“No! I don’t think so. I know how this sounds.”

“We should go to hospital.” She stands up and makes her way to the door.

“No, no, I’m fine, really! It’s—”

“If you don’t recognize your friends, and you think you live in a place you never lived, then I think that’s a cause for emergency. So come on, off we go.”

I consider the number of tests I’d be likely to undergo—if a person comes in and thinks they have another life or that they’ve time traveled or they’re from another planet, no one would ever believe them. I’d end up on some medication, maybe locked in a psych ward somewhere. I’m becoming increasingly unsure why I even expected Kiera to believe me. Of course she thinks I should go to the hospital, that’s what I’d say if someone told me this.

She gives me a serious look. “If you really believe what you’re saying—” When I appear, I guess, horror-struck at the idea, she says, “Well, we must at least go see Jim.”

“Jim?”

She looks really troubled now.

I try to seem mentally stable. “Can I tell you what I think is happening?”

She hesitates. “You’ve got five minutes, and then we’re leaving.” She goes back to her chair.

“Okay, thank you.”

I’m really going to have to make a good case for myself here.

“I got into Avalon School of the Arts when I was eighteen years old. I applied with my best friend—”

“Aimee, yeah, I know that.”

It’s thrilling and a little dizzying to hear this stranger refer to her.

I go on to tell her my version of what happened. The wait-list, the college dorms in Florida, everything. Everything but the big, important part, about how Aimee is dead.

She narrows her eyes. “This is mad, what you’re doing. It’s very unlike you to do an elaborate joke like this to make a fool of me.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing that. I hate that kind of thing actually.”

“That’s true, you do.” She cocks her head at me, suspicious. “Oh, feck, this isn’t some weird method acting thing or something? You used to do this kind of thing in school, but—”

“No, it’s not.”

“The problem here is, you’re a good actress.”

I have the compulsion to google myself again, to use the internet to prove it. It’s what you do if you’re a hundred percent sure Harry Styles has four nipples, and you desperately need to prove it to someone.

But since the internet seems to be in on whatever charade this is, I can’t simply look it up.

“Kiera, I swear on everything. I swear on my dog—I mean my dog back home. Dido. I met this dog last night.”

We both look at the retriever.