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‘Chasing you?’ Detective Beaufort asked. ‘I don’t think so, Jessie. There has been an alert out for you since you went missing, because you’re only seventeen and because of the circumstances. We’ve been keeping a lookout for you, but no one was chasing you.’

I wanted to push her for more answers, to ask about the sheriff’s deputy who had stopped us outside Atlanta and the cops who had followed us in Salt Lake City and the child protection people just outside Portland, but all that felt like I was giving too much away.

Without warning, ice-cold realization crept down my spine as Detective Beaufort’s words settled in.

You say you didn’t kill him.

We don’t think you killed him.

I had never needed to run away.

No one had thought I’d torn the Creep to pieces and left him bleeding on the floor.

There was no reason the past two weeks had ever needed to happen. I could have stayed at home, in Seattle.

And if I’d never gotten into Brooke’s Mustang, she wouldn’t have met Chris and he wouldn’t have kidnapped her. Drugged her. Traumatized her.

My heart started to beat faster, and my breath turned shaky. I had to get back to her right away, to explain, to make sure she was okay. I collapsed in on myself and a high, painful whine escaped my throat.

‘Jessie?’ Claire said, rushing over and grabbing my shoulder.

‘What’s wrong?’ Detective Beaufort demanded. ‘Are you hurt?’

I shook my head and wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to physically hold myself together.

‘Are you in pain?’ Claire called out, and I had no idea how to answer that.

They’d just torn everything I knew to be true apart and scattered the pieces. Now I had to rebuild the truth – the actual truth, not just my fears – based on what I’d been told. Guilt seeped into my pores. Would Brooke ever forgive me?

Claire couldn’t come with me back to Seattle because she had another kid she was representing the next morning.

She said goodbye to me and wished me luck and I tried to tell her thank you , but the words stuck in my throat.

She smiled at me, though, and I think she knew I was grateful even though I couldn’t speak it out loud.

I was assigned another liaison and shipped unceremoniously back to Seattle.

Sea-Tac airport was cold and dark when we arrived, and surprisingly quiet.

I glanced at a huge clock on the wall – it was just after midnight.

It took me a moment to remember that we’d crossed three time zones over the past couple of weeks. I’d barely noticed.

Being back in Seattle didn’t change how I felt.

I was still completely numb, not able to really process anything.

What Detective Beaufort had told me was such a contradiction to everything I thought I knew that my brain didn’t know how to handle it.

No one had been chasing us. Except Chris, who the police didn’t know anything about.

No one thought I’d killed the Creep. I was free to leave. They had sent me home.

My liaison took me to a hotel and told me to get some sleep, that she would be in the next room if I needed anything, and I nodded and wondered where my bags had gone.

I had nothing – no toothbrush, no pajamas, no Brooke, and I wanted to cry.

But it was like my body no longer knew how to produce tears.

In the end, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t sleep anyway.

I replayed the moment in the alley over and over again, trying to figure out if I could have done something different – if I should have done something else that would have led to a different outcome, one where I wasn’t alone in a hotel room, back in a city I couldn’t stand.

I wondered where Brooke was now. Who she was with. We hadn’t been put on the same flight home – I knew that much. I wanted to know if she was thinking about me, too, wherever she was.

The next day I was taken to an ugly office building in Bitter Lake, a neighborhood north of my old home in Greenwood. The liaison – I hadn’t bothered to remember her name – dropped me off and promptly disappeared. I should have been mad at her about that, but I couldn’t find the energy.

I really had no idea what was going on, and everyone who worked here looked so busy, rushing from one room to another with laptops tucked under their arms. I was left in a waiting area with a couch and a TV showing the Food Network, and I curled up into a ball and tried to make myself invisible.

After a couple of hours, someone came over.

‘Jessie?’

I looked up at him. He was youngish, brown hair, glasses.

‘Sorry to keep you,’ he said. ‘Someone will be here to get you soon, okay?’

I nodded and turned my attention back to the TV. He didn’t say anything else, just rushed off to his next meeting.

It took another hour, and I didn’t move except to press my hand to my stomach to stop it growling.

I’d caught enough snippets of conversation to figure out this was an agency, for fostering, which worked with local Child Protective Services.

Brooke wasn’t going to be somewhere like this.

By now she’d be back with her family, and, underneath all the numbness, I was scared for her, and scared for what she might do.

She might run away again, and if she did, I’d have no way of finding her.

I had no idea how her parents would punish her for what we’d done.

She could be in trouble, because of the gun.

She could be still in Atlanta, waiting to be charged with all sorts of crimes.

She could be back in Seattle, or in New York with Julianne, or anywhere in between.

But I knew for sure she wouldn’t be somewhere like this.

My attention flitted between the TV and the main office opposite my waiting area as another woman came in, briefly spoke to someone, then sat down on the other end of my couch.

I was expecting my mom to come and get me, even though I’d told Detective Beaufort and Claire I didn’t want that, so I thought she was likely another social worker here to ask me more questions.

‘Jessie? I’m Lena.’

I tried to assess her, but she wasn’t giving much away.

On the one hand, she was wearing a long floral skirt and Birkenstocks, so she looked like someone’s hippy aunt.

On the other, there was a sharpness in her eyes, behind her wire-framed glasses, that gave the impression she wouldn’t take any bullshit.

‘I foster young people. I’ve been told you don’t want to go back to your parents?’

I scrambled to sit up, straightening out of my slouch.

‘Seriously?’

She nodded and tucked her sandy-colored hair behind her ear. It was long and wavy, and the ends were dyed pale pink.

‘I was only called an hour ago, so I don’t know the whole situation. But you can come with me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Please.’

‘Okay. Where’s your stuff?’

I shrugged, and she sighed.

‘Don’t worry. Let’s get out of here.’

I knew I would have to face my mom eventually, especially now that I was back in Seattle. I had no idea how she had reacted to what had happened. In the news report, they’d said she was distraught, but that was the kind of thing people said when kids went missing. It didn’t mean it was true.

Going with Lena was scary because I had no idea what would happen next, but that was nothing compared to the real fear I had of seeing my own mother again.

Our relationship was complex and messy, and I was starting to build some real rage deep down inside me because she hadn’t seen what the Creep had been doing to me.

I was running away all over again, and I was aware of the irony.

‘Are you hungry?’ Lena asked as we walked out of the building and to her car – a bright-yellow VW Beetle.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘Let’s grab something to eat, then. Any preferences?’

My mind flicked back to all the junk Brooke and I had eaten over the past couple of weeks, and my stomach, still feeling delicate from all the gut-deep fear, roiled.

‘Could we just get, like, a salad?’

Lena laughed and opened the car door so I could climb in.

‘Sure. That’s not a request I get very often.’

‘I need to eat a vegetable right now,’ I said.

Eat a vegetable for once, Brooke.

Meredith’s voice came back to me clearly, and a little knot in my chest loosened.

Everything was still a mess. Actually, everything was even more of a mess now than when I had left Seattle, much worse, but also so much better.

I’d learned over the past couple of weeks that I could trust my instincts.

I could make the right decisions. I could take charge, and make things happen.

I could fall in love and kiss the girl I liked, and it could maybe, one day, work out.

‘I know a place that does great salads,’ Lena said, and I startled and looked over at her. She’d gotten into the driver’s seat without me noticing. ‘I’ll take you there.’

She pulled out of the parking lot, and I stared out onto the road, wondering what lay ahead.