Book Two Teaser
I look down at the bracelet. Touch it.
The threads are soft from years of wear, the colors bled out to ghosts of what they were.
Penny chose teal. I chose yellow. And then she mixed the colors together. We tied them on each other’s wrists in the treehouse and she said, “Now we’re bonded forever,” and I said, “Forever is a long time,” and she said, “Exactly.”
I lie back on the bed. Stare at the ceiling.
The house is quiet. The kind of quiet that used to mean danger and now means absence—the absence of wind chimes and bird feeders and a mother’s voice calling my name up the stairs for dinner.
I close my eyes. The closet is there. It’s always there.
But tonight, mixed in with the rope and the silence and the bare feet, there’s something else. The taste of strawberries and mint. The press of a body against mine. The sound of my name in Penny’s mouth—not the way she said it in anger. Not the way she said it in desperation.
The way she said it when we were kids. Like it was something worth saying.
“Xander.”
Not a prayer. Not yet. More like a question she’s been asking for five years and I’ve been refusing to answer.
Are you still in there?
I press the bracelet to my lips. I don’t know, Penny. I don’t fucking know.
New England weather is a personal attack.
I’m not being dramatic. I am actively being assaulted by the wind.
It’s January in Massachusetts and I’m walking across the Edgewood Prep quad in the school-issued peacoat that looks great in the brochure and does absolutely nothing against an actual New England winter.
Underneath: the uniform. Plaid skirt, white button-up, tie, blazer with the crest, black knee socks that stop being warm approximately four inches above where they end.
I got dressed this morning the way I’ve been getting dressed every morning since October—fast, without thinking, going through the motions so I don’t have to stand in front of the mirror long enough for my reflection to ask questions I can’t answer.
The campus is the kind of beautiful that belongs on a brochure. Gothic stone buildings with ivy crawling up the facades, arched windows, iron gates, a bell tower that chimes on the hour like we’re attending school inside a cathedral.
Everything about Edgewood Prep screams old money and older standards.
The kind of school where the parking lot has more luxury cars than a dealership and nobody blinks.
Winter break is over.
Kids are flowing through the front entrance in waves—designer coats, new iPhones, tanned skin from Christmas in Aspen or the Bahamas or wherever their trust funds took them.
They’re all buzzing. They’re all happy.
I am not.
I plaster on the smile. The Penny smile. Big. Bright. Easy.
The kind of smile that makes people laugh and stops them from looking too closely.
I wave to a girl from my lit class. Give a thumbs-up to one of the lacrosse guys who shouts my name across the quad.
Perform. Perform. Perform.
I am so far from fine that fine is a foreign country and my passport is expired.
What nobody sees—what nobody is supposed to see—is the way my hands haven’t stopped shaking since six a.m.
Or the fact that I skipped breakfast because my stomach is a knot of nausea and anxiety and something worse.
Something chemical. Something missing.
My eyes scan the hallway. Not for friends. For exits.
Bathrooms. Empty classrooms. Anywhere I can be alone for ninety seconds.
Which is all it takes.