Wednesday, July 6

PRAGUE

Ta-da!” Clara raised her arms with a flourish.

Rae examined the map on her phone. “And what exactly are we looking at?”

“The Astronomical Clock!” Clara paused. “This is the Astronomical Clock, right?”

She was asking Aubrey, but Aubrey didn’t hear—she was watching tour groups walk across the square. It was the same square Rae and Clara had stood in the night before, but it looked different now. Brighter. Filled with vendors hawking sun hats and people filming videos with their cell phones. A break-dance troupe performed where, last night, the band had played. Rae tried to clear it all away, to let memories of the evening before flood back in—darkness and light, music and silence. She tried to feel like it was all here again.

“Rae?” Clara said. “Does that look like the right clock to you?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Rae’s arm was right beside Clara’s—the backs of their hands brushing together. The daylight and the crowds seemed to evaporate completely as Rae remembered Clara’s hands moving lightly to her sides, the press of her bright-pink lips.

“We should get closer,” Aubrey said suddenly. “It’s about to strike noon.”

Rae was pulled from her thoughts. “What happens at noon?”

But Aubrey was already heading over to where a crowd had started to gather. Built into the side of an old tower were two enormous clock faces stacked one above the other with a tiny gold sun rotating around one of them.

Rae and Clara caught up to Aubrey, and the three of them stood in a row, Rae peeking at Aubrey out of the corner of her eye. She was still wearing the T-shirt she’d had on the night before, and her ponytail was a mess. It was nearly one AM when Rae and Clara had found her at the bar and led her back to the hostel, and it was nearly four AM when she finally agreed to try to get some sleep. Before then, she’d told them a little about the fight she’d had with Jonah. She told them what he’d said about Leah and about New York. But she didn’t mention anything about him leaving. Or why she’d ended up at that bar.

Honestly, it pissed Rae off a little. She kept wondering what would have happened if Aubrey had never called. If she and Clara had stayed in the shadows of those buildings a little bit longer, arms around each other, breathing each other in.

The hour chimed, and Rae shaded her eyes and lifted her head. A mechanical skeleton emerged from inside the clock and pulled a cord to make a bell ring.

“Well,” she said. “This is some pretty weird shit.”

Aubrey made a small noise that might have been a laugh. (Rae decided to believe it was a laugh.) Mechanical figures moved across the clock in a procession. Saints and apostles, their faces contorted in anguish. Tourists clicked their cameras. And then the bells stopped chiming; the crowd dispersed.

“Damn,” Rae said. “I’m so unbelievably glad we don’t live in medieval times.”

They headed away from the square, Rae and Clara keeping up their end of the conversation and trying to act like everything was normal, Aubrey definitely not doing the same. They crossed the Charles Bridge, and Rae snapped some pictures of its dozens of statues: a lot more saints, dudes in robes, a decent number of despondent expressions.

Rae stopped in front of one. “I mean, look at these guys. They’re standing on a cage full of screaming people.”

Clara stopped, too. “I think back then you were either the guy standing on a cage full of screaming people or the guy inside a cage full of screaming people.”

“Reminds me of middle school.” Rae took a picture of the statue and then another of Clara, who leaned into the lens, smiling. Rae could see herself reflected in Clara’s sunglasses. They both paused for a second, and Rae knew they were thinking the exact same thing: What would it be like if they could get a little bit closer? What would they do if they were alone?

“Aubs!” Clara said, like she’d just remembered she was there. “Come be in the next one.” But Aubrey shook her head and gazed absently at the strange, pearly-gray water.

Rae shrugged. “I guess we should keep going.”

They were headed for the Vyšehrad, a fortress built over the Vltava River. They had to climb a hill to get there, and when they arrived, they were sweaty and exhausted. Clara flopped onto a bench. “This place is”—inhale—“cool”—exhale—“isn’t it?”

The fortress was a series of sprawling ruins hovering over the city. It was overgrown with greenery and cut through with pathways that teemed with dog walkers and joggers. Beyond that, Prague’s red roofs looked hazy, almost indistinct in the golden afternoon light.

“Okay.” Clara stood up from the bench. “I need to pee.”

“But we just sat down,” Rae said.

“Exactly. We had so much coffee this morning, and we haven’t stopped anywhere for hours. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t get lost,” Rae called as Clara disappeared around a bend on the path. She hated seeing her go, even for a little while. But she needed to get over that. Soon she would be the one leaving. She would be the one on a plane landing in Australia. That harsh dose of reality made last night seem unreachable, as far away as an image in an old photograph. She pushed her feet through the gravel. “So,” she said to Aubrey. “Is it true that people in Prague used to throw each other out of windows?”

“The Defenestrations of Prague,” Aubrey said. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“Defenestration,” Rae said. “I love that word. I can’t believe there’s a word for tossing someone out a window.”

“I think, back then,” Aubrey said, “you were either the guy throwing someone from a window or the guy being thrown.”

Rae smirked. So Aubrey wasn’t totally checked out after all.

A bird sang in the branches above them, and Rae let her head roll back. The sky was blotted with purple smog, and the sun made kaleidoscopic patterns behind the trees.

“I’m sorry I missed last night,” Aubrey said. “Will you show me the pictures you took?”

Rae dropped her head. “I didn’t take any.”

“Oh.” Aubrey drew her legs onto the bench and went quiet for a minute. “Rae?” she said eventually.

“Yup?”

“I want to tell you something. About yesterday. I want you to know, you shouldn’t blame Jonah for going. It was seriously all my fault.”

“Aubs, no way. Listen. As someone who has dumped and been dumped, I promise you, his reaction is completely on him. He didn’t have to be so dramatic.”

Aubrey rubbed at a birthmark on her knee that Rae had never noticed before. “That’s what I’m trying to say, though. He couldn’t help being dramatic. What I did… it was pretty unforgivable.”

Rae ground her toes into the gravel again. “What exactly did you do, Aubrey?”

Aubrey took a deep breath. And for a second, Rae was certain she was going to get an answer. Until Aubrey’s expression filled with terror. She looked the way she had when Jonah tried to convince her to try out for the musical. She looked like she was about to have a panic attack. “I—I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about this.”

“Okay,” Rae said, but she felt annoyance flare up inside her again. So, Aubrey wasn’t telling her something. Big news. Rae had figured that out yesterday. She still didn’t know whether Gabe had been involved in the whole Jonah-getting-the-fuck-out-of-here thing. Or why Gabe had gone out by himself early that morning. Maybe Aubrey was waiting for Rae to ask about him directly. Or maybe she really did need to keep this to herself for a while, deal with her own secrets and heartbreak. But, if that was true, Rae wished she would at least pretend to think about someone other than herself. Rae wanted to say, Last night was one of the best nights of my life. I had the most perfect kiss I’ve ever had, and you don’t even care where I went or what I did. You haven’t even asked.

“It was a serious dick move,” she said instead. “Jonah leaving like that. I mean, if he’d stayed, he could have talked things over with you. He would have realized that this doesn’t have to be The. End. You know?”

“Of course it’s The. End,” Aubrey said. “We can’t come back from something like this.”

“But maybe you can,” Rae said. “You’re still moving to the same city, right? Going to college makes relationships complicated, I get it. But that doesn’t mean you have to cut each other off completely.”

Now Aubrey was the one who looked annoyed. She snorted. “That’s pretty rich coming from you.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Never mind.” Aubrey shook her head.

Rae clenched her teeth as a woman walked her dogs past them. A scruffy terrier sniffed the pebbles around Rae’s feet, and she rubbed the top of its nose, letting it wuff into her hand.

After the woman left, Aubrey said, “The thing is, I can’t really explain any of this to you. You’ve never been in a serious relationship.”

Rae blew a curl out of her eye and slouched against the bench. They were both silent now, watching the city below. A transparent sliver of moon appeared in the sky, and Rae latched on to that first hint of evening. She let it carry her back to last night and an alleyway behind a moonlit church. She let it remind her that this day would eventually end, and that, at some point soon, she might be kissing Clara again.