The thought of Maia doing that to Jasper makes me way angrier than it ought to. Like it’s something she’s doing to me.

“That’s sick,” I say. “She’s sick.”

“Yep. But it wasn’t just the journal anyway. And it wasn’t even just what happened to Cassie at the camp. It was way more complicated than that. It was a whole bunch of stuff: my mom, my dad, the future, the past, now. Suddenly it got all mashed together in my head and it felt like too much.”

“But you changed your mind,” I say. “And that’s the important thing.”

He nods and smiles with half his mouth. “Because of you.”

“Don’t say that.” This time I snap at him so hard it surprises me. But I can’t be responsible for saving Jasper. I am already such a mess. And I have such a shitty record of the people around me surviving. “Please, don’t . . .”

Also, this whole conversation is making it harder to stay in the friends zone where we belong. I squeeze my eyes shut. Hope that I don’t cry.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, though he kind of did. I can feel it. “But you coming to the bridge helped short-circuit the whole thing. I was up there and I was thinking hard about it, but then I got worried it might not be a clean fall. Or that the bridge wasn’t tall enough.”

“Jasper,” I whisper. It’s terrifying to hear him sound so matter-of-fact.

He and I stare at each other for a minute more, and I feel a hard tug toward him.

No. Whatever that feeling is—it’s one instinct I will not follow. Jasper and I are friends. We are better off that way.

“Anyway,” Jasper goes on. “I walked down the far side of the bridge to check out the drop. And I was on my way back up already wondering what the hell I was doing when I saw them putting you in an ambulance with Boston General’s name on it. And you were totally out cold. Like lifeless.” He shudders, remembering. “I started to run up to stop them. But there were too many of them. So I decided instead to steal some poor kid’s bike and come here.” He is staring at the side of my face. And I can feel that he isn’t going to stop staring until I look up at him. And so I do. “Two seconds on that bike and I realized that I wasn’t thinking clearly. That I wasn’t thinking at all. The scary thing is how it feels now like someone else was on that bridge. I can’t even believe I thought about it. I don’t think I ever would have actually done it. It was just this moment in time. And now it’s gone.”