This was why Hawthorn didn’t want any of the Grays to date each other. Most of them had kissed each other. Sometimes as part of their spellwork. Sometimes just to do it. When Lelia discovered she was on the ace spectrum at fifteen, she let everyone know that kissing was fun, as long as it wasn’t about sprinting to get to other bases. Hawthorn and June kissed every time Hawthorn brought June a good piece of rose quartz — her favorite. The Grays took each other to school dances, brought each other corsages, held each other tight on dance floors while people laughed. They ignored the whispers about orgies. They were in love with each other, and that was good.

Love wasn’t the problem.

It was losing it that could hurt the Grays.

Rush still wanted to believe that this was going to fix itself, but as week after week went by, her hope dissolved. The worst part was that Imogen kept kissing her. Dull, dutiful kisses. Kisses that had so little of Imogen in them they might as well have been the wind against Rush’s lips.

And then she mumbled another girl’s name when she thought Rush wasn’t listening.

And then she disappeared.

Danny: Now

Ipace in knotted lines around Imogen’s room as Rush tells me about her and Imogen. How it started. How it soured.

“That other girl,” I say. “Who is she?”

Rush goes into Imogen’s drawers and looks around. She pulls out a notebook. It’s not the leather kind that Hawthorn uses, adorned with stitching and stones. This is a plain book with a cardboard face. Inside, the pages are clouded with scribbles.

Emma Hart. Emma Hart. Emma Hart.

It’s the handwriting I saw pressed into the bark of the hermit’s tree. The handwriting stamped into the cover of Imogen’s school notebook.

Overwhelmed, I sit down on the bed, which dips under my thighs.

“Who is she?” I ask again, not meeting Rush’s eyes. She’s still giving off unhappiness like steam. I stare at the notebook, page after page scrawled and looped with the name Emma Hart, until it feels like my eyes must be broken. “Did you ask?”

Rush sits down next to me and touches the imprints on the page. Imogen used a black ballpoint pen, pressing hard. “I was too afraid to ask,” Rush says.

It’s not hard to understand what she means. At the time, she was only thinking about the kind of hurt that comes with being replaced.

Now there are bigger things to worry about.

“Do you think she’s . . . like us?” I ask.

“Queer?” Rush asks.