“You’re obsessed with that spot.”

I keep staring at it. “But doesn’t it look magical?”

Cora smiles at me. “Science, not magic, remember?”

I smile back. “Okay. We’re looking for science that feels magical. Is that better?”

“Yeah. I like that.” Her smile widens and she tilts her head to look at the tree again. “Do you think we should climb up there?”

My mouth feels like its full of cotton balls. I do my best to push out my words. “I—I—I—I do-do-don’t know. It’s a hard tree to climb. I got st-st-stuck in it once.”

Cora turns to me. “You mean before you showed me it? When you were doing research on your own?”

I shake my head. “A long time ago.” I don’t tell her about Parker helping to get me down.

“We’re looking for ‘exotic matter,’” Cora says.

“I know. You keep saying that. I still don’t understand what it is.”

Cora wrinkles her nose. “I’m not sure anyone really understands what it is. It’s like negative matter. But it’s also, like, positive. It definitely exists.” She pinches her fingers together for emphasis.

I smile again. “That sounds like magic dust to me.”

Cora nudges my shoulder. “Maybe it is. And if it is, I’m thinking we should follow your gut.”

“Did you, Cora Hamed, really just tell me to follow my gut?”

Cora’s smile widens. It feels so good to see her smile. Really smile. It makes me forget all about my cotton-balled mouth. “Yes, and I’m absolutely mortified by it. But I’m willing to go to great lengths to find ‘exotic matter.’”

“Me too.” I go back to staring at The Eyeball. This has to work. It just has to.

“So let’s climb it.”

A shadowy pit opens up inside me. Sometimes when I think about Parker, my memories feel like quicksand. It’s so easy to get stuck in them. I stare at the giant oak tree and remember Parker’s steady hands guiding me down, how faraway the ground seemed, what a relief it was when my feet touched down, how I could feel his heartbeat through his hand, and how I didn’t let go of him for even one second.

“I—I—I don’t know.”

“Come on,” Cora urges. “You’ll have to show me how, though.”

“I mean, it’s not that com-com-complicated. It’s climbing a tree.”

“You said you got stuck.”

I shrug, trying to shake away my quicksand-like memories. “Yeah, because this tree is kind of hard. But climbing a tree is climbing a tree.”

“Says the girl who climbs trees.”

“Says the girl who gets an A on every single test.”

Cora puts her hands on her hips. It’s not nice, but I’ve always felt like she looks kind of snotty when she does this. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever put my hands on my hips. It’s things like this that used to make Scarlett and Ainsley say that Cora was stuck-up. That and how she’s always correcting people by blurting out random facts. Whenever anyone said something bad about Cora, I always defended her, but probably not enough.