Roscoe stared at me. Stunned. Speechless. His eyes said, “Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?” The irony was not lost on me.

Finally, he snapped out of his daze. Cleared his throat. “The… uh… the burner phone’s in my car. Still in the package. I’ll go get it.”

I followed him out to his car. He rummaged through the passenger side of his car—an embarrassing disaster area littered with energy drink cans, candy bar wrappers, and Burger King paraphernalia. Like, Jesus, how was this dude so cut?

Sure enough, he emerged with a no-contract smartphone, still in its unopened packaging, still in the Walmart bag he purchased it in. He removed the receipt, crumpled and shoved it in his pocket, and handed me the bag.

“Thanks,” I said. I shifted uncomfortably. “I should be going now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

The tension was thick. The tension of a father who wanted to hug his daughter but knew he had no right. Besides, I wasn’t his daughter. I wasn’t about to delude the man. I wasn’t doing this for him.

I was doing it for Wynonna.

TWELVE

IMOGEN ARRIVED AT THE Lakes a half hour early to pick me up. Her excuse was that she had been sitting by the door, checking her phone every couple minutes for the past hour, literally losing her mind. She emphasized the literal part. Claimed that she was seconds away from a psychosis situation. Real Black Swan stuff.

Imogen was literally too adorable to argue with.

First, we went “semiformal dress shopping.” Naturally, we went to T.J.Maxx, and when that failed us, we went to Marshalls. Basically, I followed Imogen around the store while she said “Oooh” and “Ahhh” and draped dresses in my arms until my biceps ached. Then I tried them on.

I thought I was becoming an expert in wearing girls’ clothes, but it turned out there was a whole dark underbelly of girls’ fashion that I had yet to meet: semiformal wear. Some of these dresses were complicated. Some were like puzzles made out of fabric, and the puzzle wasn’t solved until it was on your body, and you didn’t look like a complete idiot. One particular dress—this embarrassingly short, denim-blue thing—had an overabundance of straps and sashes that needed to be untied and retied to fit it to your shape, and after ten minutes of trying to figure it out, I had to do the unthinkable.

“Imogen?” I mumbled.

“Yeah?” said Imogen’s voice from the other side of the dressing room door. “Is everything okay?”

I let out a ragged breath. “I can’t figure this thing out.”

“Oh. Would you like some help?”

“If that’s okay?” I said. Except my voice totally cracked on the word “okay.”