But now... He steps up to me, so close I can feel his breath on my skin, his warm body pumping blood next to mine, my own cells responding. He looks like the man I’ve loved for fourteen months now, the one I fell for the instant he smiled across the counter, the one who can make me shiver just by touching me, but tonight the shiver is from fear. Fear I’ve made the wrong choice. Fear that by ignoring the rumors and pushing away all my doubts, I’m just as self-serving as my mother.

Fear of Paul, of what he’s done.

I look at him, and my heart revs with a heavy, cloying dread. “Yes, Paul. Everything’s perfectly fine.”

I’ve gotten so goddamn good at lying.

29

June 13, 1999
1:27 a.m.

Jax opened his eyes, and the first thing he noticed was the quiet. No blaring music, no engine vibrating under his seat, no Paul and Micah arguing up in the front. Just crickets and the cool mountain air, blowing through the open windows. He shivered and sat up.

“Hey, Paul,” he shouted. “Micah.”

No answer. His friends were gone. Jax was alone.

The door handle was like water in his fingers. He couldn’t get a solid grip. After three tries he somehow managed, shoving open the door and sliding out onto the dirt. He caught his balance, then turned in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings—hard to do when the world was spinning. He rubbed his eyes, searched for movement in the dark shadows. It was like looking through a dark, wispy fog.

A trailer park. He was standing in the middle of a dark and grubby trailer park, one he didn’t recognize. Then again, why would he? He wasn’t friends with anyone who lived in one, didn’t run with that kind of crowd. The trailer-park kids weren’t exactly college-bound.

He took in the square and stubby shapes, dozens and dozens of them lined up like boxy shadows, all dark but one, pushed up against the woods at the far end. That one was lit up like a fairground ride. Colorful Christmas lights, strung across the roof and around every window. A lava-red glow coming from underneath the cinder-block risers. Jax leaned forward on his toes and squinted. Was that a hot tub?

“Hey, Paul. Micah.” He slurred their names into the nighttime sky, his voice bouncing around the hills. “Get your sorry asses out here!”

A sleepy voice shouted from the darkness behind him. “Shut the hell up!”

What time was it?

He stuck his head through the driver’s window, but the car was dark. The engine was off, the dash black. He reached for the keys and swiped air. Excellent. Now what? He couldn’t walk home. He had no idea which way to go or how far. And it wasn’t like he could call a taxi in this sorry mountain town.