Dawn lies there and shivers and feels Lucas shivering beside her. It’s not windy in this little crevice but it’s open at the top and the temperature is still falling. Their clothes are wet and they’re on top of a mountain.

And Dawn is so tired but she can’t fall asleep, not until her mind has forced her to think about all of the things that have gone wrong.

Like, from the very beginning.

From the moment she killed her dad.

That’s what Dawn thinks about, lying there in the cold.

Chapter 89

DAWN DIDN’T KILL HIM ON PURPOSE.

(Duh.)

But it’s her fault that he’s dead.

It’s her fault and she lives with it and it comes back and haunts her, and that’s why she gets stoned and fucked up so much, because it’s only when she’s fucked up that the guilt goes away.

There are no pills on this mountain, and no whiskey or gin.

There’s just guilt.

And the cold.

Chapter 90

HOW IT HAPPENED WAS STUPID.

She’d gone to the movies with her two best friends, Madison and Olivia. They went to the late showing of the most recent Avengers.

It was supposed to be a girls’ night and they were supposed to stay over at Madison’s house afterward, but Olivia knew these guys who were having a party, including this one guy, Scott, who was a little bit older and a little bit of a d-bag and who had way more than a little bit of a thing for Olivia.

So they went to the party.

The party wasn’t much of a party.

The party was Scott and his two sketchy friends playing video games in Scott’s basement and stealing pulls from a bottle of Jameson. Dawn walked into that basement and took one look at the boys and figured out it wasn’t really her scene.

But she kept her mouth shut, because Olivia liked Scott.

And Dawn didn’t want to seem like the lame one in the group.

(Dawn was like fourteen at this point.)

(She’d had—maybe—a wine cooler or two at this point in her drinking career.)

(She’d never gone shot for shot over whiskey with three boys who were bigger and older than her. But she tried—oh, she tried—and it wasn’t long before Dawn was quite shit-faced.)

It was at this point that the party began to break up. Olivia paired off with Scott and disappeared to his room. Madison and this other guy, Ryan, started making out on the couch.

That left Dawn, and contestant No. 3—and it’s a testament to that Jameson that Dawn doesn’t even remember his name.

(Nor does she really remember how she wound up on top of him.)