Chapter 1

As I sat in math class, my binder and freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil in front of me, I made a startling realization.

I hadn’t studied for this test.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t been to class the entire semester and had no idea what lay in store. How could I take a test when I didn’t understand the material?

My inner mental freak-out session sent my anxiety through the roof. My GPA was shot. My college plans would disintegrate. My entire future depended on this moment, and none of my successes to this point would matter because of this one mistake. This huge, stupid mistake. What was I thinking, forgetting about math class for an entire year, wearing . . .

I looked down and froze. Pajamas?

A loud plink distracted the teacher and the rest of the class, but not me. I would be focused and unmovable. If I pretended I meant to wear PJs to math class, nobody would care. I would just play it cool. Maybe some of last year’s math would pay off here. I could wing it, right?

The sound came again, only louder this time. I looked around the classroom, but nothing seemed amiss except my teacher’s critical glare as he slid a packet of paper in front of me. The cover page read MATH FINAL. I could tell by his raised eyebrow that he didn’t expect me to pass either.

How could I tell him I’d never failed a class and didn’t intend to start now? That I’d only missed his class because I forgot it was on my schedule? Or maybe he found my PJs repulsive.

I looked down again and released a startled squeak. My PJs were gone.

Not a scrap of clothing remained.

The entire class followed my gaze and burst into laughter, fingers pointed, phones lifted for pictures, as I desperately tried to cover all the most important parts.

This could not be more humiliating. I’d made it through kindergarten and twelve grades of school only to experience this? How cruel could life be?

The plink in the distance turned into a plunk, and all at once,the scene disappeared.I gasped to find myself sitting up in bed, breathing hard.

My bedroom lay in darkness except for a strangely bright beam of light coming through the window. My classmates and grumpy teacher were gone.

A quick check revealed I was not, in fact, naked. My PJs—loose flannel pants and a stretchy-band T-shirt—reappeared when the dream ended, thank heavens.

The naked math-class dream again. Itwas not my favorite.If this continued through college when I started in the fall, I’d have to experiment with weird bedtime routines, like yoga or meditation.

No more school dreams , I firmly told myself. You graduated yesterday. A quick check of my old-fashioned alarm clock, a present from my grandmother, and I amended that thought. Make that today. It was barely after eleven, so why was I awake? Was it that weird light?—

Crash!

I yelped and leaped backward as my window shattered, shards of glass littering the floor and bed.

What in the world?

A voice outside swore. I recognized it immediately. Hunter, my idioticbest friend.

With a relieved grin, I slid my slippers on and carefully made my way to the window. “You’re in such big trouble.”

“There goes my college fund,” Hunter muttered from below.

A big chunk of it, at least. “I hope you like vacuuming because once your mom finds out,that’s how you’ll be spending the day.”

He grumbled something under his breath and turned off his flashlight. That explained the strange beam of light. “Speaking of moms, what are the chances yours is still asleep?”

I glanced over my shoulder. No hallway light around my closed door. The only sound was the familiar, gentle hum of her CPAP. “Actually, pretty good. She can sleep through a nuclear blast these days.” Waking her up was the hard part. “What did you throw at my window, a boulder?”

“Just a piece of gravel. Barely even worthy of the rock family.” I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I heard the grin in his voice. “The first nine pebbles didn’t do the trick, so . . .”

“Why didn’t you just call me? This isn’t the year 1910. My phone is literally right next to my head.”

“It went straight to voicemail. You forgot to plug it inagain. ”

I glanced at my phone, which was indeed unplugged. Oops. “What’s so important that you had to break down my house in the middle of the night?”

He folded his arms. “The better question is, why are you sleeping tonight? This is the last night of our childhood.”

“Technically,” I corrected, “it’s the first night of adulthood. Remember commencement today and Ms. Glasgow’s speech about new beginnings?”

“Pretty sure I slept through that part. Are you coming down?”

I stared at the shards of glass sparkling from my carpet, strangely pretty in the moonlight. “You seriously want me to leave this mess and sneak out?”

“I’ll clean it up first thing. You’re going to Paris in the morning, so this is our last chance. You coming or not?”

My mom would freak out if she saw this. She’d freak out if she even knew I considered sneaking out with a boy, even my best friend. This was the parent who searched far and wide for long shirts and even longer shorts to cover every remotely possible inch of myskin. Mom lived life with an abundance of caution.

Given what she’d been through, though, I couldn’t blame her.

The middle sister of us three, Alexis, now lived with my dad in Maine. I hadn’t seen her once in the year since the divorce. Dad probably fed her all kinds of lies about Mom being “controlling” and whatever. Thankfully, the youngest, Jillian, opted to stay with Mom and me. Our family no longer felt whole, and we scraped by financially, but we made do.

The child in me had searched the audience for them today. But that child no longer existed. I had to remind myself that things would never be the same again.

“You graduated with a 3.97 GPA,” Hunter pointed out. “Your mom will forgive your acting like a teenager just once.”

Glass crunched under my granny slippers—literally, since Grandma bought them for me—as I shifted my weight, hesitating again. If Mom came in and found me missing and a broken window, I could only imagine the scenarios she’d dream up. Cringing, I envisioned myself coming home to a line of police vehicles in front of the house. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility with Mom. “I’d better not.”

“Neddie,” Hunter said, the mirth gone from his voice. His words held a depth I rarely heard, making something within me shiver. “Be spontaneous for once in your life. I want to show you something. I swear we won’t be gone long.”

I glanced across the fence at his own window, still open. How many times had we made faces at each other through our bedroom windows? And used the secret language—the one that looked suspiciously like Morse code but involved flicking our lights on and off—we assumed nobody would ever crack?

I’d memorized every inch of that side of the Morrison house. The chipped paint on his windowsill, the splatter of bird poop above his window from an old nest in the eaves, the cracked brick from our potato-gun incident, still mortared into place. The picket fence that never really separated us once five-year-old Hunter discovered how to swing the slat aside and crawl through.

“Trust me,” he said. “Please.”

Dad and Alexis were a part of a childhood I felt all too eager to leave behind. But Hunter was also my childhood, and I didn’t think I could leave him behind in a hundred years. He probably felt the same considering he’d chosen to join me at the community college a city away in the fall.

“Fine,” I said, trying to sound exasperated but accidentally letting my curiosity shine through. “I’m coming.”

“I know you are.” He didn’t try to hide the triumph in his voice.