“It’s only a little longer, all right?” she says, surveying the foyer in a lovestruck way. “We’re very close to having a buyer for the house.”

She’s told me that before, but plans have changed a dozen times since June. I hate to think of what will happen if they change any more. Fun is what my friends used to call my mother. Except that brand of “fun” can wear you down.

“But…” I trail off, a million buts dying on my lips. But everything. It’s one thing to live in such a remote place during the summer, when the surrounding landscape is bursting with color and the birds are singing. But in the winter?

What are you complaining about? Sawyer asks me. People like you shouldn’t be part of the general public.

And maybe it’s true. Maybe being alone with my family on the side of a mountain will keep everyone from finding out what is going on inside my head. That he is there, always threatening to take over. Maybe, without the outside world to intrude, Dr. Maya Helm’s crazy daughter can just go on being crazy.

Not that I can tell my mother that. No, to her, Sawyer was my fictitious childhood playmate who has long been forgotten.

But the thing is, Sawyer had been coming to me more and more since we came here. He’s always in the back of my head, that little voice spurring me to be a little wild whenever I want to hold back and play it safe. At first, I thought everyone had a Sawyer, like when he told me to throw a binder at Lucy Willis for calling me ugly in third grade or touch a hot radiator when I was two. Gradually though, I learned Sawyer’s voice was something to keep quiet. Still, back home in Boston, I had distractions to drown him out. I had studies and color guard and friends.

Here, he is front and center in my thoughts, twenty-four seven.

And Sawyer likes it this way. Even though my head is screaming that we need to get as far away from this place as possible, one part of me, the part of my stomach that’s supposed to get queasy and unsettled, feels warm. Comfortable.

My mother comes up to me and swipes a stray lock of hair from my face. I flinch. “Don’t.”

“Everything’s OK, love.” She gives me a convincing smile, even though the world might as well be crumbling around us. “I know you’re bored to death here, but I promise, we’ll be back home soon.”