My gut drops. ‘No, that’s impossible. You know that’s impossible. You’re so busy.’

‘What’s today? The thirty-first?’ The phone rustles. ‘I have a case that we can’t leave but I should have a spare day at the end of the week, next at the latest, and when I do, I’m coming to get you.’

It’s always been complicated.

He’s always been like that. Detached. Distant. Formal.

I fight the urge to comment on the ridiculousness of the lack of urgency my dad has towards even what he has deemed an emergency scenario. Not even urgent enough to come get me now. Not even after Celeste. I could be wandering through the woods myself and I wouldn’t even be sure he’d drop what he was doing. Of course I don’t want him to come. But, yes, maybe I want him to want to.

‘Are you gonna drag me away kicking and screaming?’

‘I won’t have to. Surely they’re not letting a seventeen-year-old work and board without parental permission.’

‘Dad, please. This is really important to me.’

‘Not important enough to do it honestly.’

It’s for Celeste, I want to say. But Peyton’s looking right at me, and I can’t summon the words.

‘Enjoy yourself while you can,’ he says evenly. ‘See you soon.’

The line dies against my ear.

He’s not the type of parent to punish, but when he does it’s because a rule has been broken, not because of the severity of the indiscretion or the act itself. I know inside Dad might be battling with the knowledge that nothing dangerous is happening, that perhaps I’m seventeen and alone, but really, what else is new? It doesn’t matter that I’m safe. It matters that I’ve disobeyed the unspoken rule of not becoming a runaway, that I lied. And he would never say it, but it matters that I’ve scared him.

‘Was that –’ Peyton offers. ‘Sorry. I’m confused.’

‘It’s sort of hard to explain. But I lied,’ I say. ‘To you. I don’t actually go to Harvard. I don’t go anywhere. Sorry.’

‘Oh. Why’d you do that?’

The real answer is too complicated. ‘I don’t know. I tell lies sometimes.’

She sucks on the straw of her coffee for a moment, then says, ‘I mean, you wanted to seem smart, right? New place. You can be whoever.’ That sort of affirmation that comes at unexpected moments – that isn’t the way anyone ought to react to anything – well, it stays with you, says This is how the world is. This is what others will tolerate. Act accordingly. Peyton doesn’t know it but she’s validating my brain as we speak. It’s OK to lie, she says, and I understand. I’ll carry it.

‘I guess that’s it. You’re not mad?’