I grab the branch above me, my face pressing into the shaggy bark. It’s softer than I’d imagined, and the limbs of the tree are strong, fanning out in spokes. When I reach a gap, my heart goes glossy with fear. I press off with my feet, and I am touching nothing but air until my hand cuffs the next branch and a scream drops back into my lungs, unused.

I’m not braver than Sebastian; I just want to get to the top more than he does. There is something waiting for me up there, and I won’t be able to name it until I see it.

Now that I’ve gotten past the rough, patchy middle, the tight spin of branches near the top makes the rest easy. It’s like climbing a spiral staircase into the dawn.

“Quick,” I say. “We’re missing it.”

The treetops give way, leaving a jagged view. The gray sky is just black rubbed thin. A pale, secret shade of pink glows where the sky and the world touch.

I stop where I am and sit, my back settling against the trunk. Sebastian pulls himself up and stands right in front of me, his thighs barring the sunrise. “Sit down please,” I say, and he does. Now his face is in my way, but before I can complain, the sunrise turns his hair into glory, softening each dark strand with coral and rose.

“You know what’s weird?” I ask, my eyes catching on a break in the treetops, a pothole between us and the sunrise, right over the town we came from. “Being new feels a little bit like we don’t exist. Like somebody in Tempest has to notice that we’re here before we can really be here.”

He looks down at his fingernails, which are nervously picking apart a small piece of the tree. “Maybe we can notice each other,” he mumbles.

That wasn’t really my point. But he looks so hopeful that I can’t tell him the other half of my thought. It’s too unwelcome. Too Danny, and I’m going to be different here. Somebody who eats avocados and talks slowly enough that people listen.

But not saying it doesn’t stop me from thinking it.

We could die tonight, and it would be as easy as crumpling a name tag.

I pull my phone from the pocket in my dress. The screen’s glare cuts against the soft burn of the sunrise.

“You’re texting?” Sebastian asks, a whine trickling into his voice. It’s not as cute as his nervous dancing, or even his halfhearted tree climbing.

“My mom likes to know I’m alive,” I say. I don’t owe him the rest of the story, even though it itches on my tongue.

Sebastian nods and keeps nodding until it’s clear that he’s working himself up to something. “Do you want to hang out? Sometime?”