“Caleb?”
My voice sounds strange in my own ears—too loud and too quiet at once.
He turns.
The spinning slows. Just a little. Just enough. I can’t make his face hold still—it melts, reforms, pixels rearranging—but theideaof him anchors me.
He’s gravity, and I’m a balloon drifting toward the stratosphere.
My feet move without permission. I reach for him because I don’t know what else to do, because my mouth’s too dry for words, because he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s turned to dripping watercolors.
He hesitates.
No. Don’t go. Please don’t. I’m drowning.
Then—contact.
Palm to palm. Holy palmer’s kiss. Is that how the line goes? Shakespeare won’t write this tragedy. I was always meant to end this way.
His touch shoots through my arm, electricity and anchor, grounding me just enough to believe I’m still here, still real.
I laugh—sort of. It comes out raw and jagged.
Because of course. Of course, this is me. The girl who gets drugged at parties. The girl whose own mother called her a bitch and meant it. The girl who ruins everything she touches.
You can’t escape what you are.Darlene’s voice coils through my head, wrapping around the beat and the lights and my pounding heart.
The pool light ripples over my companion’s face, shadowing his eyes into black pits that see straight through me to all the broken parts I’m trying to forget.
Then we’re moving—how did that happen?—together under the string lights. The tilt of the world is still there, but he’s solid beside me, real, the only fixed point.
I’m burning again. Inside-out burning. The sun lodged in my ribs, incinerating me from the inside.
I claw at my jacket. He helps peel it off, hands gentle, but it’s still too hot, too tight. I’m going to crawl out of my skin if I don’t?—
The crowd whoops. Cheers? Screams? I can’t tell anymore.
He leans in, breath warm, words scraping across my ear and down into my bloodstream, but they’re just sounds without meaning.
I look up, trying to focus?—
His face shifts again.
Suddenly, I know.
It’s not Caleb.
The knowledge slices clean through the haze. My heart jackhammers against my ribs.
I’m not safe with this man.
I don’t know who this is. I don’t know where I am or how much time I’ve lost or what I’ve already done. I just know I’m eighteen years old in two days, high on something I didn’t choose, and standing in front of someone I can’t trust.
Fear floods in, cold and clarifying. My brain shrieksmove, but the heat is louder.
I’m so hot. Unbearably hot. If I don’t cool down, I’m going to spontaneously combust right here.
The pool glitters like salvation. Blue and cool and promising relief.