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“Yeah.” I nodded. “But if the cops ask questions?—”

“I know,” she said quietly. She sank on herself almost, shrinking down, as if pressed flat by the weight of things, and I felt it too.

Over the course of one weekend, everything’d changed. Lacey wouldn’t get to just go to high school anymore—she’d be That Girl, as soon as news got out. And our classmates—our classmates would be like wild dogs.

“I’m really sorry, Lacey,” I said, knowing that that sentiment did not even begin to cover the half of it.

She nodded absentmindedly. “Me too.”

I heard the clock on the wall counting faintly, seconds ticking away one by one. My mom wouldn’t be away from home forever, especially if the bar closed early with the weather like this—and I needed time to put my clothes in the drier when I got back. I didn’t know what she’d say if she knew why I was here, but it didn’t matter because I couldn’t tell her anyhow.

I propped myself up. “I gotta go.”

“Are you sure?” Lacey asked, sounding small.

“I don’t want to, but I have to. I’ll come back with my mom tomorrow, okay? I’m grounded, so don’t let on I was here.” I slid out of the bed, taking half of her sheets with me. I put my shoes on and picked up my coat before looking back at her. “I still love you.”

“I love you too.”

I nodded, grabbed the flashlight, and went for the door.

I walked past the nurse’s station, and one of the women there cleared their throat at me. “Do your parents know where you are?”

“Yeah,” I said, and kept walking like I belonged.

As soon as the last glass door fell shut behind me, I raced out into the rain. I ran till I hit the edge of the parking lot and kept going—I didn’t even put on my coat. Each raindrop that hit me stung, but that was nothing, nothing, compared to all the stinging on the inside. I felt like I was full of wasps.

And if I felt like that—Lacey, God—Lacey.

Why’d he—whoeverhewas—do that? Hurt my friend, tear my friend—why? My questions pounded in time with my legs, and the puddles that splashed me back were my only answers. Iran until my stomach burned, and sagged to my knees, a stitch in my side, panting for each humid breath, fat raindrops pelting the back of my head like pennies.

The storm screamed down, and I screamed back at it. Each time I heard thunder, I howled. I couldn’t outrun it, and even if I could there was nowhere to go. Nothing I could do would change what’d happened to Lacey. I wished I’d been the one to go to the party instead—or that I’d blown off work and gotten fired and gone—I imagined myself racing in, with a gun that I didn’t have, with karate that I didn’t know, breaking beer bottles, with shuriken, pool cues, screaming until someone called 911, somehow stopping, changing, the past. A thousand scenarios from books, TV, movies played out in my head—but at the end of all of them, I was just me, kneeling in the rain by the side of the road, stupid and powerless. Thunder roared, as if the sky itself were mocking me.

“It’s not fair,” I muttered. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I could feel my dinner rising up my throat. “It’s just not—” I burbled, and then threw-up, a small geyser of sick, quickly washed away. I clenched my hands into the roadside gravel and waited in case there was more. When there wasn’t, I rocked back on my heels. The world around me was a wet blur, the sky overhead a hateful smear, the nearest streetlight far and flickering. Lightning strobed bright enough to blind me.

Lacey was right—nothing felt real anymore. Time seemed to stretch on forever, and I started feeling weightless, which made sense because I wasn’t here. I couldn’t be here, in this strange world where somehow things like this could happen. Things had gone wrong. Everything had gone off course. All the hairs on my arms stood on end, like I was starting to pull apart.

In this new place, where everything was wrong and spinning, the only thing I was sure of was that the second worst thing in the world to getting raped is finding out someone you love hasgotten raped and not being able to do a goddamned thing about it. A lightning bolt punctuated my pain, washing everything in cleansing light before thunder pounded, as if echoing the awfulness I felt back down.

I wasn’t myself anymore, just a broken and blubbery mass of tears and snot. But I still had to get back home. I stood up too fast, feeling even lighter. Maybe I could just float away. Unhinge from this world and go someplace easier, more safe.

I looked up at the dark sky and the last thing I remembered was a bright light and the sound like a clap from God.

CHAPTER 8

Something tickled my face.

I blinked as I reached for it. I touched my face like it was someone else’s, and felt something pokey resist. I pulled my hand back and looked at it, and saw an obstinate ant crawling over a fingertip—and past that—morning sun.

I lurched up in bed—but I wasn’t in bed, I was out…by the side of the road. And it was dawn.

Dawn.

What the fuck had happened to me?

I scrabbled to standing, mud sucking at my clothes, squishing inside my socks—my socks—I looked down, and my shoes were six feet away from me.

“What happened?” I asked myself as if I could answer. I shrugged muck off of myself, scraping my feet on their opposite calves before putting them back into my shoes. What did I remember? Walking to the hospital in the rain. Running away from it in the rain.