I lie back down on my bed and stare at the ceiling for a few minutes, but I’m restless now. I flop to my side, and the fucking letter falls off the bed onto the floor, its pages spreading across the carpet like a stain. I jump up. That’s it. I can’t lie here any longer with this bullshit contaminating my space.

I bend down and gather the pages, trying not to think about what might be written on them, trying not to breathe. I crumple them together and head downstairs and outside. When I get to the garbage cans on the side of the house, I start tearing the paper into confetti. It’s getting all over the ground, but I just want his words gone. I want to erase their existence. Tear them out of my mind. Scrub them from my brain.

By the time I finish, my fingers are bleeding and my face is on fire. There’s no way I’m going to get back to sleep. So I grab my backpack from behind the old refrigerator in the garage, where I stuffed it the other night, and take off down the driveway on my bike.

About thirty minutes later, I pull up on the curb outside the Tellers’, panting and drenched in sweat. The night air is thick and heavy on my skin. The house in front of me is dark. I sling the backpack off my shoulders onto the ground, tucking it and myself behind a bush in the front yard.

Now that I know Zach lives here, it seems different. Before, it was just a building, a place that houses a woman I despise. For a second, I wonder which window is Zach’s bedroom, but I force the thought out of my head. Concentrate, May. Since when do I let boy-related bullshit seep into my thoughts when I’m supposed to be focused? When I broke up with Miles after everything, it was a clean cut. No sentimentality—I dumped the few gifts he’d given me, the dried-up flowers I’d saved, the old T-shirt I’d borrowed from him one day after we went swimming. Threw it all out in one fell swoop. Deleted his text messages.

He was gone.

I felt nothing.

With that final thought, I pull a spray can out of my backpack and stand up, set my jaw. This time I won’t trip the spotlight on the driveway. This time I won’t end my night making out with a cat.

I tighten my grip on the can and start across the front lawn. It’s hot as shit out here, just like last time.