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Less than an hour after setting foot in her new house, Rose stormed out of it, then took off running. She didn’t know the terrain of Meadow Falls yet and had only the road to guide her. She ran as the tangerine sunset bruised into the purple-blue night, until there were no more houses and hardly any cars; only a gas station store, buzzing bright and electric as a bug zapper. And like a doomed fly, she went straight to it.

Now Rose stood in the freezing fog of the store fridge, hoping to cool her body—and her emotions—down, but the rainbow rows of soft drinks only seemed to mock her with their neon brightness. She breathed in the cold, let it chill the sweat that had gathered in the hollow between her collarbones and the dip in the Cupid’s bow of her upper lip. She glanced at her phone. Three missed calls from her dad. She’d need to use Google Maps to find her way back. Also an address, which she had forgotten and was in no rush to remember.

Behind her, the bell above the store entrance chimed.