The voice makes me jump, but it’s not a whisper from the corner of the room, it’s an echo: Bella’s voice, the night before the wedding, pulling me from a dream of sex and Norse gods. The night before the wedding that we’d all been dreading. I had been sweating, skin damp and clinging to the sheet, the heatwave still going on. I wasn’t shivering like I am now. The storm didn’t break until the night of the wedding.

Bella was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and I twisted to look at the clock, thinking I’d overslept and should already be at the hall, trussed up in my mint lace bridesmaid’s dress. But it was only four o’clock, still dark outside and hours from morning. I’d stayed up too late, trying to make inroads into the mountain of reading I had from school that had been gathering dust since the beginning of the summer holidays.

“Can’t you sleep again?” I pushed the sheets off me and sat up. All this, I remember, the crisp cotton of the sheet brushing against my legs, the groggy disorientation as I was pulled from sleep.

She shook her head. “I need to tell you something.”

“Go on then.”

“No—not here,” she said, pulling on my arm.

“Where are we going? We have to be up in four hours to get ready.”

“This can’t wait. Come on.”

I was thinking I was still in that dream as we walked up the lane in the middle of the night—Bella in shorts, me in my pajamas and flip-flops. I was thinking it was still a dream and, any minute, some Norse god would appear with Max’s face and sweep me off into the woods.

Max. Where is Max now?

The night air was thick and still. Hot, even at that hour. It felt wrong. Unusual for August: there should have been rain in the air, clouds to cover the stars and moon. The heat and dryness made it seem like I’d been transported somewhere else in my dreams, somewhere with warm seas, twisted olive trees, cicadas, and bright lizards swarming the walls.

Bella stopped by a crumbling, ivy-choked wall and turned back to look at me. She bent down, laced her hands together. “I’ll boost you over,” she whispered.

Dean House watched from behind the wall, windows black. My scalp prickled and I could feel the hairs rise as I figured out where we were. No way.

“Not scared, are you?” she said, a challenge in her voice.

I remember all this, I think, but I’m not sure I’m remembering it right. There’s a woodenness to the memory that makes me think I’m missing something. The dream I had seems more real than this.