PROLOGUE
Claire
Sophie packed fast, like she was afraid if she slowed down, she might change her mind. She knelt on the floor of her bedroom, folding clothes and pushing them into a single backpack. Not neatly. Just enough to make everything fit. She pressed down with her hands, zipped it halfway, frowned, then opened it again to rearrange things that didn’t really need rearranging. I sat on the edge of her single bed with my legs crossed, watching her move around the room.
“You’re going to wrinkle everything,” I said.
She didn’t look up. “I don’t care.”
“You always care.”
It was true. Sophie liked the clothes in her closet folded neatly. I was the exact opposite. I couldn’t be bothered. That’s what was worrying me now. The way she haphazardly packed her bag. A bag that had to contain everything she needed to make it across the border.
She shrugged. “I care about getting out more.”
I knew that too. Sophie and I had been best friends since kindergarten, but it didn’t take long for my parents to catch on to the fact that something was off with Sophie’s dad. Sophie andher mom were horribly scared of him, and play dates only took place at our house, not Sophie’s. I’d stayed in touch with Sophie since her mom left her dad about a year ago. They moved towns, and Sophie changed high schools. I had to be careful getting here because there was always the fear her dad was watching me too, since he knew Sophie and I were close. That’s why I took a bus one town over before looping around and coming back this way. Sophie’s room in the basement apartment was small and plain, like everything else about the place. Bare walls. A narrow bed. It was completely different than the home she grew up in. That home was fancy, and her room was large. Her dad was an attorney and took on big criminal cases. But what no one knew was that behind closed doors, he was a monster. He hit her mom and yelled at her a lot. Sophie was caught in the crosshairs a few times and got smacked around too. Her dad was a connected man. He knew law enforcement and private investigators. For the past year he had been a nightmare for Sophie and her mom because it was so hard to hide from a man like Mr. Moreau. They had no friends visit them. No sleepovers and neighbors weren’t allowed to know their real names. They parked behind the house and came in through a side door. They kept to themselves. It wasn’t a life to be envied. It was a life filled with constant fear.
Sophie crossed the room and tugged on the bottom drawer of her dresser. It stuck, like it always did. She yanked harder than she meant to, and the drawer slid out too fast, dumping its contents onto the floor.
“Seriously?” she muttered.
I slid off the bed and knelt beside her. Photos, loose papers and random junk scattered across the carpet. She picked up a photo and laughed.
“OMG. This one.” She held it out to me.
It was from the summer we went to camp at the community center. We were about eight years old and had missing teeth.We were standing in our sunhats and backpacks, smiling at the camera. Sophie had her arm slung over my shoulders.
She picked up another picture. “And this.”
“That was when you won your first swim meet,” I said.
“It was a glorious day,” Sophie confirmed.
She had been on the competitive swim team ever since I could remember. She was a great swimmer, and it gave her a reason to leave town to go on meets. But her dad never let her mom go with her to cheer her on, and Sophie always worried about what state she would find her mom in when she came home.
I picked up the next picture. “The chocolate cake.”
“The chocolate cake,” she repeated.
Sophie had come over to my house for my fourteenth birthday and helped my mom bake a cake. Mom had to leave to work and asked Sophie to take it out of the oven, but she forgot, and the cake burned, so she got to work making me a new one. I appreciated her efforts, but it tasted awful.
“I’ll never be a baker.” She shrugged.
“No, but maybe you can swim for the American Olympic team,” I suggested.
“That would be a dream,” she said, and we both sighed.
We had high hopes that Sophie could live a normal life in America. Her mom only had enough money to get one of them across the border, and she insisted Sophie should go.
We laughed quietly, sitting cross-legged on the floor, passing photos back and forth. Talking about stupid things. Old jokes. Moments that had felt small at the time but somehow mattered now. Everything felt so normal and that almost made it worse.
“You’re really doing this,” I said eventually. I was losing my best friend, even if I understood why she had to go.
Sophie nodded. “I have to.”
I knew that too. “I know. I’m actually excited for your new adventure,” I forced a smile while trying to keep my tears at bay.
Sophie didn’t have any type of ID, and her mom said it would be dangerous to apply for a passport. Her dad was too well connected. They stayed away from any official documents that would make it easy for him to trace them. It kept them safe. It also kept Sophie stuck.