For the first time, a shocking thought has popped into my head and is clinging there, tighter the more I try to push it away. What if I’m not always Germ’s best friend? What if I’m not even her best friend right now? I’ve never even considered the possibility—it’s like thinking, What if this arm I’ve been using all my life to draw and write and brush my teeth with turns out not to be my arm? And it makes me think of that feeling of having a big missing piece inside. And how if I miss Germ too, I’ll be missing, like, three quarters of myself. I’ll be, like, one quarter of a person.

I touch the scar on my palm. I worry the line where we once cut and promised each other to be blood sisters forever. But we’re not really sisters. We’re not stuck together like that—like family. Germ is not really my other half; she’s someone who can drift away.

It’s a feeling like a hole opening inside, the feeling of a stomach drop as you fall.

Even with what’s happened the last few days, it might be the scariest thing I’ve ever felt.

All the way down the winding cliffside road, looking out at the sea and the sliver of moon above it, I’m thinking I was horrible to Germ and regretting it bitterly. But I’m also angry. I don’t understand how anyone could be so excited about what everybody thought of their talent skit, when there are witches in the world.

Maybe it’s better this way, I think. Better if Germ stays away so she doesn’t get hurt. After all, it’s me the Memory Thief is after. But jealousy still grips my heart, and as hard as I try, I can’t imagine facing the scariest thing I’ve ever faced without the person I lean on the most.

As we pull into the driveway, I’m pulled out of my daze by a dazzling sight.

The trees. They’re blinking.

Every tree lining our driveway, every tree in the woods surrounding our yard, appears to be alive with light. It takes me a moment to realize why: they are all covered in insects, including what looks to be thousands of fireflies.

“Mom,” I whisper, “look.”

My mom doesn’t respond as we climb out of the car, though she, too, is staring at the trees.

In the air there’s a hum, a buzzing from all directions—there are grasshoppers and dragonflies, spinning and flying through the air or gathered on trees, on bushes. Spiderwebs sparkle in the gleam of our headlights. And of course, there, kneeling in the center of the yard, whispering to a handful of regular moths (not the scary kind), is Ebb.