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“Sam?”

“I was just thinking.”

“Yeah, about what?”

“That my parents won’t be home for an hour or so.”

Her chest tightened for a second, and then her anxiety evaporated. He’d said it so casually, as though the words meant nothing at all—just an observation, really—but the weight of his suggestion hung in the air, and despite the warmth of the afternoon, she shivered a little.

She wanted to go back with him so badly.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I mean… I want to. I just can’t.”

He nodded. Katie wondered what was going through his mind. Was he losing patience with her? Had he already? There had been no pressure from Sam on that level at all, but she couldn’t help feeling she’d just failed a test of some kind. And she supposed that she had. Because even though her parents didn’t seem to care very much about her, she was still being good, wasn’t she?

Still doing what she’d been told.

“One day though,” she said.

“One day.”

She looked to her right—and there was Chris, walking slowly along the road toward them. As always, he was alone; she didn’t think he had any friends. His hands were tucked in his pockets, and his head was bowed. He was fifteen but looked younger and smaller than his age, and Katie had to wait for him every day and walk home with him. Her mother insisted. Katie supposed it made sense. They were at the same high school, after all, and were both going to the same place at the same time.

But while she loved her brother very much, she was not his keeper, and the sight of him now caused the resentment inside her to blaze even brighter. God—he evencarriedhimself like he didn’t belong. Why couldn’t he look after himself instead of her being expected to do it? Why didn’t her life matter to her parents as much as his?

Sam saw Chris approaching them.

He sighed and stood up, hitching his bag onto his shoulder.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said quietly. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Then he stood in front of her, waiting for her to stand up and kiss him goodbye as she always did. But she was still looking to her right, watching Chris walking toward them, and the feeling of resentment that had been building inside her finally spilled over.

She looked back at Sam.

“No,” she said. “Wait.”

If you could see the future, would you want to?

You can’t, of course. A life is lived forward. The present is a vantage point from which every moment in the past is inevitable and every moment in the future invisible. Most of those moments won’t be important, but a handful will turn out to be pivotal—shattering, even—and you never know which until it’s too late.

As Katie boarded the bus with Sam that day, she didn’t know that a local man named Michael Hyde was leaving his house right then.

That he was walking toward his car with a knife in his hand.

She spent an hour at Sam’s house that afternoon. She had made a decision to do whatshewanted to do for once, and it was thrilling. She would deal with the consequences later—and really, how bad could they be? Sam walked her to the bus stop afterward, their hands clasped tightly together and their upper arms pressed against each other. He kissed her goodbye. When the bus set off, Katie smiled at him through the window until he was out of sight, and then she looked straight ahead, smiling to herself instead, her body full of warmth and light. It felt as though she hadn’t just discovered a secret but somehow become one.

After getting off the bus, she walked home slowly. She was more than ready to have whatever argument awaited her there, but she also wanted to hold on to that feeling inside her for as long as possible. And besides, it was a beautiful afternoon. The sun was still bright and warm, and there was a lovely cast to the light that brought out fresh colors in the world around her. Everywhere she looked, it was like she was seeing things for the first time. As though everything had changed.

And, of course, it had. She just didn’t know it yet.

Katie reached their road.