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She gives us a Tayla-worthy look of disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right? You were all there.” With that, she clambers up the rest of the way into our tree house, settling herself on a paisley cushion and helping herself to a mozzarella stick from my napkin.

I don’t even want it, but still .

“How’s Kiara?” Caroline asks, shooting me a disapproving look.

Around a gob of cheese, Radhika evasively says, “I called Keiffer. He was helping his mom sell her jewelry at the festival, but he’s dropping everyone home.”

Keiffer is her boyfriend. He’s also Kiara’s ex-boyfriend and one of the guys I crushed on before she got to him first. And as a rule, I’ve never gone for anyone after she’s dumped them, which left the field open for Radhika to swoop in and bond with him over their crushed hearts. It’s all very evolved.

“That’s good,” says Caroline. “I hope Kiara will be okay. We were all pretty scared for her.”

Radhika licks her fingers clean. “Which is why I’m here. We need your help.” She looks at me, lips pursed, as if it’s the last thing she wants to admit. Up close, she looks exhausted, the corners of her eyes drooping like she could just curl up here and go to sleep.

“We?” asks Austin.

“Tayla, Evan, and me.” She grimaces. “The psychic at the festival totally messed with Kiara. Hexed her or something. Freaky stuff has been happening, like earlier today when Kiara found a spider swimming in her butterscotch soda, and later, she almost face-planted on the sidewalk when she stumbled over a crack. But when we stopped by Aurora’s tent earlier, she denied everything.

And those things were fairly harmless compared to what we just witnessed!

If things get worse…” Her brown eyes, winged with sharp, dramatic lines, punch through my brain fuzz. “But you…you can help.”

Guilt coils in my gut like a heavy snake. “You already talked to Aurora?”

She gives the tree house a quick skim. “Your dad used to run tours into the forest, right?”

Guess that explains why they think I can help. “Yeah,” I say tightly. “So about Aurora—”

“Did he ever, you know, find it?”

She doesn’t need to clarify what she’s talking about. We all know: the wishing well.

“ That’s why you need my help?” I scoff. I need to head this off, stat. “Sorry, wrong girl.”

“But—”

“The wishing well is just a rumor, Radhika. Only kids, cranks, and tourists believe.”

Her voice rises. “That’s not true, and you know it.” She leans in earnestly. “Your dad—”

“Don’t talk about my dad. He wasn’t like everyone else! He wouldn’t go looking for it!”

“Nova’s right.” Austin’s voice shoulders a hard edge. He glares at Radhika. “You really think that if the legend was true, someone wouldn’t have found it by now?”

“Someone did ,” she shoots back. “My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

I bristle. “ Our great-great-great—yeah, I’m not saying all that—grandfather.”

“And yet you don’t believe in his discovery?

Some descendant you are.” Condescension drips from every word.

“The wishing well can undo any curse. That’s not rumor, that’s fact.

That’s our town history, which you should know since we devote a whole festival to it every fall.

” She quotes directly from our history textbook.

“?‘Upon his discovery of the wishing well in 1782, Henry Prior founded the town of Prior’s End, where everything prior could be undone if one only asked for it.’?”

Shaking my head, I say, “Right, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that his last name was Prior.” When she opens her mouth to argue, I hasten to add, “Look, it makes for a nice origin story, which is fine. Whatever. And upholding the legend gives us a quirky little hook to draw the tourists in, and your guidebook plays it up, but you should know better than to believe in your own con.”

“Are you kidding me with this bullshit, Nova? You know your dad believed it was real, don’t you? Why else would his aunt have fallen out with my grandparents over publishing the book?”

Invoking my dad, acting like she knew him, is too far.

Gritting my teeth, I say, “Yeah? What exactly did the great Henry Prior discover? A crumbling ruin in the middle of a forest? And then suddenly his woes were ended and he lived happily ever after, blah, blah, blah. All hail ye olde pile of rocks.”

“Henry died of syphilis, so not exactly a HEA,” Caroline mutters.

We all stare.

She blinks. “What, did none of you read to the end of the chapter?”

Radhika isn’t distracted for long. “The well has powers—” she starts to say, but Austin cuts her off.

“That people have died looking for.”

The emphasis he places on that one simple word changes everything, reminds her what he’s lost. What I’ve lost. What all those adventure seekers come here to find.

It’s jarring, hearing him say that he thinks our dads are dead.

Whenever people talk about Dad, they use the word gone .

But if Mom’s going to do what she said she wants to, then I have to get used to hearing the other word, too.

Caroline lays her hand on top of Austin’s knuckles, not squeezing.

Just enough pressure to let him know she’s there.

Stricken, and with enough sense to know she’s overstepped, Radhika falls silent.

“You should leave,” Caroline says firmly.

Radhika crawls to the rope ladder and swings one leg over the side until she locates a rung. “Things are going to get worse, Nova. Even if you don’t believe, can you at least accept that Kiara does? That she’s going to the wishing well whether you help her or not?”

“This is not my problem,” I tell her.

I really, really try to believe it.