The first time, I’m passing the Tempest Diner. I feel a prickle at the back of my neck and turn. Rush is perfectly framed in the front window, waiting for an order. Like so many people do in California, she keeps her sunglasses on — aviators tinted saltwater green. I’m busy staring when she catches sight of me. Even without her eyes to give her away, I can see her face light up. But I’m afraid to be near her without the insulation of the Grays, the safe distance they create when they’re standing between us.

I act like I didn’t see her and hurry down the row of shops.

The second time, she’s sitting in her car in the trailhead that leads to one of the least popular redwood hikes. The car looks abandoned at first, and my heart skids. What if she went into the woods looking for Imogen and didn’t come back? But no — she’s slouched in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette, which I’ve never seen her do. It’s like watching someone speak a language you didn’t know they knew. She tips the ash out the window. Pulls so hard that the end lights up an angry red. Then she stubs it out, somewhere out of view. She lifts a jar of honey from the passenger seat, tips her throat. Her lips reach for amber droplets that are sliding down, down, down the glass. It’s not a black-cherry lipstick day. Her mouth is stripped, soft pink. The droplets are stuck.

I run away fast, as if I’ve been caught staring in her window at night.

And then I find her in the graveyard, singing for an audience of trees. Rush’s voice is a ribbon, shiny and unspooling, leading me forward. I don’t stop until I’m up against the fence, standing behind her, the dowsing rod pointed at her back. The tips of Rush’s long dark hair reach for the ground. Her music rises.

This is a melody I’ve never heard before. Imogen’s song was powerful but trapped. This makes me think of wind and freedom. It skips through the air like a kite, brighter than anything around it.

This time I don’t have to run. Rush is so bound up in the music that she doesn’t even notice me.

Imogen and Rush: Five Years Ago

They met in fall, not long after school started, on a day that smelled of sweetly rotting leaves. Imogen Lilly wasn’t new in Tempest, and neither was Rachel Downing, but they were new to each other.

Imogen had outgrown childhood friends, the ones that had been chosen for her. Rachel didn’t have time for friends. She had music. Rehearsals, recitals, dreams that were shoved full of difficult runs that woke her up with aching fingers and sweat on the back of her neck.