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“Shhh. You’ll wake your family,” I whispered.

“At least acknowledge it before you go, Julia—what’s fucking both of us up. We never talked about the moment we first saw each other at Barton Springs. Something happened. And ever since then, I’ve known we’re supposed to be together. You felt that too. It’s why you’re here, right?” He didn’t wait for my response, his tone annoyed now.

“I’ll go to college, get a job, meet someone someday, but they’ll always be second best. You’ll be with one of your boys like Angus, and you may be happy that you’re so superior, but a huge part of you will be locked away. So you choose, Julia. I know which life I want. It’s the harder one, but the second I met you I accepted it.”

John was looking at me. He’d spoken so clearly and honestly, and after everything he still wanted me.

I’d have been lying if I told myself I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t stopped thinking about it all night, ever since we arrived at the hospital. But I kept coming back to the same set of facts.

“I’m too different. I would just ruin you, John.” I shook my head.

“You already have.”

“I’m eighteen—I have nothing to my name. What am I supposed to do? I need to be with them to be safe.”

“Who told you that? Are you so sure about these rules? Who’s telling you that you should only function in a tight group? That could be a complete lie.”

“I can’t not see my sister again.”

“This is your one life. Not your family’s. You act like there’s this wall between you and the rest of us, that you live some sort of mythical parallel existence. But you can’t just ignore the reality all around you. You don’t want to.”

“I’ve always been taught that the group comes first. It’s so ingrained, I can’t imagine anything else. I don’t know anything else. And I can’t be myself out here.” I gestured around.

“You can’t be yourself with them, either. You were happy when you let us happen instead of keeping everything controlled. I hate watching you when you shut yourself off and act uninterested in the rest of the world just like the rest of them. I was drawn to you at Barton Springs because you’re not exactly like them.”

He had hit the nerve of my lifetime.

“I am them. You have no idea how selfish I can be.”

John looked at me closely. “What?”

“No. Nothing.” I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I hadn’t planned on ever telling him.

From the way I’d said it and then backtracked, he guessed it had something to do with him. “Tell me.”

I almost walked away. But then I decided he should know. “Tell me,” he demanded.

“Sometimes I could hear your thoughts.”

I saw it on his face. It was like he’d been aware that a piece was missing, and right then it clicked into place. All the times I’d messed up—things I’d known that he’d never told me, his random thoughts I’d finished out loud, how I’d always seemed so in sync with him.

“You had no problem doing that to me? Like I was your toy? After I asked you to leave me alone?”

He was suddenly angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Why did you even come here, Julia? Just to mess with my head one last time?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Everything you’ve done has been selfish. You came slumming to public school and wrapped me around your finger, telling me things that blew my mind…and then you dumped me like you couldn’t have cared less. I thought that was the extent of it. But this?”

“I didn’t plan for it to happen, and I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t or didn’t. I don’t know.”

“So I’m completely exposed to you? I never gave you that permission.”

I grabbed his face with both hands, forcing him to look at me. He jerked out of my grasp. “Listen, it hasn’t happened since we broke up. And before that it only happened when you were open to it. When you were angry, I was cut off. But for better or worse, I know you. I know what’s inside you. And I can say you are the most perfect person, John.”

He shook his head in disgust. “You had no right.”

“I didn’t have a choice. It happened.”

“So I was your experiment. Is that why you talked to me when you ignored every single other person at the school?” Again, he knew.

“Maybe it started that way….”

“You need to go.”

I stood for a moment, but he wouldn’t look at me now. On some level I’d known telling him would make it easier to walk away. I’d made it so I could go, free and clear. He’d be happy if he never saw me again.

“You are the only one who accepted everything about me.”

I let myself out and walked away from him, knowing this last memory of him would feel like a never-ending wave, crushing me over and over again.





I should have been present on the drive home, memorizing every detail of Austin, the last city I’d ever see if what Liv said was true. Instead my mind raced, occupied by John, and I arrived back on Scenic Drive before I was ready. The grand black gate swung open, and I hesitated at the entrance. I felt my knees go weak when I drove over the threshold, knowing I’d just begun the metamorphosis.