Long lashes, the kind to make any housewife in Orange County jealous, cling to his skin, still wet. I nod. For the first time since I arrived, a flicker of hope ignites that coming here was the right thing to do. I owe it to Angela to learn more about her last years. To meet the people—the life—she chose as her own.

He opens the door, allowing me to pass through first. On a whiteboard above a desk at the far end of Angela’s studio apartment is her familiar scrawl. My heartbeat quickens seeing her writing—maybe one of the last things she ever wrote.

But as Seb closes the door and turns the lock behind us, I realize the words on the whiteboard aren’t in English or in French. Instead, I recognize the childhood language Angela and I invented, the one we used whenever we didn’t want our parents to know something. As we got older and grew apart, the language became a throwback to more innocent times.

I inch closer to the whiteboard, while Seb moves to the bachelor-size refrigerator in the corner.

Greek letters written in Angela’s slant cover most of the whiteboard. Your average kid from San Diego would probably consider Greek an alien language—especially with the letters written backward and upside down, as they are here—but not us. The dots and swishes that decorate the flat tops of the symbols form a pattern that feels like home. I absorb the words as casually as if it had been weeks instead of years since my sister and I last exchanged notes.

Too casually. Too fast to really grasp their meaning. I read a second time. A third. I blink, and the symbols pulse through my eyelids and set fire to the brief reprieve of calm I felt a moment earlier.

“Are you thirsty? Hungry? How are you feeling?” Seb rummages in the kitchenette cabinets, then stops when I don’t answer.

Every exposed hair on my legs, arms, and neck stands on end. Angela’s message to me reads:

ALIVE. TRUST NO ONE.

“Shayna?” Sebastien’s voice is at my ear. “How are you feeling?”

No one. Not even her boyfriend? The man with a key to her apartment and hands the size of waffle irons.

I turn to face his barrel chest and raise my eyes to his.

“Parched.”

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When we were kids, a clear dirt path still existed from our home straight to the beach, to a sandy inlet only a handful of intrepid surfers claimed as theirs. Nowadays, most paths in the area, and in San Diego as a whole, are laid in concrete, brick, or wooden boards. Filters, Angela would say as we got older, standing between us and what is real.