“What, you think I’m going to put all my cards on the table? I knew you were freaked when I told you we had sex.” He sighs. “It was that unrequited bullshit, anyway … she didn’t know. Never knew. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe telling you is the closest I’ll get.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Lily had to keep me at an arm’s length to have sex with me. She didn’t like to get personal, so I didn’t.”

“You really think she made it?”

Cary lets the question hang in the air. The last time we talked about her, he said she’d make it but when we played I Never, he also said he’d never been in love.

“I hope she did. I like to think she did.”

“She left me,” I say. “She didn’t tell me she was going.”

“She had things to figure out.”

“I thought you said you never got personal.”

“It didn’t get personal enough.”

“What do you think she had to figure out?”

“I don’t know. She said she felt hopeless once,” he says. He pauses. “Trapped. She never felt free. I thought it was one of those post-high-school I-have-no-idea-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life meltdowns. Was it?”

Letting this conversation happen was like putting a toe in the ocean and now the water is over my head. The way we hold each other changes, in that I stop. My whole body turns to stone. It doesn’t escape his notice. I sense my name on the tip of his tongue, but I don’t give him the opportunity to say it. I get to my feet but as soon as we’re not touching, I feel it so much.

“I should get back to the auditorium before they start wondering,” I say.

“What you should really be doing is looking for Baxter’s way in,” he says, and he’s right. That’s what I should be doing. That’s what all of us should be doing. “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out.”

I do and then I just stand there in the hall.

What she told me: it was us two, nobody else. Our future was our freedom. She was the one who tied and knotted us together, made escape with her the only thing I wanted, convinced me there was nothing else to want.

But I knew she hated it.

I can’t do this anymore, I’m so sorry.

Just because she said it to Cary first—

I wrap my arms around myself and circle the school. Trace’s, Harrison’s, and Grace’s voices sound from the gym. When I step inside, the basketball is in Harrison’s hands and everything about this moment is something I want to kill.

“We should be looking for how Baxter got in,” I say.

“Don’t start,” Trace says. “Already got this lecture from Moreno.”