Five weeks? That didn’t seem like enough time. I didn’t know anything about the school. I needed to prepare for meeting people. How would I get there? Would I have to ride a bus? Would the bus pass by dark canals? What if it slid off the road? The image of a giant tin can full of drowning kids filled my head, and my stomach turned. What if I didn’t want to go to school? What would I wear? I couldn’t show up dressed in Agatha’s clothes. People would assume I was in a cult or something.

We made it to the back door of the house, and Barrett moved aside for me to pass.

“Hey,” I said. “Who’s Lily?”

“Lily?” he repeated. “Lily who?”

“Copeland,” I said. Duh.

He frowned. “There’s a Lily Copeland?”

I was frozen. I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d been sneaking around the house at night. “Yeah,” I said simply.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Okay,” I said, eager to drop the subject.

“Where’d you hear about her?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied. “I just saw the name somewhere.”

Then, before he could ask any more questions, I hurried upstairs and into the nursery, closing the door behind me.

AT DINNER, IT was clear that something had changed between Barrett and me. It was harder to actively dislike someone I’d just had a conversation with—someone who’d let me scold him without protest. And even though I hadn’t particularly wanted his help, the fact that he’d helped me without being asked forced me to award him some okay-maybe-I-don’t-hate-you-hate-you points.

Plus, I was intrigued. The way he talked about his parents wasn’t the way I would have guessed a person would talk about John and Laura. He wasn’t the obedient robot I had expected. Which made me wonder about Agatha. What was her true personality? All along I’d assumed she was just a clone of Laura—but what if she was more like Barrett? After all, she’d been a normal teenage girl. Her bedroom was evidence of that, even if there was none of it left in her behavior.

We only exchanged a sentence or two, but I didn’t find myself automatically irritated by what he said; I felt neutral, like it was fine if he chose to say things in my presence, which was decidedly not how I’d felt at previous meals.

THAT NIGHT, LAURA brought my tea but hardly drank hers; I knew she saved most of it for her visit to Barrett’s room, and it bothered me a little, but not as much as usual. Barrett was her son, after all.