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Rose awoke the next morning in a bed that was not hers. The first thing she saw was the framed artwork hanging on the opposite wall. Depending on who you asked, the watercolor was either a slab of raw meat or a portrait of Hart, made avant-garde by a sudden storm.

She was in Hart’s bedroom, though he was not.

Rose swung the thin blanket off her, the whole of the night before rushing to her head so quickly it made her sway. She walked to the window and pushed aside the curtain, wincing as the sun hit her face. But her eyes adjusted as she looked out into the garden. If Hart was anywhere, it would be there. She grabbed her pants and slipped them on, her mind already made up. Looking for Hart would be her excuse. But what she really wanted to do was go back to the hedge maze. She needed to see it in the light of day.

Of all the places in Hemlock Hill, the hedge maze was the one Rose was least familiar with. Which was why she’d pocketed the golden gravel the night before. As she ran through the hedge maze, she’d dropped pieces like breadcrumbs, a tiny trail she could follow in the morning. The bits of gravel were virtually undetectable if you weren’t looking for them. But now that she stood at the entrance to the maze, she could see a tiny mound in the grass, beckoning her to walk toward it.

Rose didn’t think Hart would ever take her through the whole maze. And though that would turn out to be wrong, at this very moment, as she spotted the next bit of gravel, she was convinced this was her only way to solve the labyrinth.

In daylight, it felt brand-new. The walls stretched into the open blue sky at double Rose’s height, manicured into perfect geometric angles. She touched the verdant corridors as she went, feeling their dichotomy beneath her fingertips. Stark lines and lush life, ever growing but not beyond their stated shape. Though it should’ve been easier to navigate for the second time, in the light of day and now that she was clearheaded, none of the maze felt familiar. Every pathway looked like the previous one, every turn a surprise, and Rose relied entirely on the gravel breadcrumbs.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the intense feeling of déjà vu, growing stronger the deeper she got. That she’d been here, not just last night, but many times before. Then she saw it, its brown surface stark against the green. Rounded at the top, with clearly defined whorls in the wood, the door seemed embedded in the hedge, as though it grew out of the plant itself.

This, Rose knew instinctively, was the center of the hedge maze.

But just as she reached for the door, she heard a voice on the other side of it. A soft murmur she had to strain to hear. Its rhythm made it sound like a prayer, or maybe a chant. Rose pressed her ear flat against the wood and listened.

“Let me forget,” said the voice. “I wish I could forget. I want to forget. Please—”

The voice—racked with desperation and anguish—cut off suddenly, and Rose held her breath and every inch of herself still.

“Who’s there?” the voice asked.

Rose peeled away from the door, tiptoeing backward, but every tiny movement might as well have been the stomp of an elephant. A scrambling came from the other side of the door, then soft thrashing, like legs swiping through shrubs, coming closer, until the door opened and Heather walked through it.

While Rose was still shaking off the hangover of last night’s party, Heather looked luminous. Saintly, even. The sun doused the top of her head in so much sunshine she wore it like a crown. She looked so perfect, in fact, that the imperfections jumped out instantly. The dirt marring her fingertips. The soft skin just beneath her eyes, puffy and damp.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. And she really was. Whatever Heather had been doing in here, it was private, and Rose felt like she’d just interrupted it. “I was looking for Hart.”

“He’s not here.”

“I know.”

“You cannot be here,” Heather said.

“I’m—”

“You cannot be in this part of the garden.”

Clearly Heather didn’t want anyone to see her in this vulnerable moment. Least of all Rose. But Rose felt a sudden urge to help her somehow. “Are you—?”

“Leave!”

Rose’s lips shut in a tight line and she turned around, her eyes downcast, searching for the beacon of pebbles to lead her out of there.

Breakfast was long over by the time Rose got home, and when she walked through the door she found her dad on his feet, mid-pace in the living room. One look at his eyes and Rose could see that he was so tired that he probably hadn’t slept at all last night, but also so irate that he couldn’t possibly try to sleep now. It hit her that she’d forgotten to text him her usual excuse of “sleeping at a friend’s house.”

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

Rose stalled, putting her keys down on the console table by the door, pushing some flyaway hair behind her ear. The truth—that she’d been too out of it to come home, that she’d done the safe, smart thing and spent the night at Hart’s—would probably upset her father more.

“I called you about a million times last night and you just don’t come home?” Mr. Pauly said.

“Dad, I’m sorry.”

“Do you know how worried I was about you? How close I was to driving to that party to find you?”

A thought flashed through Rose’s mind, not of how embarrassing it would’ve been if her father dragged her home from the party, but that he probably wouldn’t even have been able to find it in the acreage of Hemlock Hill.

“You know, I let you do whatever you want. I am trying to instill strong parent-child trust between us and foster independence in you. And all I ask is that you come home at night. You can’t even do that?”

Mr. Pauly never got angry, so seeing him this mad stirred something up in Rose that made the back of her throat tickle with shock and hurt and frustration. But it was the secondhand self-help parental speak that made her roll her eyes.

Her dad didn’t like that. “You’re not seeing that boy again.”

“What?”

Mr. Pauly threw his hands in the air, fed up. “You spend every minute with him and I haven’t even met him, and now you’re spending the night with him ? And don’t bother denying it—you haven’t made any other friends since we moved here, not counting that boy who ate all my Fig Newtons.”

“Well, yeah, it’s kinda hard to make friends when you’re wrenched out of your high school, away from the friends you’ve had your whole life, and made to live in the middle of fucking nowhere!” That tickle in Rose’s throat only grew bigger, making it hard to get the words out. But she did, matching the volume of her father’s voice and raising the ante with some fresh tears.

“Connecticut is not the middle of nowhere.”

“Yes, it is!” Rose shot back, letting rip every bit of childish insolence pent up inside her.

Mr. Pauly sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Rose,” he said, her name laden with remorse.

“I didn’t want to come here,” she said. “I’m doing the best I can.”

“I know that,” Dad said, calmer now. “But it isn’t healthy. You’re neglecting your whole life for a boy.”

Rose shrugged, giving herself a little time to swallow down all the emotion that clogged the back of her throat. “He’s the only good thing in my life.” She felt like she was exposing something about herself, and hated how she couldn’t even get into an argument with her dad without her voice cracking. And she especially hated how much she sounded like a cliché right now, but clichés existed for a reason. She went to her room and slammed the door shut.