But you have that rad date with Vance, I remind myself. Even though I don’t know how to contact him. Could he just call the hotel phone? Yeah, surely.

Right?

I force a pep back into my step, telling myself that I’m coming down with a case of the con crud; it’s not that I’m missing my friends and having massive FOMO while I dig around my purse for my keycard. It’s fine. I’ll just go back to my room and, I don’t know, watch episodes of Starfield? Browse Tumblr’s #sheith and #carmindeuci tags? Play Pokémon Go! around the lobby? I have a few lures left…

I press the button to summon the elevator and glance down at my phone. Nothing. I thought someone would’ve texted me today at least. The #SaveAmara tags are old. No one is talking about it right now.

I make it back to my room, plop down on the bed, and stare at the hotel phone. Vance will call me. Yeah.

I know he will.

Jess

THE PARTY IS…NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to go with Harper, but it definitely didn’t involve a gender-bent Elsa and Captain Marvel rapping to the Pokémon rap, or a green-haired fashion designer and her girlfriend modeling cosplay on a wiener dog. Sure, I thought someone would be singing “I’m Looking for a Hero” while everyone else tried to ignore them, but this is different.

There isn’t a bouncer at the door or a DJ spinning sick tunes. There aren’t fancy shrimp cocktails or caviar toasts making the rounds on platters balanced by dour-looking servers. This party is in a hotel suite—I don’t know whose, but hopefully it’s someone Harper knows—with about twenty people. There’s colorful ribbons strung across the walls and plastic wrap over the lights to make them different colors and glowsticks hanging from the ceiling. One of the lamps has been replaced by a blacklight that makes my shoestrings glow, and on the kitchenette bar is a wall of liquor bottles and sodas.

I’m not old enough to drink, I think, and then I realize that neither is anyone else.

This isn’t a party so much as a gathering of friends, and I know absolutely no one. Harper invited me but we’re not really friends, and I’m praying that none of these people know Imogen.

I am incredibly out of my element.