I didn’t care that Wynonna was sweaty, dirty, possibly covered in blood. I didn’t care that she looked like she was having the worst day of her life. All I cared about was that—right here, right now—she was the most important thing to Imogen Klutz.

In that moment, I wished I was Wynonna Jones.

“You excited for the eclipse tomorrow?” said Mom, on the drive home.

I pretended to mull the question over. Shrugged. It was easier than telling Mom I didn’t give one single crap.

“You should be excited,” she said. “Did you know that Carbondale will experience the longest duration of totality in the entire United States?”

I did, in fact, know this. Everyone in town talked about it like it was the Apollo 11 moon landing—which it definitely wasn’t.

“It’s cool, I guess,” I said.

Mom rolled her eyes.

“How about Romeo and Juliet?” said Dad. “You got those lines memorized?”

Now that was something I could get excited about. I gave a toothy smile. Nodded elatedly.

I never fell asleep that night—the first blip in a pattern that would grow to haunt me.

I couldn’t even begin to fathom the scar that accident left on my brain. The memory faded like a dream, but the scar remained. A scar filled with crumpled metal, and shattered glass, and blood. So much blood.

The next day, Mom, Dad, Willow, and I joined fourteen thousand people who crammed into Saluki Stadium for the biggest eclipse-viewing event in town.

At 1:20 p.m., the moon completely eclipsed the sun.

For a split second, I became someone else. Someone who was also at Saluki Stadium, watching the exact same eclipse, accompanied by a family—just not hers.

Someone who was doing everything she could to ignore the fact that her life had been ruined forever.

But it was a fleeting instant. A flicker.

The moment I sensed something was off, I looked away from the eclipse, looked around me, looked at my own hands.

I was myself. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

But not for long.

THE PRESENT

TWENTY-FOUR

I WOKE UP.

Reality sucker-punched me in the face. This wasn’t a drill. It wasn’t a dream, or a memory, or some pensive in-between either. I was here, and I was now. It was a very physical sensation.

Or maybe it was just the lingering impact of the steering wheel. My face seriously hurt.

I glanced down at myself. I was wearing a hospital gown, and there were wires everywhere—in my nose, in my arm, spooling around me like the entrails of a gutted cassette tape.

And I was me. I was Ezra Slevin.

“Hello?” I said, but my voice came out as a breathless croak. I tried harder. “Helloooo? Is anyone there?”