What We Saw at Night

The same week that I got my cast removed, we also started school.

For other people, that would have been: Gah! We’re seniors! We rule! For the Tabor Clinic Few & Proud, it meant that we received a syllabus from the school district and a bunch of books in a box. I made paper covers for them for the last time in my high-school life. A letter with the names of my new tutors was also enclosed. Then an email popped into my inbox—from Nicola Burns. The first yearbook meeting would be at her house. A ray of hope flashed through the darkness of my brain. Nicola! Why hadn’t I thought of her? When I wrote back, I asked her if we could do something first, hang out and catch up. She didn’t respond right away. Finally she replied: OK. No exclamation points or smiley-faces. But that was all right. At this point, I’d take what I could get.

THAT SAME NIGHT, Rob finally texted me. I get if you don’t want to be with me, that way, but why r u not talking to me or J? I miss u. I really do.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream or start crying again. How long had it been? Two months? Rob had never been so brick-thick before. True, he was the only guy I knew well. (Let’s face it: at all.) And having learned almost everything about the guy species from Jack-Jack, I figured there was a certain level with a guy, even an evolved guy like Rob, of not being able to grasp subtlety unless he wanted to (or unless he could punch it or eat it). But even so, by now I wasn’t sad so much as furious.

Suppressing the urge to call him right then, and spill everything, I lurched out to the swing set. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I had a feeling I would practice until dawn. I placed my hands on the crossbar when I saw my mother watching me through the screen door.

“I didn’t know you were awake,” I said.

“You never stopped,” she answered, stepping outside to join me.

“I did it while I was healing. I did what the doctor told me to do.”

“What you’re doing, it’s beautiful,” my mom said.

“Thanks. It makes you strong, and helps you be alert in an emergency, too. And it’s really fun.”

She said, “Well, be as safe as you can.”

I said, “You knew all along.”

“Sure.”

“Before I got hurt.”

“Yes.”

“And you let me.”

“What was I going to do, stop you? It’s your life, Allie. I just want you to contain the risk.”

“That’s part of the goal, Mom. The motto of some Tribes is train swiftly; train safely. I got hurt through my own stupidity.”

And someone trying to kill me.

“What else is going on?” she asked. Not upset, just curious.

“I … I …” Before I knew it, I was sobbing again. I shook my head angrily. “Rob.”

“You love him.” The words were gentle.

I shrugged, unable to speak.

“That’s lucky for him. Not so much for you. Allie, sweetheart. I wish I could say he’s not worth it.”

“He isn’t worth it!”

“He is worth it,” my mother said. “Have you …?” She didn’t finish.

“No, but I want to.” There was no point in hiding anything at this point. Besides, she knew what I wanted, anyway.

“I don’t blame you,” she said. “Nothing better for the hormones and worse for the heart than the right boy at the right time.”

She could always surprise me. “What do you mean, the right time?”

“Well, you let yourself cry in front of me for the first time in a while. So it’s clearly the right time for you. He drives past here ten times a night like a stalker. So something’s going on with him, too. But something’s not working or we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”

I wiped my cheeks. “Don’t you want me to wait?”

“No,” Jack-Jack said, without hesitation. “I don’t want you to wait until the idea of being in love gets all snagged and dirtied with obligations and promises and other people’s expectations.”

My jaw fell open. “You want me to have meaningless sex at sixteen?”

Mom shook her head and headed back towards the house. “No, I don’t,” she said over her shoulder. “Who said anything about meaningless?”

I DECIDED TO wait to call Rob. I wanted to first prove I could do Parkour on my own. The next night, I returned to the roof over the cobblestone alley between the Smile Doctors and Gitchee Pizza. Gideon was not too bad off that night so I alerted him in advance. He came out to watch. True to his personality, Gideon was not at all alarmed at the sight of my leaping from the dentist’s roof to his roof, although the insurance liability would have made any other adult lose his lunch and dinner. He raised his fists and cheered for me.

I repeated Juliet’s original leap with the twist in the air.

After I clattered down the fire escape, he gave me a large with peppers and anchovies on the house. As I scarfed down the pizza, I debated whether or not to head up to Superior Sanctuary and trace the living crap out of what I’d seen Rob and Juliet do and trace it WAY better than they could ever have possibly imagined—

But then I looked at my watch. It was only 10:11. I was feeling brave already, pumped with adrenaline, so I decided to capitalize on it. I dialed Nicola.

“Allie?” she said, as though my call came from beyond the grave.

My heart immediately started thumping. It was ridiculous. I was more nervous about calling her than I’d been about risking my life only minutes ago. “Yeah … I’m sorry. Is this too late?”

“No … it’s just.… Wow. Hi. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Well, not nothing. I said I was going to call.”

She laughed lightly. “Yeah. But I didn’t think you would.” What an a*shole I was. “So, do you want to do something?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Nicola, let me tell you, I’m so sorry for not calling you for so long.” I paused.

“This sounds so weird. I know.”

“Are you with Juliet right now?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“What happened with you two?”

“Well, I broke my arm.”

“You broke your arm? So you’re not friends anymore?” When somebody said it like that, it sounded about as absurd as it actually was.

“It’s more than that,” I said. “I … we just have different things going on.” Now, Nicola would think I was going to the bench for a relief pitcher. “This has nothing to do with Juliet, actually. I just called to see if you wanted to hang out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to go to the Fire Festival?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. I’m psyched. Bye, Allie.”

I hung up and let out a deep breath. Gideon smiled at me drunkenly. Maybe that’s why he drank so much: he understood that basic social interaction was sometimes a lot harder than risking your life.

FRIDAY NIGHT, POLITELY after dark, Nicola showed up in her mother’s convertible: a purple Mercedes. Nicola’s mom was a pretty famous travel writer whose stories ran in The New Yorker and other big-name magazines. I’d never ridden in a convertible. They’re sort of the anti-XP car, if you think about it.

“She lets you use this?” I asked as I buckled up.

“It’ll be mine next year,” said Nicola.

“Seriously? Get out of here!”

“For college. I’m going to the University of Texas at Austin. It’s a long way from home.”

“I’ll drive with you if you go overnight and let me help you drive.”

She smirked. “Deal. If you drive the whole way.”

The Fire Festival is a generally touristy extravaganza held up at Timbers, the big ski resort on Torch Mountain. It’s the town’s last excuse for a party before the cold weather really kicks in. It’s supposed to celebrate art and food and culture, but I imagine it feels pretty much like any big fair held in any other Nowhere County. There’s some fake legend about Native Americans (I’m sure Gideon would scream): Ojibwa deciding to determine who got the first dibs at the caribou by a flame-throwing contest; the Iron Harbor version was more like juggling flaming clubs. There were teams that practiced all year and had the scars to show for it.

I personally would not want to throw and catch a club with an oil-soaked rag on fire. But then again, I imagine they’d think that using buildings and stairwells and any other man-made structure as a perpetual means of death-defiance wasn’t too far removed, either. When Nicola and I hopped out of her car, for the first time in a long time, all I could think about was having a good time. I thought about the burnt ears of sweet corn I used to eat out of the husks, salting them with tin saltshakers that hung from tree branches by strings. I thought about fry bread, and these little walleye filet sandwiches.

Then I saw Juliet.

Nicola and I had paid our ten bucks and were passing through the banner-festooned archway. In the gaudy light of the food tents, Juliet was standing a few feet from a long line of hungry people. Our eyes met. She didn’t smile. She shook her head and sort of wiggled her finger at me, like she was warning me not to approach.

“There’s Juliet,” Nicola said, and began pulling me toward her.

I tensed. She must be here with Rob, I thought, panicking. “No, just leave her for now.” I said. I shook free of Nicola’s grasp. “I think she’s with a guy.”

“A guy who doesn’t let her talk to her friends?” Nicola said with a laugh.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

The guy approached her then. He wasn’t Rob. If time slowed to molasses whenever I saw Juliet do something outrageously life-threatening, time became solid amber in that instant: frozen and horrible.

Blondie.

He placed his arm around Juliet’s shoulder, his back to Nicola and me, revealing the lightning bolt on the back of his head. Juliet laughed, for him, but rolled her eyes at me, frivolously, as if to say: Men! Can’t live with them; can’t live without them.

“Let’s go,” I said to Nicola.

“What?” she asked. “But we just got here.”

“I’m sick. We have to go. I have to get home. Or to a gas station. Whichever comes first. I’m really sorry.”

We ran for the parking lot.

Why did I look back? Juliet was far from me by then, at least two hundred yards, but what did I expect? Fear? A mad laughter? Instead, her face opened to me like a prayer, and I got it, in that moment, that Juliet was longing for me, too, just as I was longing for her.

As for Blondie, he followed Juliet’s backward gaze, too. But there was no surprise or alarm. He looked at me the way the opossum had looked at Angie and me that night many years ago, not at all threatening, just communicating what he knew. He had to survive, and if he had to pretend to be something else to survive, he would.

SHORT STRANDS OF questions and suppositions snapped and rolled like a cheap Mardi Gras bead string in my mind. Memory collapsed back and back, to our beginning Parkour, to the cat leap and the descent of that very building on that very night. Was it all planned? In that instant, I remembered the way he pressed against the sliding door on the night we saw the dead girl. That was the first time I had seen his face. Except it wasn’t. Not even then. I thought hard now, and it seemed that I recognized him, from somewhere, long ago. Had I seen him before?

I barely heard Nicola when she said, “What’s wrong? Is Juliet contagious?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“It always is,” Nicola said. “You can tell, if you want.”

“I know.” Finally I allowed myself to relax. We were sitting in Nicola’s convertible. We were safe. “But I don’t even know what to say. I don’t even completely get why I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Is it that guy? The older guy? Are you crushing him, too?”

I shivered. “No. But I do know him, though. From someplace.…”

“Allie, are you okay?” Nicola asked pointedly.

I shook my head, “I don’t know,” I said, faking a wan look. “I might have a fever. I’ve had a headache and I’ve been shivering all day.”

She stuck the key into the ignition. “I’ll take you home.”

“But I was going to stay over at your house.”

“I know,” Nicola said as the engine roared to life. “You’re white as paper, though. Next Saturday, we’ll do something. I have extra shitty AP History and English this semester anyhow, and I have to read two books that are, like, eight hundred pages. You know?”

I knew. They were the same ones I’d already read.

“Next Saturday,” I agreed, gratefully. “How’s yearbook going?”

“Now that is uber-complicated,” she said. “In addition to you, we have a stoner, a girl who won’t speak, and a guy who shall remain nameless who constantly hits on me. You’re the least complicated member of our little team, Allie.” She let out a little sigh and laughed. “And there’s other stuff. That will take a whole sleepover.”

I mustered a smile. “You know me. I’m up all night.”

It was weird. I wanted to hug her, and not just because I was freaked out about Blondie. I’d never felt such affection for a virtual stranger before, at least aside from health care professionals. She could never be to me what Juliet and Rob were, but she was funny and smart and big-hearted and she never ever looked at me as if I was a freak.

But could she be just a normal friend? The way I was with her? Was this how Daytimers operated? Did they have normal friends with zero baggage? It seemed as if she wanted exactly that from me—no more, no less. I should have spent more time with her. I should have, in some way, taken better care of her. Yet even then, I doubted I would ever stay over at her house.

Still, when she hugged me goodbye before she dropped me off, I had no clue that it would be the last time I saw her alive.





There was no way now that I could keep Juliet’s involvement with Blondie to myself. I wanted to tell my mother, and Juliet’s father. But before then, I had to confide in Rob. A very small part of me tried to keep another terrible small part of me from myself: the shameful relief that Juliet’s companion at the Fire Festival wasn’t Rob.

As soon as Nicola dropped me off, I texted him: HAVE to meet NOW

I heard a ping almost at the same instant my mail took off.

11:30 at the cabin just u

One hour from now. My whole body trembled as I thought of us, alone up there at Ghost Lake.

THERE WAS POLICE activity just shy of the exit up to the old fire road.

I so wanted to be with Rob that I would have ignored a forest fire, but something about the wreck drew my attention. I slowed as I drew closer to the swirl of sirens, where the police were setting up barricades. A car had skidded off the road and plunged into the ravine below with such force it left the guardrails gaping like broken teeth. I peered over the precipice. Then I slammed on the brakes.

Purple.

At first, all I could process was the color under the glare of floodlights.

The color of crumpled metal that had once been a convertible, now half-buried in mud. I jumped out of the car so fast I left the door hanging open. I ran toward the first officer I saw, Mike Beaufort. “Whose car is that?” I whispered.

Officer Mike held my shoulders as I tried to plunge past him. I gaped down at the cluster of firefighters and cops and medics. “Who was it? When did this happen?”

If I hadn’t decided we should be friends, you’d be alive, Nicola, I thought desperately. It should be me. Every moment, the stain on my life got bigger and darker and now it was rolling and spreading, bulging and scalding other innocent people, beyond Rob and Juliet and me. And it was my fault—

I stopped. No. That was wrong, and worse, self-pitying. I was innocent. We were all innocent. “It was called in about fifteen minutes ago,” Officer Mike said. “The way it looks, the wheels not spinning, the smell of gas … it’s been a while.”

“Was somebody chasing her?”

“Chasing her?” He seemed puzzled. “There are no other tire marks.”

“That was her mom’s car. She would never have driven it in a crazy way. She was going to drive it to college next year. In Texas.”

My hands trembled. I reached into my pocket for my cell phone when I felt a pair of arms close around me from behind. I knew who it was even before I spotted the Washington Wizards logo on his jacket. I buried my face in Rob’s shoulder and cried.

THE NIGHT ENDED in Juliet’s kitchen.

Rob and I hadn’t even knocked. If Juliet’s mother or father had been home, I don’t know what would have happened. I wish they had been. I wish that Juliet’s kitchen had been an open window onto the whole of Iron Harbor, so that every single person in town could hear me as I burst inside and shouted her name. She was sitting at the table, reading. She jumped to her feet.

“Allie! What’s wrong?”

“She’s dead!”

Rob hesitated in the doorway. Juliet’s eyes flashed to him, then back to me.

“Who’s dead?” she whispered.

I swallowed. Yes, Juliet was a very, very good and skilled liar. But now she looked frightened. She really didn’t know anything about the accident.

“Nicola,” I hissed. “Her car is upside down.…” My throat caught. I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to banish the image from my mind.

“Allie, please. Slow down.” She reached for me, and then stopped. All three of us stood there in that little dimly lit kitchen, like chess pieces scattered on a forgotten board. Rob withdrew further into the hall. “What are you talking about?” Juliet pressed.

“Somebody forced her off the bridge. I know it was him! Who is he, Juliet? Please, just tell me who he is.”

Juliet reached into her backpack and pulled out her phone, dialing her father. Where’s Ginny? I wondered. Then I remembered Juliet’s mom spent four or five days at some harvest fair in California every fall, selling her salsa and relish and hand-loomed ponchos. Normally we made a big deal of sending her off. Normally … but what about the past few months qualified as normal?

“I’m calling about a car accident,” Juliet stated into her phone. Her forehead creased. I could hear the murmur of her father’s voice—rapid-fire. She nodded. Then she swallowed. Her face whitened. “No … I, um. Allie and Rob are here. They told me. We went to school with her.” Juliet paused and then her face clenched. “I’m sorry you have to, Daddy. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you in a bit.”

I felt sick. Juliet’s father always said there was nothing he hated about his job except having to walk up to a door where the people inside were having the last good few minutes of their entire lives. It wasn’t just XP that claimed lives in Iron Harbor. Kids started drinking in sixth grade and driving at thirteen. Accidents weren’t unheard of or even uncommon, although I knew of only two kids who had been killed—two boys the summer after my freshman year.

Juliet turned to me and opened her arms. Before I even knew what I was doing, I fell into them. “Hush, my Bear,” she soothed, stroking my hair. “I’m so sorry. I know you were friends.…”

Just as quickly, I began to struggle out of Juliet’s grasp. “Your Bear?” I snapped. “You’re goddamned right Nicola and I were friends. And if you care so much, why have you been lying to me? To us? Who is he? Why were you with him tonight?”

She tried to hold my arms. “He didn’t have anything to do with Nicola Burns.” There was fear in her eyes again, fear I hadn’t seen since her ski accident. “Allie, do you know how much I’ve missed you? How much we both have?” She jerked her head towards Rob. “Is this what it takes for you to come to me?”

“No. Stop it. Stop lying. You know that he tried to kill us, the night I broke my arm. In the parking lot in Duluth.”

“No,” she said, sounding not just adult, but also old and vastly tired—like a grandmother. “No, that’s not true. That was a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“This is all a mistake. It’s awful, but not like you think.”

“He killed Nicola tonight, right?” I nearly shouted. “Isn’t that what your dad just told you? That she’s dead?”

Juliet didn’t answer. Her lips quivered.

“Right. Dead. All because of me. Because he knows I know! And I saw you with him tonight! It wouldn’t matter to him who she was. It was … it must be some kind of warning. He wanted to get to me because I’m the only one who saw him with the girl he killed, that night at Tabor Oaks.”

She lowered her gaze. “I don’t know what you saw that night, Allie.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that anymore! You both know that I saw him that night with a dead girl. Her face was covered with bruises. She was gray, Juliet. If you had seen her, you wouldn’t be pretending it was all some kind of dream.” I turned to Rob. “Tell her! Tell her!”

“I don’t know what to tell her,” he said. “I absolutely believe you. And after what just happened to Nicola, I want to believe you more. But … I didn’t see anything, either. And neither did the police. Not that night.”

Hot tears stung my eyes again. “So you think I’m nuts, too.”

“Not at all. Not even a little.”

I turned back to Juliet. “Please. Please if you care at all, tell me the truth.”

She kept shaking her head, her eyes flickering over me—as if weighing her options. Would she still lamely attempt to make it seem that Blondie never existed, or, if he did, that she wasn’t connected to him in some weird way? Would she insist that her connection with him had nothing to do with how the three of us fell apart? Let her try, I thought. I wasn’t going to let Juliet make this into a hallucination. My life had become crazy, but I wasn’t crazy. I had reached outside the sanctum of the three of us and touched another world, and been touched by it. In some pretty essential ways, in a very short time, I was a different girl. I wasn’t willing to be controlled by Juliet for the privilege of her willful, intense, (and yes) sweet friendship.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, Allie-Bear. Do you want to know? Do you want to know things you’ll wish you didn’t know?”

Very suddenly, I was afraid. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before to fear Juliet. Maybe because our history together was lifelong, or because even tonight, her sadness was so convincing. Yet it was increasingly clear that if she had been trying to confuse me, she had nothing to lose. My fists clenched at my sides. “Admit that he exists and that you know he tried to kill me.”

“He exists, but he didn’t try to kill you.” Juliet sat down hard on the kitchen chair. “I think … or I believe … I have to believe that he just tried to scare you. I’m sorry Allie. You’re my heart. You’re my best friend. I would never be part of anything that would hurt you.”

“Who was in the car with him?”

“Me.”

“So at least you’re telling the truth now. And you say he didn’t try to hurt me. Let me ask you again … Juliet, are you insane?”

“He was trying to scare me, spinning out of the garage. Not you or Rob—me.” Juliet smiled and shrugged, but her face was pinched and closed, and she no longer looked like a kid, but like a crone. “It’s this thing he does. It wasn’t even bad that night. He off-roads and spins his car on the ice—”

“Nothing you’re saying makes any sense,” I interrupted. “But say I give you all that. Even if he just happened to be in Duluth with you in the same place that Rob and I had picked to do a course—”

“I knew about what you guys were doing,” she snapped. “I wanted to see that. I wanted to show him. He drove me. But believe me, we had no idea we scared Rob so much or what happened to you after the fact.”

“It didn’t occur to you to apologize?” I said, nearly spitting. “For breaking my arm?”

She stared at the floor. “I was so ashamed. And I didn’t want to tell you.”

“So, okay. This guy, driving Dr. Stephen’s car, tries to scare you and ends up nearly killing Rob and me … and you don’t even bother to introduce him to us so he can apologize. I could call your father right now and have him brought up on charges. You know that, right? You’re lying out of your ass right now, but I don’t even care. Let’s say all of your bullshit was true. How do you explain those girls in the apartment?”

For the first time all night, Juliet looked me straight in the eye. “The girl I saw is fine. And yes, he was the guy with her. But I never saw him with anyone else. I’ve known him a long time and he’s never lied to me.”

“You’re crazy. You think I’m lying about something like that.”

“I’m not sure what you saw. Neither is Rob. Neither is my dad. He thinks you might have imagined it. Especially after what happened at Tabor Oaks, when you were babysitting.”

I’d all but forgotten that Rob was there, patiently standing near the door, listening to us go at it. The revelation hit me, vivid and terrifying: Juliet knew that I’d called the police the night I’d gone out to investigate the trapped door in the lawn. And she’d decided to tell Rob about it, spinning the whole thing as if I had gone mental. Juliet had decided to sell Rob a sack of garbage, and he’d made the purchase, and he was still halfway lapping it up. That’s why he hadn’t called all summer. That’s why he’d been spending so much time with her. That’s why they’d both avoided me after I broke my arm. I was suddenly “the crazy friend.” She’d actually succeeded in making Rob doubt the evidence of his own senses. She was a snake charmer. No, she was worse. She was a stranger. In that moment, I truly didn’t have any idea who Juliet Sirocco was.

“Allie?” she murmured, “do you really think I’m capable of hanging out with somebody who would do something so horrible?”

I stood there for a moment. “No. Well, I don’t know. He nearly killed Rob and me; you’ve just admitted as much. Basically, you’re telling me that there’s a key to the lock and I can’t even see the door, Juliet. That’s not fair.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“And right now, I am sick to my stomach. I need to call my mom.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Rob stepped forward. “I’m gonna go home. Allie … call me later, okay?”

I nodded.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He didn’t even glance in Juliet’s direction. “Bye,” he said.

The front door slammed. Seconds later, the Jeep’s engine sputtered to life. There was a thud of tires on the bumpy road outside, and the dull roar faded into the night. Before Juliet could say a word, I dialed home. Angela answered, crying. It all came out in a frantic jumble: Mrs. Staples was with her at our house, because Mom had gone into work in the ER. They were short-handed and a girl from town had been in a car wreck, and she was dead, and they were still getting the dead girl out of the car but the girl’s mother accidentally took too many pills when she heard the news.…

“Is Nicola’s mother okay?” I asked. The words sounded hollow in my ears, as if someone else had spoken them.

“Yeah, I think so, but Mom just called,” Angela said, hiccoughing through her sob. “She’ll be home soon. I wish you would come home now. She said to tell you if you called.”

I swallowed. “I’m at Juliet’s. That girl was my … she was our friend.”

“Can you come home now?” Angie pleaded.

“I’m going to stay at Juliet’s. Just for a while—”

“I’m scared you’ll get killed in an accident.”

“I won’t. I promise I won’t, Angie. I would never leave you.”

“Okay. Will you tell Juliet hi?”

“I’ll … bye, Angie. I’ll be home soon.”

I shoved the phone back into my pocket. I felt even sicker. I had no idea what to say. One life lost; another in danger. Because of me. Because of him.

“You and Rob,” Juliet said, catching me off guard. “Do you love Rob?”

“Obviously,” I said. Reacting to her unspoken follow-up, I added, “You’re the one who’s been hanging out with him.”

Juliet sighed again, once more sounding old and defeated. She slumped back down at the kitchen table.

“Allie, I want you to hear me right now. I know you’re shaken up. You just told Angie you’d never leave her. But you’re going to leave her. We’re all going to leave our families. We’re trapped until then, having blood drawn and giving pinch biopsies and having moles removed and waiting to die, like monkeys in cages.”

Now I really was frightened. I’d never heard Juliet talk like this. For a moment, I even forgot about Nicola. “The research with the retroviruses repairing the DNA—”

“Isn’t going to happen for us,” Juliet said.

“You don’t know that. My mother says it’s on the horizon.”

“She’s your mother, Allie. That’s what she wants to believe.”

I shook my head, mostly for myself. “Juliet, think about what DNA research has changed, in just our parents’ lifetimes. There are people who were executed for crimes they didn’t commit before DNA testing. There are people who got nailed for murder who would have gotten away with it.…” I stopped.

“What?” Juliet said.

I know what I’m going to do with my life. It was an epiphany, the kind only a horrible trauma can induce. I wasn’t going to be the female David Belle. No, I was going to stick a pin through insects like Blondie with their own blood and tissue, insects that sucked the life out of friends and turned them into zombies. At work in the dark of a lab, I could wield a sword like Joan of Arc in the sunlight. I had never thought much in terms of my destiny as an adult. It wasn’t territory where I was comfortable going. XP kids can think all they want about college online or in person, but usually, the reality is they’re going to grow up single and kind of disabled.

I decided right then that I was not. I had reentered my love of the natural world. And I was going to study it, beyond college. I was going to study Biology first, and Criminal Justice, then Forensics.… People like Blondie would fear me, their time as predators like an hourglass slowly emptying, one they could not dislodge or turn over.

“Juliet, if I am your best friend, you owe me,” I said, returning to the moment. “You owe it to me to tell me everything.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’m not really your friend.”

“No, really, you are. It’s because I love you that I can’t tell you.” She stood again and began to tie up her hair in a bun. I was exhausted, by the events of the night, and by the time I’d spent here. I looked at the clock, and it was already past two. What time had it been when I’d arrived? All I wanted was to sleep.

With her hands fiddling with her hair, she unintentionally bared her mid-riff. I glimpsed her tattoo.

“The ‘Great and Terrible’ Juliet Sirocco,” I muttered.

Her hands abruptly fell to her sides, as if I’d caught her stealing something. “If I tell you something, you have to swear to God that you won’t ever tell a living person, not even Rob. Even if you think you’re doing the right thing, and if you think it’s for my safety. I get to decide that.”

Slowly, I nodded. “What are you talking about?”

Juliet raised her eyebrows. “Say it. Swear it.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Not even Rob.”

“G.T.”

“What about it?”

“It represents … my ticket out of here,” Juliet said.

“A person? A drug? Are you talking about a way to end your life, Juliet? You said it meant the great and terrible.”

“It does, sort of.”

“But not completely.”

“No. Not completely. And that’s all I can tell you right now.”