“You should go find him,” I say. “It’s a nice night. You could take a walk.” Lex raises one eyebrow at me, and I laugh. “Or something.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t wanna leave you alone.”

But he’s not responsible for me. I don’t need a babysitter.

And I refuse to be afraid of things that aren’t real.

“I’m a big girl,” I tell him. “I can find my way back to the cabin. I promise.”

“You sure?” he asks, and he’s already getting up. I fight the instinct to grab him by the hand. Swallow the urge to tell him how I almost drowned in the bathroom.

Because if I tell him that, I’ll have to tell him about all the other weird things that have happened to me over the past few days. I won’t be able to stop myself, and it will all come spilling out of me. Like that water flowing out of the bathroom faucet.

My muddy feet the first night here. The bathroom mirror in the farmhouse.

I’ll have to tell him about the whispering.

And the woman outside my window.

Then there’s no way he’ll leave me alone. I already know that about him. He’ll spend the next four weeks glued to my side. And I want him to have this. Whatever this thing is with Jude. Because something tells me he really needs it.

So I just say, “Be good.” And he blows me a kiss.

“Oh, believe me,” he says with a wink, “I always am.”

I laugh and watch him walk away until he gets swallowed by the dark. And it feels strange to be alone. My phone says it’s 10:45. Just a few minutes to curfew. I glance around the amphitheater, but there’s no trace of fog. The air is cool and dry, and I tilt my face up to find the stars. They twinkle and shine, but none of them fall out of the sky. They’re all firmly anchored tonight.

I think about that voice. The one from my dreams. The one I can never remember the sound of.

Look at the stars!

I try to conjure it up. But there’s only the waves breaking down at the beach. The call of the foghorn. And the constant, empty ache deep down inside me somewhere.

The hole where my mother should be.

It’s bigger than usual tonight. I feel it spreading like water poured on a tile floor. It bleeds out into my whole body until I’m made of so much nothing.

And that’s when the cold sets in. Like always.