But the book feels so much less important now compared to getting the girls out, finding my dad. I will read what’s inside, and I will figure out what it all means at some point. If and when I find Kelsey again, maybe she and I can even help each other somehow—or maybe she can just help me. Maybe that’s the truth. When I take the book from Jasper’s hands, something falls out. It isn’t until I pick it up from the floor that I realize it’s Kendall’s note.

I take a deep breath as I stare down at it. Just when I was wondering what we should do next: an answer.

“Can you take me somewhere?” I ask Jasper.

“Sure,” Jasper says without hesitating. He’s so glad to leave the hospital. “Where?”

“Someplace you are not going to want to go.”

17

WE DRIVE INTO CAMBRIDGE, PAST THE IMPOSING IVY-COVERED BUILDINGS OF Harvard and the packs of jostling students so filled with all that promise and possibility. I fixate on one girl walking alone. She is tall and slim with short jaggedy hair, but cut intentionally that way unlike mine. She even has a backpack like the one I used to carry. It’s amazing how she and I could look so similar and yet the gulf between us is infinite. Permanent maybe, too, I beginning to realize.

By the time we park in an alley a few blocks off Harvard Square, a full-blown summer storm is overhead. There is a distant rumble of thunder, and the air feels heavy and wet, even inside the car.

Without pressing for details, Jasper drove all the way to the address I gave him following the GPS on his phone, pulling into one of the only open parking spots a couple blocks away. He was so happy that I’d agreed to leave the hospital that he probably would have gone anywhere. But I could feel him getting more anxious the farther we went into the Cambridge side streets.

“Okay, now you have to tell me where we’re going,” Jasper says as he turns off the engine.

“To the address I gave you,” I say. And I know it’s stupid to delay the inevitable, but I do anyway. “That’s where we’re going.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I got that part. I mean what’s at this address?”

Really, I shouldn’t drag Jasper into—well, that’s just it. I don’t even know what I’m dragging him into. I can’t do that without telling him what’s going on.

“It’s the address that was on the note Kendall gave me.” Even without looking at him, I can already feel Jasper’s anger in my toes.