice is hoarse. Threaded with tears and thick with grief and confusion. “After the argument you remembered.”

“How did the three of you end up at Willa’s place?” Lex asks.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Lots of the details are missing.”

I don’t know exactly what happened in those last hours. Or moments. Between the deadly tinkling of wind chimes and George pulling me out of the sea.

I don’t know who B. C. is.

I don’t know anything, really. Except that my mother is dead. And now the only person with any real answers is probably dead, too.

It’s late and the temperature has dropped. We’re all shivering. Damp. Numb from the cold. And from what we just witnessed. Jude says we should go to bed. Try to get some sleep. We still have a show tomorrow, after all.

Cole holds my hand as we slip through the tree branches like a band of ghosts. Nobody makes a sound. But just before I step out into the open, the foghorn sings out low and sorrowful in the darkness. I glance back over my shoulder.

And there they are. So real.