I told her that I was meeting up with people who could potentially become my friends. I didn’t use the word Grays. She doesn’t know, specifically, about Hawthorn and June and Lelia and Rush. What would I tell her? They think they’re witches? I think they’re witches, but I’m not sure? I might be a witch, too, but don’t worry?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I text the same words, like a heartbeat.

I’m alive.

Mom asks about my day even though we went over all this at dinner.

Did your teachers spring any tests on you?

I used to tell her the grades I got on every quiz. The feelings I had about every friend. People said we were so close.

Loved that garlic pasta! Yum!

Mom abuses exclamation points, trying to convince me that everything is good. But I can’t seem to move my thumbs.

You are so thoughtful today!

She doesn’t know how much it stings to be reminded that I’m not a thoughtful daughter most days. Besides, it isn’t even true. Today I skipped a class. Today I stripped in front of someone, even if it was by accident.

I shove the phone into my pocket.

Walking deeper into the woods is surprisingly easy. The moon blasts hard enough to create its own sort of noon. I want to spread a picnic blanket and stretch my body out, basking in the silver that’s been swapped for gold.

The mother tree sprawls at the center of a clearing. The mother tree is dead, technically, fallen and tipped sideways, but there’s so much life taking root on its soft bark: silvered ferns and even tiny trees.

June and Lelia sit in the moon-shade, using tarot cards to play a game like it’s a regular deck. I think Lelia’s winning, but maybe she just likes to crow. Hawthorn is sitting cross-legged on the tree’s long body. She has her face turned toward the sky. She’s counting stars. Or renaming them. Trying to move them with her mind, maybe? Moonlight drips down her long throat, studs her natural hair like fairy lights.

Rush is standing at the end of the tree. I walk around to join her and find myself staring at a claw of roots, the place where the tree used to become part of the earth. It’s taller than Rush, ringed by spikes of tortured, twisted wood, and rotting toward total darkness at the center.

Rush is singing into that darkness. A whisper song in a minor key. A mourning. For Sebastian? Or Imogen? For whatever they had together? Is that gone, or does Rush want to get it back?

Is that why I’m here? To save their love story?

To save all of them from having to live without this girl?