Grabbing my Converses out of my bag, I put them on, grab the keycard so I can get back in later, and leave the room. I’m not supposed to go out because I still look like Jess. I haven’t taken the wig off, and my eyeliner is on point, but I don’t want to be in here, either, waiting for Ethan to come back. It’s been three hours.

He’s probably with Jess.

I don’t really know where I’m going, but I avoid as many people as possible as I head through the hallway. Music pulses from the rooms with the parties, rattling the light fixtures on the walls. I pass hotel rooms hosting old-school LAN competitions, fan meetups, and revelries with no theme at all. I quickly duck away from them—but not fast enough.

“Hey, Jessica!” someone shouts.

I glance over my shoulder, but I can’t tell who’s calling Jess’s name, and I don’t want to know either. Whoever it is, it can’t be anyone I should talk to.

So I dodge around the corner, into the emergency stairwell and out through another door. It leads to the rooftop pool a few stories below Jessica’s hotel suite. It’s not actually on the rooftop—which is still a few floors above me—but it is on a rooftop, I suppose. It closed at ten o’clock, so the place is quiet.

I can barely hear the traffic in the streets way down below.

Even in Jessica Stone’s makeup and clothes, I have the baggage of Imogen Lovelace underneath, and there is still that little voice in my head telling me that I am nothing, that I’m just someone in Milo’s shadow who won’t amount to much—and everyone else already knows it but me.

I don’t want to listen to that voice.

Especially now, when it’s closer than ever to being right. Because General Sond is the next villain.

Because no one cares about Amara. Not really.

Shut up shut up shut up! I say to that disembodied voice.

Even as Jessica, I can’t seem to get Imogen out of my head. The highs from earlier are a dull throb in the back of my memories. How come the negative thoughts sound so much louder than the good ones?

With an aggravated noise, I wrench off my wig, tossing it behind a planter with my keycard, slip off my shoes, and run toward the pool.

The water is fresh and cool, and it shocks all the thoughts out of me—my mind is finally, miraculously void of everything. I swim a lap, letting Jess’s designer dress tangle around my legs. It’s a salt-water pool, so I know it won’t get ruined. I just needed to swim.

Besides, swimming in a pool disguises crying fairly well.

Not that I’m crying.

Because I’m not.