‘It’s not true that your family’s all you have, though, is it? You have me,’ I offer. ‘You have Peyton.’

I don’t know why I find myself wanting to convince him of this, of the comfort of belonging to someone. Of wanting you both to belong to each other.

‘I wanna find Roxy for b-both of us,’ he says.

‘For everyone,’ I say. ‘Everyone.’

Ellis nods, steadfast, but looks around, something spooking him. ‘Can we get out of here? This is giving me the creeps.’

I perform a melodramatic huff. ‘You want to get in trouble until you’re in trouble, and then you wanna get out.’ I don’t say it but this is also giving me the creeps. It seems like these sorts of places – empty parking lots – only appear during the quiet hours. It’s the weird quiet, the silence, the dark, the muffled hiss of waves on rocks.

My terrible lies.

Though there’s a comfort, admittedly, about the perpetual crash of waves against shore – the inevitability of the next and next and next, like days. ‘But, yeah. We should get you home.’

‘You don’t need to b-be my chaperone. I can get home myself. And I’m f-from here.’

‘Was just offering.’ I smile. ‘Clearly something’s after us tonight. I might need to protect you from rogue lightning.’

We leave in different directions, the echoes of what I’d told Ellis pounding in my ears, the night-time air dry on my eyes.

All I can think is that I didn’t mean to lie again.

I really didn’t.

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

Celeste lied.

She lied so often and easily it was as though she had a parasite that spoke the words for her, an evil little mouth only capable of spouting cruel, strange things.

She was six years older than me and it was a reasonable expectation that, even from the time I was very small, she’d be able to look after me. I was left alone with her most days. On a Saturday when I was seven years old Celeste sauntered into the room looking too much like me – my blonde hair, my jaw, my dark eyes – but arranged on her in a better way, somehow, in a way that was more proportional, more interesting, made more sense. She insisted that we should go out for a walk in the woods on our property. We lived in a suburb of Indianapolis, and our house was on a plot of land acres wide – the woman who gave birth to me had apparently loved the outdoors.

When Celeste asked me to do something, I did it.