This girl is a witch. Maybe that’s what her magic is. Does she feel me wanting to step closer, to set my hand where her glove and her shirt don’t quite meet? Soft fingers on soft skin. Standing close and quiet, a river of unspoken questions.

Part of me is frantic, afraid that she knows.

Part of me is buzzing with hope that she does.

I go outside the cabin and wait around the back on a decorative little bench that it’s possible nobody has sat on for ten years. Every time I try to walk away, I loop right back, like I’m tying knots.

When I open the door an hour later, Rush is gone, and the furniture gleams.

Imogen and Rush: Eight Months Ago

They were in love.

It was possible but not true for a long time. And then they were in Imogen’s room one charcoal afternoon in the middle of winter. In Tempest, winter was a season of dark, endless water, the world outside lashed with rain.

It felt like summer had forgotten about them.

“We need to make our own heat,” Imogen said. She pulled her body on top of Rush’s and braced herself. A joke. Until it wasn’t. Rush was as hot as coals from sitting so close for so long. They kissed with the quick burn of paper, and once it started, they couldn’t stop. Rush and Imogen ate through hours like that, mouths and bodies pushing against each other in a constantly changing balance, the kind of kissing that Rush had always believed in with the same fervor that she believed in magic.

Their past shifted as they told it to each other, revealing itself in layers, a slow undressing. The times that they’d met each other’s eyes and laughed when no one else knew what was funny. That afternoon when Imogen had heard Rush play the cello, once upon a time. All those nights they’d stayed up later than the rest of the Grays, Imogen getting Rush to split a cigarette with her, but only because she’d brought a jar of honey to cure Rush’s throat after the smoke ripped it up.

Imogen kissed Rush’s throat.

Rush said she was ready.

“For what?” Imogen asked.

“For . . . you.”

“You can’t be,” Imogen said. “We just started.”

“I think we started a long time ago,” Rush said. “We just figured it out now.”

But Imogen wanted to be careful, because Rush meant so much. Because she didn’t want to rip at Rush’s heart. Because there was no amount of honey you could pour on a wound like that.

“Okay,” Rush said. “We’ll wait.”

Danny: Now

Walking through the woods that night, I text Mom every five minutes.

I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.