Greta realized she’d gotten turned around listening to her sister talk and was now looping back around toward Frenchmen Street. She could hear the first stirrings of music and a crowd.

“So what’s the deal? Are you never coming back either?”

“Huh? I didn’t say that.”

“Dude, come on. You’re loving it there, no?”

She was, but that wasn’t the same as never going back. She had a job in Owl Island, a house. You didn’t just up and move away from everything you knew after being somewhere for less than a week…right?

“I am loving it,” she conceded. “But it’s been, like, five seconds.”

“You’re super into this girl, you’re hanging with Ramona, and you’ve sent approximately seven hundred pictures of flowers to Ash.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw him at Muskee’s the other day. Omigod, speaking of: he’s so into Truman. Have you talked to him about it?”

A pang of guilt twisted Greta’s stomach. She hadn’t talked to Ash at all. They’d never really had a phone relationship—she usually just stopped into Thorn—but she should definitely text him.

“No, I owe him a text that isn’t all flowers.”

“Well it’s de-light-ful. He’s all moony. Anyway, are you? You totally should. We could announce it to the family together. They couldn’t kill us both. It would be too suspicious.”

Greta imagined staying. She imagined walking outside without a winter coat. Having a garden where the plants of her heart thrived year-round. Learning a new culture, a new region. She imagined waking up wrapped around Carys, making her coffee with lots of cream and sugar, bringing it to her in bed. She imagined kissing Carys’ lips and brushing back her curls to nuzzle her neck.

She sighed with pleasure, but it was too soon. She could just imagine Carys’ expression if she said, Hey, I like you. How about I move here?

“I just mean…what if you did?”

Reasons why it would never work automatically scrolled through Greta’s mind like a ticker tape.

“Well, I don’t have a job—”

“You can get one.”

“Don’t have a place to live—”

“You can find one.”

“I don’t know how I’d be able to get all my plants here—”

“It’s called a moving company, and I refuse to believe you don’t understand that.”

“Haha. I don’t know.”

“Dude, these are not problems. They’re, like, normal parts of moving that anyone over the age of twelve knows. What’s the actual issue?”

“What if I move here and I’m just as miserable as I always was at home?”

The words came out of her mouth before she even registered their truth in her mind.

“Whoa.”

“Sorry, I just mean—”

“No way. Do not apologize. I just never knew you were straight up miserable.”