“But you could,” she says. “You could get out of here. You could come visit me wherever I am. Paris maybe.” Her eyes widen at the thought of it, as if she were already halfway there just by thinking it—the taste of a buttery croissant already on her lips.

I smile in spite of myself. And shake my head. “I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself in Paris.”

“Why not? We could eat pastries for breakfast and gelato for dinner and fall in love with whoever we want. We wouldn’t even have to learn French, we could just let the boys whisper their foreign words in our ears and lose track of the year. Lose track of who we used to be.”

I laugh and sink onto the couch next to her. Suzy snorts, her cheeks rosy red. I like her dream, her imaginary world where we can go anywhere and be whoever we want.

“Okay,” I say, because I like this moment too much. Because I want to believe she’s right and we can do these things.

For this moment, I am a girl who leaves the forest behind. A girl with a friend who convinces her to sneak out her bedroom window late one night and run far, far away from here. A true, forever kind of friend. One you’d go anywhere with. A friend you’ll never lose—no matter what.

“We should pack tonight,” Suzy says with a wink, continuing our impossible little dream. “Make sure we have the right hats, we can’t go to Paris without the perfect Parisian hats.”

“Agreed,” I say. “And shoes.”

“And sunglasses.”

I nod and laugh again.

“We’ll also need new names,” she says, swiveling her head to face me. “To match our disguises. We can’t have anyone knowing we’re two small-town girls.”

“Obviously.”

“Agatha Valentine,” Suzy says, her eyes beginning to water with laughter. “That’s my name.”

I shake my head. “It sounds like a private investigator’s fake name,” I say.

“Or the heiress to a greeting card company.”

I break into laughter.

“You’ll be Penelope Buttercup,” she tells me, raising an eyebrow. “The daughter of a racehorse tycoon, whose champion thoroughbred, Buttercup, won the Kentucky Derby. But not the Belmont Stakes, which was his greatest embarrassment.”

“My backstory seems slightly more elaborate than yours,” I point out, still chuckling.

Suzy’s eyes are weeping now, and I think we have a touch of cabin fever. That feeling that once you start laughing, you can’t stop—when everything becomes funny. Even though it shouldn’t be. “A greeting-card heiress and racehorse royalty,” she continues. “We’ll be invited to all the best Paris parties.” She snorts again.