Lelia tried to kiss Rush on the cheek, but Rush retreated quickly. The last person who had kissed her in any way — in every way — was Imogen. Rush needed to keep that feeling intact for as long as she could.

Rush and Hawthorn and June climbed, while Lelia stayed on the ground, looking up at them, spinning in circles.

“Pretty,” June said as Hawthorn tossed her a ribbon.

“Rainbow silk?” Lelia called up. “Really?”

“Spells are made of symbols,” Hawthorn said. “Symbols. Aren’t. Subtle.”

June tried to toss the ribbon to Rush, but it fell short, rippling toward the ground. When June looked down, her right leg tingled — her nervous system sounding a warning. “On second thought, we could have done this without the climbing.”

“Too easy,” Hawthorn said. “Don’t forget the second rule.”

Lelia threw the ribbon up to Rush as they silently filled in the rule. The greater the risk, the stronger the magic. The Grays tossed and tossed the silk around the grove, asking a question with their bodies. Asking for a girl. Beckoning her closer.

Calling out in a language only she would hear.

Danny: Now

Isit down, right where I was standing. I cross my legs, hiking wet canvas sneakers up until they imprint on my thighs.

The girls watch me.

My breath is rough, scattering memories.

The feeling that California was the answer to a question no one had asked. The way I spread the candy-pastel map of the United States and picked Tempest in twenty seconds, without blinking. The trees, the trees, the trees. How they pulled me away from everything that made sense.

I look up and find four faces waiting. Their names were embedded in the story they just told, and now I dig them out. June, Lelia, Hawthorn, Rush. Those words dissolve, and I’m left with just two.

“The Grays,” I say. “Part of me thinks you must be playing a shitty trick, and the other part of me already knows that first part is wrong.”

The girl with ripples of long dark hair — Rush — shifts between me and the rest of the group. She puts her hands on my shoulders. These girls, with their touching. I only touch people when there’s kissing involved. Anything else is off-limits. One of the unspoken rules. “Are you okay?” she asks.

My brain clicks through answers. “Yes. No.”

“You can hold both things at the same time,” Rush says. I watch her lips as she speaks — they’re expertly lined and painted this black-cherry color that I can almost taste. Her face is the perfect heart-shaped kind that pinches to the delicate point of her chin. Her hands and her body are round and soft-looking, but her voice has a sandy roughness to it. When she sang, her voice was different. Smoother. The difference between polished crystal and raw. “You won’t burst if you try to hold more truth,” she tells me. “We’re not riverbanks, right?”