I’m officially cutting class now, six periods into what should be a brand-new school year. A shiny new Danny.

“You told me she was missing,” I say.

“She is missing,” June says. “We haven’t seen Imogen in six weeks. She’s been like . . . that.”

Whatever that is, it’s big and not easy to break through. Still, I want to yell at June, at all of the Grays. They brought me here because their friend won’t talk or look them in the eye? She could be depressed. In some kind of medically recognized fugue state. She could be so pissed at the world that she doesn’t want to connect to it anymore. There are options. Things that could explain this.

Words that can be used to put a box around whatever is wrong.

But I know from experience that boxes aren’t always big enough. And I don’t want to treat the Grays the way people treated me for so long. I want to believe them, the way nobody bothered to believe me.

“I’ll help you,” I say. “If I can.” It sounds really nice, but in a way it’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever said, because I want to be close to the Grays. Something about them pulls me in, holds me in place.

Their responses come in a tangled heap.

“Thank you,” June breathes.

“It took you long enough,” Lelia says.

Rush stares and stares, underlining the importance of what everyone else is saying with her hard gaze.

Hawthorn asks, “What can you do?”

The Grays: Now

They pull Danny into the woods. There are no old-growth trees right near the high school, but there are still redwoods, scruffy upstart ones, punching their way up, fighting to own a patch of sky.

Lelia gives Hawthorn a highly refined This won’t work glare.

“It’s good enough for now,” Hawthorn says.

But the real problem isn’t the lack of proper trees. It’s the lack of time. The Grays have never had to find someone’s magic in a hurry. It’s always been a careful process, searching out a path to a place no one’s ever been. But here’s something they know: the longer Imogen’s gone, the less likely it is that they’ll get her back. And then there’s Sebastian, killed by a wind that Lelia insists was unnatural. Killed on the day that Danny showed up.

One girl unreachable, one girl finally here, one boy dead.

The gossip at school wasn’t completely stupid this time. The Grays see the same pattern as everybody else. They just read it differently.

“How are you doing?” June asks, patting Danny’s shoulder. Danny pulls away like June’s fingertips are live flames. “Sebastian dying can’t be easy, especially since you knew him.”

“A tiny bit,” Danny says, working her backpack straps off her shoulders and dropping the bag to the ground.