When I started school here, in this town almost three years ago, it was horrible, as things often were those days. Leaving all my friends back in Destiny still stung. Plus, back there I knew the bullies. There was Ross and his buddies, and I knew how to avoid them.

Not that he picked so much on me as on my sister, but still. I know about bullies. I know them well. Calling you names, tripping you in hallways, stalking you on social media and posting insults, tearing your locker open and filling it with used condoms, ripping your backpack to shreds, cornering you and lifting your skirt, just short of raping you right in front of everyone.

But here they weren’t any better.

Sydney, my bestie, suffered from them as much as I did, or so she says. But she had three boys protecting her, and she said I should do the same.

Easier said than done.

The first time I talked to Jarett, I’d just been following him from a distance all the way from the school bus stop. I’d started doing that at the beginning of the school year. The strategy was simple: choose a tall, muscular, mean-looking boy walking in the direction of my house and stick close to him. Pretend you know him, that you’re walking home together.

Keep the bullies at bay.

If the boy is alone, bonus points. It means he won’t show off to his buddies by picking on you, won’t gang up on you.

This boy seemed perfect. Though not new to the school, he was a loner, and living in my neighborhood. We took the same bus, got off at the same stop.

He wasn’t bad looking, either.

Okay, so he was frigging hot. Which made it all the weirder that he never had any following as he hoofed it home from the bus.

Well, except for me. I was his most loyal follower.

I took notice of everything about him—how he limped sometimes, how his eyes tracked everything, how his lip curled when someone stood in his way.

Just… hot.

And now he flicked the cigarette he’d been smoking—well, the joint, I can smell weed as well as the next person—and turned to look at me.

I froze and did my best not to show it, barely slowing down. I smiled instead.

His expression did something weird. It stilled, though his eyes seemed to darken. He stumbled a little, almost coming to a stop.

Taking advantage, moving before I thought about it too hard, I crossed the street and joined him.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Gigi. What’s your name?”

He kept walking and didn’t say anything for a long while, not until we were almost at my house, his hooded eyes flicking sideways at me all the way.

And right before I skipped away to a promise of warm lunch and an afternoon listening to music and doodling, he said, in his deep, rough voice, “Jarett.”

I think I’d fallen for him already, from a distance, but that one word, his name, sealed it. I didn’t know it then, but this was the boy who would one day break my heart.

* * *

The club is so full we push through people as Sydney pulls me after her in an unknown direction.

“Syd, stop.” What’s going on tonight? Why does everyone think they can drag me around like a rag doll, like I don’t have a say in any of it? “Jesus, stop. What’s the matter with you?”

We stop near the bar, and she turns to face me, her face a mask of guilt. “Sorry, I…”

But my mind is not on her right now. I turn in a circle, trying to see above the heads of the people, but even in my stilettos I’m not that tall. “Dammit.”

“What is it?”

“That guy I was with. Can you see him?”

That’d be a long shot. Goes to show how out of my wits I am right now. Sydney is much shorter than me, high heels or not.

I start back the way we came. “I need to find him.”

“Why?”

“Because…” And I halt.

Because he looks like Jarett. The first boy who ever got my attention. My full attention. And never returned it.

But that’s not what the other guy called him. He called him Fen.

Was I mistaken?

“Gigi?”

“Never mind.” I rub my hands up and down my bare arms, shivering despite the heat inside the club.

It has to be Jarett. Maybe Fen is a nickname. Jarett’s brother’s name was Seb. Sebastian. The coincidence is too much.

And it shouldn’t matter to me. Just because he pulled his brother off me and took me out to the alley to get fresh air, that doesn’t mean anything.

“You think I want you?” So amused.

I bet in his eyes I’m still the silly girl who ran so desperately behind him years ago and blabbered on about every stupid thing going through her mind.

Still I’d have loved to talk to him, ask him how he’s been. The urge to go looking for him, to take his hand, is a physical need, an ache in my chest.

To know if it is really him.

Instead, I turn back to Sydney. “Talk. What’s going on?”

She lifts her hands, eyes wide. “Look, I shouldn’t have disappeared like that. I got stressed, you know? Later I went looking for you but couldn’t find you. Where were you?”

Her lie leaves a sharp bitterness behind. I can taste it on my tongue, like a crushed pill. “You sure that was why you abandoned me there?”

“I didn’t abandon—”

“Yes, you did.” I hate that we have to shout to be heard over the music. “Syd, I saw you in that back alley.”

She pales. Even in the bluish flashing lights, I can tell. “No.”

“Those were drugs, Syd. Were you buying? Are you using?”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you right now.”

“Why not?” But maybe she doesn’t want to shout it all out, even though nobody’s paying us any attention. “Listen, we can go home and talk. You can stay over. I’ll make us hot chocolate—”

“I can’t tell you, Gigi.” She won’t look at me. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

“What does that even mean? You were getting drugs for who, one of your boys?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, Syd…”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll take you home.” Her voice cracks, and I don’t know what to do with that.

I can’t stop thinking about the guy that may or may not be Jarett, and about seeing Syd in the alley with the drug dealer, and when did this evening turn into something out of Black Mirror? It’s like an alternate reality.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I hear myself reply, my voice distant in my ears. “I’m done with partying tonight anyway.”

* * *

Predictably, two hours later I’m lying in bed, covers up to my chest, unable to sleep, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling. I have my headphones on, plugged to my cell phone. “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf is playing.

I can’t stop rewinding the events of tonight in my mind, over and over, in dizzying loops. Faces, voices, words spoken. Sensations.

Sebastian’s bruising hold on my wrist.

Jarett’s deep voice in my ear, his spicy smell.

Syd buying drugs in the darkness.

Jesus. I’m in shock, okay? Syd and me, we’ve never kept secrets from each other before. Right? Ever. At least I never have. Well, except for that one thing only Merc knows, but that doesn’t count. That’s old news.

And this… this is big. This is awful. I’m scared for her.

Maybe it’s these boys she’s circling around. Maybe they aren’t good for her. This isn’t good for her. Are they pushing her to try drugs? If the drugs are for one of them, why is she the one in the back alley, buying?

How long has this been going on?

My attempts to get her to talk to me during the ride home were met with silence. And she didn’t even ask me anything else about Rett. Like, why I was talking to this random guy. Who he is. Why I was upset she dragged me away.

Nada.

This isn’t good, not at all.

I twist and punch my pillow before lying back down. I’ve always felt safe at home, my brother Merc sleeping on the other side of the wall, and Mom two doors down. My sister’s kids—well, my brother-in-law’s kids really, from his late wife—are not staying with us tonight. My older sis, Octavia, is still pregnant. Hugely pregnant. I can’t wait to meet the new baby.

Yeah, I’ve always felt good here, like the world could never invade this bubble of warmth and love.

Tonight the bubble is too thin, though, its glass walls showing cracks. Sydney has been my family, too, since we moved here to St. Louis from Destiny. And if she’s in trouble, then this isn’t safe, this little world I’ve constructed. The spell is broken, the illusion gone, and it all reverts into the house of cards it’s been all along.

I fight a bone-deep shiver. Wiggle my bare toes under the covers. Nod my head to the music.

No, everything will be okay. This is just a passing tremor, a tiny earthquake. My little world is strong, it will wither this small shake. Here it is safe, and what was in the past, is in the past. No more bullies.

No more being afraid to walk in the street.

And Sydney will talk to me. We’ll figure this out. I’ll get her counseling, if needed. Will make sure she doesn’t go looking for chemical relief again, for herself or her friends. It’s dangerous. Jarett made it clear by the way he hauled me away.

Rett. That’s what I used to call him.

It has to be him. No boy ever sparkled so darkly in my eyes quite like Jarett… no other boy ever meant anything to me.

Why didn’t I recognize him right away? How could I not see who he was from the moment he appeared, when I’ve been thinking so much about him all this time? Replaying in my mind the things I told him, his brooding profile, his limp that got worse when the weather turned cold and that he refused to talk about, his dark outline behind his attic bedroom window.

His sudden, rare smiles that turned my heart inside out.

But I guess the different name threw me off. That, and Sydney’s weird behavior.

Okay, so it’s more than that. He changed, I think. There’s something profoundly different about him, and it’s not the way he looks. His hair is shorter, sure, his shoulders broader. I think he even grew a few inches taller.

His eyes are the same, though. His mouth. But his expression was harder when he looked at me. His smile sharper. His eyes darker.

I frown, rising up on my elbows, the song coming to an end. I hit stop on my phone playlist and frown harder.

He lied for me.

He told his brother my boyfriend was looking for me. He came to rescue me. What would his brother have done to me? What a screwed-up brotherly relationship is that? It was like… like he’s used to stopping his brother from doing something awful, smoothing his ruffled feathers and nudging him back into line.

What was it he’d said to him?

“Plenty of chicks around. Take your pick.”

Yikes.

God.

Also, it finally strikes me as I lie back down, hitting play on “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy, this is the first time ever that I’ve heard him string so many words together. Back when I knew him, he almost never talked.

What else about him has changed? I wonder…