Chapter One

WHEN YOU LOOK UP AT the sky in Los Angeles, all you see is a strange film of smog, like the whole city is filtered through the lens of your dirtiest sunglasses. You can’t see any stars. And if you’re really unlucky, there’s a blimp up there writing the words “Happy Birthday, Heidi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” in the sky in pink. Yes, with sixteen exclamation points, one for every year of my former best friend Heidi Javadi’s life.

I was at the rented mansion hosting Heidi’s sweet sixteen party, wishing I was anywhere else. Seriously, I would rather have been dissecting a bat or listening to my mother lecture me about how there’s nothing shameful about Spanx.

Caroline led Joy, Kurt, and me inside. I turned my gaze down from the sky toward the mansion the Javadis rented for Heidi’s party. Beautiful cocktail waitresses in pink dresses stood at the entrance of the event, holding pink champagne for the grown-ups and pink “Heidi-tinis” for us, welcoming us to this very opulent version of hell.

“You guys know this is exactly what Iran was like before the revolution, right?” I asked.

“Obviously,” Kurt said. “Everyone knows all of Iran was painted pink until those mullahs stepped in.”

“And Heidi’s name was permanently emblazoned over the skyline of Tehran,” I added.

Caroline laughed, slapping me on the shoulder a little too hard. Caroline did everything in her life with a little too much passion. She was the most outspoken member of our group of friends. If someone was leading the way, it was usually Caroline.

Kurt, Joy, and Caroline had been their own little posse since junior high. I joined the crew when high school began, so I was still the newbie. But I was the one who had dubbed us the Authentics, because my new friends were the first people I’d met more concerned with being who they were than with who others wanted them to be. We weren’t the coolest kids in school, or the most popular, but we were the realest. At least that’s what we thought.

“Wow,” Caroline said, looking at the pinkstravaganza around us. “Is this the most Persian party in the history of parties?”

“It may be super-Persian,” I said, “but it has nothing to do with being Iranian.”

“Semantics,” Caroline said. Being my friend, she knew that Persian and Iranian were terms the same exact community of people used to describe themselves. Persians felt pride in their ancient empire and shame about the current regime of their homeland, while Iranians believed in accuracy over pride and shame. “This is who you are, Daria. Embrace your truth. You do you.”

“You do you is a really gross expression,” Kurt said. “It’s trying to be about self-empowerment, but doesn’t it sound like it’s about masturbation?”

“Ew,” Joy said. “Seriously. I do not want to picture you doing yourself, Kurt. And can we stop? This is actually Daria’s culture, so can we all be a little less judgy?”

Joy got it since her parents were from Nigeria, which is nothing like Iran, but which is still somewhere different. She got that living in one world in your home and in a completely different world outside your home was like being two puzzle pieces that didn’t really fit together.

We found a cocktail waitress holding a pink tray of Heiditinis, and grabbed some.

Caroline gazed around the room. Pink balloons, pink disco balls, pink tablecloths, pink cupcakes. “This is color fascism,” she announced drily.

“Or tint totalitarianism,” Kurt said, and Caroline high-fived him.

But I was still stuck on Iranian stereotypes. “I mean, my culture basically invented poetry, math, and rice,” I said. “But all people seem to care about is that some of us have tacky taste, wear too much cologne, and build really ugly McMansions.”

“Hey,” Kurt said. “At least you have a culture. The only culture in my house growing up was homemade yogurt.” Kurt’s mom was an actress or therapist (depending on what day you asked her), and she was all about growing her own vegetables and fermenting kombucha.

Kurt had a point, but I hated that most people who heard the words Persian, fifteen, and Beverly Hills would immediately assume I was a spoiled Persian princess. They would’ve thought I was one of those girls who pouted until her father hired One Direction to perform at her sweet sixteen party. For the record, I liked One Direction . . . when I was nine.

The girl you’re imagining—the beautiful Persian princess—that’s Heidi, who stood in a circle with her Persian posse, aka the Nose Jobs. Heidi looked up at me and smiled. Her just-whitened teeth were perfect. She was wearing a skintight pink leopard-print dress. Her hair looked like it was straightened on an ironing board, and it had pink highlights for the occasion. Basically, she looked like a cross between Kylie Jenner and Hello Kitty, and by the way, she was the kind of girl who would’ve taken that as a compliment.

Heidi gave me a small wave with her left hand, and I noticed how perfect her manicure was. She had turned into our mothers, and I had turned into a chunky girl with dirty fingernails. I gave Heidi an awkward wave with my left hand, and then I quickly tried to hide my hands in my pockets. But the poufy pink dress I wished I weren’t wearing didn’t have pockets, so the gesture just felt weird and unfortunate. I knew better than to bother walking over to Heidi, and she didn’t come over either. It was hard to imagine that Heidi and I used to be best friends, but that was a long time ago. Now she was beautiful and popular, and I was, well, authentic.

Heidi’s mother, basically a grown-up version of Heidi, approached her and whisked her off to another room, no doubt to greet some elderly Persians. Respecting your elders is a really big thing for us.

As the Authentics and I did a lap around the room, I realized this was the first time my two disparate worlds—high school and Tehrangeles—had been brought together. To my left were the drama kids. To my right were my father’s golf buddies. To my left was our high school soccer team. To my right were my mother’s rummy ladies. And then I saw my parents gliding toward me, looking sophisticated as ever. We had arrived separately, since I’d gotten ready at Joy’s house.

“There you are,” Baba said. “You look beautiful.”

He was lying. I looked fat and pimply, though the dress Joy had picked out for me was cool in a throwback kind of way.

“Thanks, Baba,” I said.

“Hello, kids,” my mom said as she took in our colorful outfits. Caroline was wearing a pink bow tie with a vintage white polyester suit. Kurt was wearing a pink checkered shirt, white pants, and his signature fedora. Joy wanted to be a designer, so she’d picked all our outfits, but obviously hers looked best, a fuchsia disco dress she found on Melrose that she swore once belonged to Bianca Jagger. Joy was good at dressing us, but an expert at dressing herself. True confession: I had to Google Bianca Jagger, but I didn’t tell Joy. She took her style icons very seriously.

“It’s wonderful to see you all,” Sheila said to my friends. My mother liked me to call her Sheila, probably because it allowed her to pretend she was my older sister.

She was lying too. I mean, my mother liked the Authentics all right, but she wished I were still best friends with Heidi. She got Heidi, and she had no idea what to do with the Authentics. Maybe it’s because my mother valued being fabulous way more than being real. If my mother still believed in the Persian Empire, then she also believed she was its Cookie.

“Did you see the aquarium of pink goldfish in the bathroom?” Sheila said. “They’re so beautiful.”

We all laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Sheila asked. “I thought it was clever.”

“Beauty is in the pinkeye of the beholder,” I said, and my mother gave me that look she gave me when she thought I must be an alien she birthed.

“LOL,” Caroline said. Caroline’s goal in life was to skip college, move to New York, and become our generation’s preeminent lesbian performance artist. In her last piece, she vowed to incorporate an internet acronym into every sentence she spoke. IMHO, it wasn’t her strongest piece (that was definitely the one with the rats and the stilettos), but it did get people talking about communication and technology, and how we had all stopped really listening to each other.

Baba grabbed a pink meatball from a waiter’s tray. “Is this meatball undercooked or color-treated?” he asked as he popped it into his mouth.

Sheila laughed and threw her hair back. She turned to me and asked, “So, any ideas for your party yet?”

“We’ve talked about this. I don’t want some gross sweet sixteen party,” I said. “I just want to invite my friends—my real friends—over to the house.”

Perhaps sensing a tense mother-daughter moment, Caroline announced, “I think I’m gonna go try some pink fondue. The line doesn’t look too bad right now.” Joy and Kurt followed Caroline, and though I wanted to go with them, I stayed behind with my parents. Sometimes I felt like so much of my life was an obligation. There were so many things I had to do that it was hard to remember what I really wanted to do. But that’s what I loved most about the Authentics. They were the first part of my life that hadn’t been curated by my parents.

“Daria, please understand,” my mother pleaded. “We can’t throw a party without inviting the Ghorbanis, and the Palizis, and the . . .”

As Sheila continued rattling off the names of every Iranian family within a ten-mile radius of Beverly Hills, I caught Baba giving me a sympathetic glance. “Sheila djoon,” Baba softly interrupted, “I think Daria already understands that you would like to invite the entire Persian community to her sweet sixteen.”

“It would be rude not to,” Sheila said, as if we had no choice in the matter.

“Yes, I understand,” Baba said. “But since it’s Daria’s birthday, perhaps we can all compromise . . . and only invite half of the Persian community.”

And to my surprise, my mother threw her hair back and laughed again. This was her physical cue that she was having a good time. She did it when she was dancing, watching reruns of Seinfeld, or winning a round of rummy. Her hair was her tell. Kurt, whose mother had instilled in him a very deep love for astrology, said it was because she was a Leo. He said Leos needed their manes brushed all the time. I think Kurt meant that Sheila needed to feel admired, and Baba had figured out exactly how to do that. As for me, I wasn’t much of a mane brusher. I was the girl who’d chopped the hair off every Barbie doll I ever had.

“Well, I love parties,” Sheila said. She wasn’t lying. Sheila was always telling me to dress up more, go out more, put on more makeup, and have more fun. Sometimes, when I was in the library studying, I would tweet that I was having a dance party with friends just so Sheila would get off my back.

“So, Daria, if you don’t want your sweet sixteen to be the party of the century,” she continued, “then how about we focus on my forty-ninth birthday party next summer. I’d like everything to be lavender.”

“Even the goldfish?” I cracked, and to my shock, Sheila laughed and threw her hair back. Had I brushed her mane without even meaning to?

“Okay, we’ll throw you a lavender forty-ninth birthday,” Baba said, with a smile my way. In truth, she was fifty-two, but we let her get away with shifting her age as she saw fit. “It’ll be a party to remember,” Baba said. “We’ll paint the house lavender, and have lavender fondue, and lavender meatballs, of course.”

Sheila laughed and slapped Baba’s arm playfully. He pulled her close to him and gave her a kiss. And by kiss, I mean he went for it.

“You guys, get a room,” I said. “Preferably soundproofed.” Their passion was a cruel reminder that I had never even kissed anyone.

Luckily, a slide show began, diverting my parents’ attention. The whole party oohed and aahed as photos from Heidi’s past appeared on-screen. There was baby Heidi, smiling a gaptoothed smile in her mother’s arms. There was toddler Heidi, in ballet class, obviously. There was seven-year-old Heidi, randomly sitting on Kelly Ripa’s lap. There was tween Heidi, riding a roller coaster with her father. There were Heidi and her new friends, looking airbrushed and blow-dried, posing on top of Heidi’s dad’s car like they were Bravo reality stars doing a Carl’s Jr. commercial. And there was Heidi and me. We were twelve years old, lounging by her pool. Heidi, of course, looked adorable. I, on the other hand, looked frightening. My skin was covered in acne, my hair was frizzy, and I was wearing a too-tight bathing suit that made me look like a raspberry muffin.

All around us, the Persian parents commented on how cute Heidi looked and how beautiful she always was and how she looked just like her mother. I hated myself in that moment, because I wanted their approval as well. I wanted to be cute and beautiful and to look like my mother. The picture was up there for all of five seconds, but by the fourth second, I felt like I was being suffocated by it.

“Can we please leave?” I begged my parents in an urgent whisper.

“They haven’t even cut the cake,” my mother replied in a hushed tone. “It would be rude to—”

But I didn’t wait for her to finish the sentence. Instead, I walked out, causing a few of the guests to turn their attention away from the slide show. My parents followed me outside, and I could feel my mother’s annoyance radiating off her.

Once we were outside and alone, I turned to my mother ferociously. “You know who’s rude, Sheila?” I asked. “Heidi is rude. She makes me feel awful.”

“She’s your friend,” Sheila argued.

“If she’s my friend, then the shah and the ayatollah were besties.”

“Who is the shah in this situation?” Sheila asked.

“Obviously, she is,” I said.

My mother rolled her eyes. If anyone was going to be the shah in this analogy, it would be her daughter.

“Maybe you’re the queen,” Sheila said.

“Fine,” I said, “I’m the queen.”

Sheila placed a hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Now you just need to believe it.”

The girl he pulls to the surface is dead. I know it the moment I see her.

The camera zooms in, shaking a little as she comes into focus. Even in the golden lights shining down from the bridge, her skin is an unnatural shade of blue. Her top hangs loose and heavy with water from one shoulder, revealing a black bra strap. Long, dark hair streaks down her face in waves, covering her eyes, nose, mouth, and I want to brush it away so she can breathe, but the blue of her skin says it wouldn’t help. She isn’t breathing. She can’t feel the hair covering her face or the water that moves in her lungs instead of air.

She can’t feel anything.

Not the arms that drag her dead weight from the dark water, or the crack of her skull against the boat as they lift her into it. Not the hands that lay her down roughly on the deck, then feel her neck, her wrists, anywhere for a pulse. She doesn’t feel the bite of the night air against her bare skin when they rip her shirt open, straight down the center, without hesitating.

I watch, relieved that she can’t feel the force of those hands as they come together, one on top of the other, in the middle of her chest, and thrust downward. Deep enough to produce a contraction in her motionless heart. Hard enough to send a rush of blood and oxygen through her body, to her brain. Strong enough to crack ribs.

I wince at this, and at those hands that come down again and again, the full weight of the person behind them compressing her chest, her lifeless body convulsing under the force of them each time. Over and over.

But then, like a reprieve, the hands stop, brush the hair from her face, almost gently, and tilt her chin to the sky. The camera zooms in on her face just as he pinches her nose and brings his mouth to her blue lips. He breathes his own air into her lungs before his hands move back to the center of her chest to start the cycle again.

Her mouth begins to foam.

Sirens whine in the distance. Voices off camera murmur urgent words that are lost in the wind. Someone is crying.

“My God,” the voice from behind the camera says, “it’s too late. There’s no way she’s going to live.”

ONE

“LIV?”

It’s a voice that’s familiar. Warm in a way the makes me want to keep hearing it. Comforting, but I can’t place it. I search. Through the water or the fog—I can’t tell which because it’s everywhere, all around me.

But I know this voice. I know her.

Her.

I grasp at the word, reach for something to pair it with. A name . . . a face . . . something, anything, but I come up empty, except for that familiar feeling.

“We’re right here, Livvy. Right here,” the voice—she— says, and I feel a gentle hand on mine. It doesn’t poke or prod, just sits there, still and warm, and I relax at the touch, and the sound of my nickname.

“Hey, Liv,” another voice says gently. A male voice. “Can you hear me?” he asks.

I know this one too. And I can feel the answer, just beyond my reach. I wade through the heaviness all around me, fumble through the haze that seems endless, and this time I don’t come up empty. I find the answer.

Yes, I can hear you. Yes. Yes. Yes.

“If you can hear me, sweetheart, try to open your eyes.”

Sweetheart . . .

I hang on to that word he said.

Sweetheart . . .

That word he always says.

Good night, sweetheart.

I know this.

Be safe, sweetheart . . .

I know him . . .

Wake up, sweetheart.

Dad.

The word materializes from the fog crystal clear, like it’s always been there, and it makes me so happy I want him to keep talking. Keep asking me questions.

“Can you wake up, Liv? Open your eyes?”

My eyes. I remember them too now and try to do what he asks, but they are weighted down—impossible, leaden things that won’t be moved.

“She will,” the first voice says, and I know all at once it’s my mom. Her warm hand squeezes mine and I squeeze back, but she doesn’t notice. “She’ll wake up when she’s ready.”

But I’m awake. I’m here!

I try to say the words. Try to let them know that I can hear them. I need them to know that their voices are so clear, and I know who they are, and I want them to stay with me. I don’t want them to leave me alone in this dream- fog place, with the never-ending beeping and buzzing and muffled voices of strangers, and strange hands that move me around, touching and checking me in what seems like a constant cycle. I summon every bit of strength I have to form the words, but they get lost in the haze between my brain and my mouth.

It’s quiet except for the machines. I panic. I don’t want them to leave me. I need to say something so they don’t leave me.

I try again, harder this time, and after a moment, a tiny sound—cracked and desert-dry—comes burning from somewhere deep in my throat.

My mom’s hand squeezes again, and I remember it’s there. Again I squeeze back, and again she doesn’t notice. Why doesn’t she notice?

“Did you hear that?” my dad asks. “I heard something, Suze. She made a sound.”

I feel the weight of his large hand come to my shoulder. “We’re right here, sweetheart. Your mom and I are right here.”

I try again to speak, and the cracked sound turns into a low moan that I don’t recognize. It burns in my throat, and in my ears, but the harder I try to make it stop, the louder it gets.

“It’s okay, baby,” my mom’s voice says. “You’re okay, you’re just waking up, that’s all. You’ve had a nice long sleep, and you’re waking up.”

Waking up.

When she says the words, I understand that’s what I need to do. That’s what they want me to do. I do my best, concentrate on my eyes. Make them blink, just barely. The brightness sends a f lash of pain through my head. I cry out so loud it scares me, and squeeze my eyes shut as hard as I can.

“The light, Bruce,” my mom says. “Get the light.”

I hear a shuffle and then the click of a switch, and in my head I try to calm down, but my skull is pounding and my throat is burning and I can’t.

“Sshhh . . . it’s okay,” my mom says, running her warm hand over my forehead now. “It’s okay.”

I realize I’m still making that low, terrible sound, still squeezing my eyes closed so hard it hurts.

My dad is next to me again, his hand back on my shoulder, his voice soft and low. “Hey, hey, hey, you don’t have to wake up yet. You just wait until you feel good and ready.”

The lightning strike in my head is gone, but tiny ripples of pain still radiate outward from someplace deep inside. I’m scared to open my eyes again, but I want to wake up, I do. I want to wake up and go home, and leave this place, whatever, wherever it is.

I try to relax my eyelids enough to let them f lutter open, just a little, bracing for the pain to come f lashing through my head again. But this time it doesn’t. I open my eyes a tiny bit more, and now I can see something. I can see the blurred outlines on either side of me—my parents. And I can hear the sudden cry from my mom, and the laugh that escapes from my dad as he leans over me and kisses my forehead.

“There you are,” he says.

For a few seconds, it feels like someone is turning the lights up slowly. And then it happens.

I wake up.

 
Nattie has always been that under-the-radar straight girl who hangs out in the cafeteria with her gay-straight alliance friends.

She's never been the girl that gets the guy, let alone the girl that gets a hit song named after her.

But when last summer's crush, smoking-hot musician Sebastian Delacroix—who has recently hit the mainstream big-time—returns home to play a local show, that's just what she gets. He and his band have written a chart-topping single—"Natalie"—which instantly makes Nattie second guess everything she thought about their awkward non-kiss at that June pool party.

With her once-normal life starting to resemble a gossip magazine, Nattie is determined to figure out if her brief moment with Sebastian was the stuff love songs are made of—or just a one-hit wonder.

CHAPTER ONE

Everything weird started the day my dad brought home the yurt.

“Robert?”

Anne McCullough, alias Mom, was peering through the windows of our back door, cup of coffee in hand, and frowning. Robert Schwartz, alias Dad, had taken the station wagon somewhere early that morning and was now puttering around in the yard. But since puttering was one of those activities Dad did to relax, like separating the recycling or buying dress shoes on eBay, I wasn’t exactly concerned.

“Nattie?”

Natalie McCullough-Schwartz, alias Nattie, alias me, was sitting at the kitchen table, chomping through a noontime bowl of granola. It was Saturday, after all, so I was entitled to loaf around for a bit, reading and eating cereal to the soundtrack of the college radio station that my parents had playing 24-7.

“Whuh?” I responded without looking up from my phone, where I was completing my normal Saturday-morning Pixstagram catch-up session.

“Where did your dad go this morning?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged. “Groceries or something? I was asleep.”

My mom was still frowning. She had her grayish auburn hair piled up on top of her head in a knot, which could have been either an intentional artistic look or just the result of not having brushed her hair yet. I was sporting a similar style, but for the latter reason.

“Sam? Did you see my husband go anywhere?”

Huang Xueyang, alias Sam Huang, was sitting at the desk in the kitchen, eating breakfast and probably checking his email from his family in China, and shook his head. Perhaps to assuage parental guilt over their blatant negligence of every school-related activity from signing permission slips on time to “not forgetting the date of the parent potluck for the third year in a row,” the McCullough-Schwartzes had been first to volunteer when the Owen Wister Preparatory Academy needed host families for foreign exchange students. So, since the beginning of the last school year, Sam Huang had been part of the clan. It was like suddenly having a fifteen-year-old brother, which I liked because it meant I always had someone to split a microwave lasagna with, my mom liked because it meant we were putting the spare bedroom to good use, and my dad liked because Sam played classical guitar and was “the son I never had,” which made Sam and me feel kind of equally uncomfortable.

My mom looked out the door again.

“Robert?”

Even though it was October, we still had the screen door up, because procrastination is a McCullough-Schwartz family value. So my dad should have been able to hear her, but she wasn’t getting a response.

“Robert?”

There was a definite tone now. Sam poured another bowl of Cocoa Puffs. I scrolled down my phone. At the top of my feed was an artsy shot of the Donut, the front-lawn sculpture at Owen Wister Preparatory Academy that was actually called something like Concentricity of Knowledge, a photo that was intriguing because one, it was a Saturday, so no one was at school and two, it was posted by user sebdel, alias Sebastian Delacroix, who had left Wister forever when he graduated. Or so I had thought.

“I think he’s . . . Is he unloading something from the car? Sam? Nattie?”

Sam smiled but shook his head. I wasn’t going to move, but Mom clearly wanted someone involved and I, as her flesh and blood, was beholden to her will.

“Nattie. Come here.”

Reluctantly, I tore myself away from creeping on Sebastian Delacroix’s Pixstagram feed and stood up. She took a pull from her coffee and narrowed her eyes, pointing out into the backyard.

Dad was definitely out there, wearing his weekend polar fleece and covering his balding head with one of his grimy bandannas. Next to him, on top of the maple leaves that no one had raked yet, was a stack of various pieces of wood, a beat-up red toolbox, and what seemed to be a heap of fabric.

“Looks like it,” I said.

“I can’t believe this,” Mom said. “And neither of you knew anything?”

She cast a hard look back at the room, where Sam Huang was now kind of cowering.

“Sam,” Mom said slowly and a little too nicely, “you know you can tell us anything. I mean, tell me. Especially about my husband’s whereabouts.”

“I . . .” Sam Huang darted a glance at the door. “I wasn’t supposed to say.”

Mom was not having it. “Come on, Sam. Where did he go?”

Sam Huang fidgeted again. “He said he was going to pick up something for the lawn. And that it was a surprise.”

“Aha.” Triumphant, and indignant, Mom swung open the screen door and started off across the yard. I unrolled my sleeves and followed, because it was chilly and I was curious. The ground was cold and a little mushy under my bare feet, but not cold enough to make me go back for shoes.

“Robert? What’s going on here?”

Mom marched right up to the edge of the little clearing Dad had made with his supplies in the corner of the yard, and folded her arms. Around us, the air was thick with mystery, and also fog. I tried to put it together: we already had a toolshed, and both Sam and I were way too old for a swing set. I had begged for a trampoline for my last birthday, but Mom insisted they were death traps, and she was probably right, given the way Dad tended to construct things. The McCullough-Schwartz basement was a graveyard of splintered IKEA dressers and oblong birdhouses no self-respecting blue jay would nest in.

“Oh, there you are!” Dad said, as if he’d completely missed her entreaties from the kitchen. He straightened up and mopped his face with the bandanna. He was beaming. “Looking good, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

My dad’s grin faltered just slightly.

“The yurt. Of course.”

“Nattie?” Sam Huang appeared, holding my phone, which I’d left on the kitchen table. “You have a message.”

I took my phone and unlocked it to discover not one message, but three.

From: Tess Kozlowski

JAMBA ALERT

where are you

it’s important!!!

“What’s a Jamba alert?” asked Sam Huang. “Is it an emergency?”

I considered. Last May, Tess had found herself mysteriously subscribed to text alerts about smoothie deals from Jamba Juice, which we both thought was hilarious, and so, naturally, ever since then, we have referred to every text message, whether smoothie-related or not, as a Jamba alert. I knew our role as a host family was to be ambassadors for the American people, or something, but this was a weirdness that went beyond national cultural differences and into the weirdness of my particular group of friends.

“No.” I locked my phone again. Tess was my best friend and the person I trusted most in the world, but she was also the most liberal person I knew, both in her politics and her definition of important. So I knew whatever her deal was could wait until after the yurt. Whatever that was.

“The what?” Mom was saying.

“Yurt,” Dad repeated, like this was a word people used every day. “The traditional dwelling of the nomadic peoples of the steppes of Central Asia. It’s a sanctuary.”

“Robert,” Mom said slowly. “We don’t dwell in the steppes of Central Asia. We dwell in the suburbs of eastern Pennsylvania.”

“Right, but that’s just the beauty of it. It’s like an escape, for the family, right here in our backyard.” Noticing me, he wiggled his eyebrows. “Whaddya think, Nattie Gann?”

Natty Gann was the name of a plucky Depression-era orphan from a 1980s Disney movie that no one except my dad seemed to remember. It was also his favorite, dadliest nickname for me.

“I thought you said you were going to build a hot tub one day,” I said.

Actually, the putative yurt was taking over the exact space where I’d envisioned having our spa. I’d always wanted to have a cool place to put my friends—Tess, Tall Zach, and Zach the Anarchist, alias the Acronymphomaniacs, which we called ourselves not because of any actual nymphomania, but because we were fond of abbreviations and also belonged to a club with an uncommonly unwieldy acronym. It had just sort of stuck.

“He said he’d think about it,” Mom corrected.

Bzz. Bzz.

I thumbed my phone unlocked again.

From: Tess Kozlowski

nattieeeeee come hang out

“A yurt,” Dad said soberly, “is much better than a hot tub.”

This I took issue with. Because while I knew that, as a teenager teetering on the verge of adulthood and also the college process, I should have capital-G goals like “achieving purposefully,” “actionizing change,” and “not failing the math portion of the SATs,” my number one actual goal in life was just not to be weird. A hot tub was different, sure, but in a cool way. (Well, literally in a hot way, but the point stands.) A yurt, though, would just be a monument to strangeness and eccentricity—and for what? I couldn’t put it on a college application unless maybe I was applying to something like architectural school. And even then they’d probably flunk me for being too weird.

“Now, just a second, Robert,” Mom said. “We haven’t even discussed this.”

“Right, I know. But I was browsing the online yesterday night, and someone in the city was getting rid of this yurt kit for practically nothing because he had nowhere to put it, but I had to act fast or else he was just going to donate it to charity. I picked it up this morning.”

Dad looked proud, but Mom looked positively pained.

“What on earth are we going to do with a yurt?” she asked.

“What on earth would a charity do with a yurt?” I asked.

It took Dad a minute to come up with an answer. “Hang out,” he said. “Do some art projects. Or just get some nice peace and quiet, you know? The guy told me the yurt is intentionally built with a low ceiling and door, so you can’t get in without humbling yourself—”

“It’s built that way to keep the heat in,” I pointed out, vaguely recalling a social studies class.

Dad wasn’t listening. “We’ll get some cushions out here, a couple of candles, maybe a cast-iron stove to burn up some logs. . . .” He got a dreamy look in his eyes.

Mom looked like she’d rather burn the raw yurt materials than any logs. Even though she is, professionally, a creative person, Mom is not a big fan of Dad’s weekend projects. Maybe it’s because she gets to build frames for beautiful paintings all day and he’s cooped up in an office doing whatever it is executive directors of nonprofit voting-rights advocacy groups do all day, or maybe it’s because he’s left one half-dug koi pond too many in our front yard, but either way, the McCullough-Schwartzes do not have a good track record with home improvements.

“You can’t just start building a yurt in our backyard, Robert,” Mom said. “It looks . . . ugly.”

“Well, sure, it looks ugly now,” Dad said. “But soon it’ll be a circular canvas tent!”

This did not placate Mom. “What will the neighbors think?”

“It’s not for the neighbors,” Dad said. “It’s for us. Look, Sam Huang loves it.”

Sam Huang did not look like he wanted to get involved in an altercation between his host parents. I briefly wondered what would happen to him if they got divorced. Or to me, for that matter.

“We need to have a place to relax,” Dad said. “It’ll be good for us.”

Mom pursed her lips. “Does the place to relax have to be so . . . visible?”

In my pocket, my phone buzzed for the billionth time.

From: Tess Kozlowski

NATTIE JAMBA ALERT GET HERE OR ELSE WE

WILL ALL BE VERY SAD

:’( :’( :’(

I decided it was probably time to indulge Tess. And also get dressed, because it was twelve fifteen and I should probably do something more with my day than Pixstagram stalking. I was curious about the outcome of the whole yurt-stravaganza, but knowing my parents, the odds of a swift resolution were about as good as me applying to architectural school.

“I’m . . . gonna go see Tess,” I said, and backed away slowly.

“Great,” Mom said, in a tone of voice that was anything but great.

“Have fun!” Dad said brightly.

“Bye, Nattie,” said Sam Huang.

The screen door slapped behind me as I crossed the threshold back to the warmth of the kitchen and the bowl of mush that had once been my breakfast. When I stomped down the back stairs ten minutes later, Mom and Dad were at the counter, Dad gesticulating wildly and Mom laughing over a fresh cup of coffee, Sam Huang was set up at his computer watching guitar videos on YouTube, and beneath everything else, as always, the radio was softly playing an unfamiliar song.

Matt hasn't eaten in days. The hunger clears his mind—and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he's going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away.

Matt has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have . . . powers. The ability to see things he shouldn't be able to see. Maybe even the authority to bend time and space.

Matt decides to infiltrate Tariq's life, then use his powers to uncover what happened to Maya. All he needs to do is keep the hunger at bay. But Matt doesn't realize there are many kinds of hunger…and he isn't in control of all of them.


TRIGGER WARNING:

Eating disorders and body dysmorphia are recurring themes in The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller. Please be aware if these are sensitive topics for you!

 

TRIGGER WARNING:

Eating disorders and body dysmorphia are recurring themes in The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller. Please be aware if these are sensitive topics for you!

Congratulations! You have acquired one human body. This was a poor decision, but it is probably too late for you to do anything about it. Life, alas, has an extremely strict return policy.

Not that I’m some kind of expert or anything, but as an almost-seventeen-year veteran of having a body, I’ve learned a few basic rules that might save you some of my misery. So I’m writing this Rulebook as a public service. Please note, however, that there are a lot of rules, and some of them are very difficult to follow, and some of them sound crazy, and please don’t come crying to me if something terrible happens when you can only follow half of them.

RULE #1

Understand this: your body wants the worst for you. It is a complicated machine built up over billions of years, and it wants only two things—to stay alive and to make more of you. Your body thinks you’re still an animal in the jungle, and it wants you to eat ALL the food, and stick your DNA up in anything you can hold down. Lust and hunger will never leave you alone, because your body wants you grotesquely fat and covered in kids.

DAY: 1
TOTAL CALORIES: 3600

Suicidal ideation.

When you say it like that it sounds soft and harmless, like laissez-faire or any of the other weird sets of meaningless words they make you memorize in school. The letter from the psychiatrist sounded so calm I had to read it a couple of times before I saw what she was trying to say. She didn’t quote me. She didn’t tell my mom I said, Sometimes I think if I killed myself everyone would be a lot better off or Five times a week I decide to steal the gun my mom thinks I don’t know about and bring it to school and murder tons of people and then myself.

Instead, the psychiatrist said a lot of scary things in very tame and pleasant language:

Recommend urgent action—
Happy to prescribe—
Facilitate inpatient treatment—

Poor thing. How could she know my mom hides from the mail, with its bills and Notes of Shutdown and FINAL WARNINGS? I didn’t want to go see the psychiatrist in the first place, but the school set it up for me because I am evidently an At-Risk Youth. At risk of what, I wondered, and then thought, oh right, everything. At risk of enough that one or all my teachers filed whatever due-diligence report they’re obligated to file on someone who is obviously headed for homicide or suicide, so his or her blood isn’t on their hands. And as soon as the psychiatrist’s report came, addressed to my mom, I plucked it from the mail pile.

I read it on my walk to school. My mom still thinks I take the bus, but I stopped around the six thousandth time someone called me a faggot and punched me as I walked through the aisle. That kind of thing can really start your day off on the wrong foot. Plus, walking to school makes it easier to get there late, so I’m spared the agony of playing Lord of the Flies while we all stand around outside waiting for the first bell to ring.

The branches were almost entirely bare overhead. Stark and black like skinny fingers clawing at the sky. One crooked tree still had half its leaves. Hunger rumbled in my belly, and I felt like if I reached out hard enough, I could stretch myself taller than any of the trees. Hunger is funny like that.

Anyway. I shredded the letter, let it fall behind me like a trail of breadcrumbs. Lesson learned: Don’t tell people you want to kill yourself. Although really I should have known that one already. If high school teaches you nothing else, know this: Never tell anyone anything important.

I slowed down. Savored my last few steps before the hill crested and brought me in sight of the school. Stared up at the trees, and down the garbage-strewn road. Stopped. Breathed. Wondered what would happen if I turned and walked into the woods and never came back. I thought about this a lot. I had plans. I’d hitchhike or ride the rails or follow the river.

Under my bed there was a bag, full of books and hoodies and diet soda from the vending machine behind the ShopRite, and one of these days I would be ready to sling it over my shoulder and run away for real.

But I wasn’t ready, not yet. As miserable as it made me, I had to go to school. Not because I cared about college or education or a career or any of that pig shit, because anyone who spent five minutes in a Hudson High School classroom would know there was no actual educating happening anywhere in sight. The reason I couldn’t kill myself, and I couldn’t stop coming to school, was because Maya beat me to it. Because five days ago, my older sister ran away from home. She called the next morning from somewhere on the freeway to assure us she wasn’t kidnapped, she was taking a week off (“or whatever”) to go to some studio near Providence to record her band’s first album, she’d catch up on school when she got back. We shouldn’t call the cops. Etc.

She says she’s fine. She says nothing happened. But I don’t think that’s entirely true. I think someone hurt her. And I know who. And I had to keep coming to school because I had to find out what happened, so I could hurt him back.

So I crested the hill and walked down to the squat sprawling one-story building, an ugly heap of aluminum and brick, cursing my abject failure at estimating travel time, for I had arrived too early, and they were there, my peers, my fellow primates, hooting and hollering, pounding chests and grooming each other.

My senses felt like they’d been turned up too high. Maybe it had something to do with skipping breakfast, with the churning engine of my empty stomach generating electricity that danced in my limbs, crackled in my head, but these people stunk. They spoke too loudly.

Their clothes and bags were head-achingly bright. It made every step toward them harder.

And there, at the door, arms folded like the bouncers outside a club in a cop show, they stood. Three of them: Bastien, Tariq, Ott. Hudson High’s soccer stars; the shrewd-eyed roosters at the top of our pecking order.

“Pretty,” Ott said as one girl approached.

“Not pretty,” to the next. Grinning hyena-style at how her face crumpled.

“Pretty.”

“Fugly.”

“Thinks she’s pretty.”

At this, they cackled. Everyone but Tariq. Tariq, with his perfect stomach and impressive chest and a beard thicker than any high school senior’s ever, Tariq of the dimples and broad nose, Tariq who could have stepped out of my computer screen, because he’d fit right in on the sites I spent all night searching when my mom was asleep. Pages packed with boys, beautiful ones—a secret nation to which I would never belong. Tariq, who somehow made me feel fat and scrawny all at once.

Tariq, who saw me and looked away as fast as he could but not fast enough to hide the guilt that soured his face.

We had both been crushed out on Tariq, my big sister and me. He wasn’t like the other boys on the soccer team, even if he did spend an awful lot of time with them. He wasn’t a bully. He was handsome and smart, and even nice, sometimes.

That’s what made him so dangerous. Everybody knows to steer clear of a bully. Maya would never have gone to meet up with Tariq in secret if he had already showed us all he was a brutal thug.

But he seemed . . . human. So she did.

He didn’t know that I knew. And, admittedly, I didn’t know much. Just that they met up that night. So maybe nothing happened. Maybe he just gave her a ride to Providence, to this recording studio I don’t really believe exists, or to where one of her bandmates lived. The fact that he gave her a ride that night wasn’t what made me suspicious. What made me suspicious was this: something shifted, in Tariq’s body language, after that night. He doesn’t look me in the eye anymore. He turns his shoulders away from wherever I am standing.

Like right then, as I approached the front door, where he stood with his best friends, staring at the ground with his perfect lips pressed tight together.

I gnawed my fingernails furiously.

My mom tells me it is a disgusting habit. She tells me to stop. I can’t stop.

It hurt, how much I wanted to smash my face against those perfect lips. I wanted it even though I felt pretty sure Tariq did something terrible to my sister. And the wanting got rolled up with the shame and filled me with a sputtering, stupid animal rage. How could it be, that in spite of everything, I still felt lust when I looked at him? Lust, and hate, in equal measure.

That’s why I’m writing this Rulebook.

Your body is a treacherous savage thing and it is trying to kill you. I am here to help you win. Together, we are both going to win.

Ott saw me stop and stare daggers at Tariq.

“You want something, Matt?”

That’s my name: Matt. I didn’t want to tell you, because I hate it.

A matt is something people step on. A matt is full of filth.

I debated lying. Making up something badass or manly, Damien or Colby or Barrett or Bo, something gay-porn-star-y. But honesty is important. I want you to trust me. Because pretty soon I’ll be telling you some things you’re going to have a very hard time believing.

So, Ott called my name. My whole body twitched with fight-or-flight triggers, but I knew either choice would be disastrous. If I fought, I’d get my ass beat, and if I ran, my limited ability to make Tariq feel uncomfortable, to apply pressure, would evaporate.

People were watching. If Tariq hadn’t been standing there, I’d have gone about my business, but he was my real audience. Ott didn’t matter.

I winced, tasting blood where I bit down too hard on the cuticle of my ring finger.

In movies and books, all you need to do to stop a bully is to punch them back. Bullies are cowards, the story goes; they can dish out violence, but they can’t take it.

This, you should know, if you haven’t already found it out the hard way, is bullshit. I tried it, in middle school, and it made things worse. Maybe it’ll work for you, if you’re stronger than me, or a faster runner, but it earned me a lovely session of puking up blood.

I knew that hitting Ott wouldn’t get me anywhere. But I did see something flicker in his eyes, something like fear but not exactly that, something bigger, messier: hate and fear all at once. I took a step closer. I took a deep breath. I smelled him.

And don’t ask me how, but I knew. I knew from the smell: I made him nervous. I terrified him. My existence, my gayness, threatened his whole way of understanding the world, what it meant to be the male of the species.

I’d never understood the word homophobia before— people who are homophobic are not afraid of gay people, they just hate them! But in that moment it all made sense. Straight men will insult and assault and beat and kill gay men because they are terrified. Because masculinity is the foundation they built their whole worldview on, the set of lies that lets them believe they are inherently better than women, and gay people expose how flimsy and arbitrary the whole thing is.

I turned to him and said, “No, Ott, I don’t want anything. I was just wondering. What about me?”

His mouth curled into a snarl. “What about you?”

“Which one am I?”

He unfolded his arms with a slowness that revealed his uncertainty. “Which . . . one?”

“Yeah. Am I pretty? Not pretty? I definitely think I’m pretty.”

A girl giggled. Even Tariq cracked a grin, though he turned his head to hide it from me.

I took another step forward. Ott’s lips parted slightly, and I saw muscles tighten in his arms. He was confused and getting angry: he sensed I was humiliating him, but not in any way he could reasonably understand. He was desperate for me to touch him, or explicitly insult him, so he could hurt me. I had planned to tap his chest with one finger when I delivered the finishing line, but that would have made Ott feel justified in a physical response. So why bother.

Seconds ticked away—

“You are Not Pretty,” I told Ott an instant before the first bell rang.

Then I slipped by him and walked inside.

ONE

I WON’T MISS these mornings.

I won’t miss the sand, the sea, the salt air. The splintered wood of the old, worn boardwalk, burrowing beneath my skin. I won’t miss the sun, bright and blinding, a spotlight on me as I watch and wait. I won’t miss the silence.

No, I won’t miss these mornings at all.

Day after day, I slip down to the boardwalk when it’s still dark. I’ve worked hard to make it look like I’m simply a girl who loves sunrises, a girl who’d never shove back. One of those is true, at least. The Wolves who guard this beach hardly blink at me anymore, a rare show of indifference bought by my consistency, my patience. Two years of consistency and patience, every single morning since they plucked us from lives we loved and shoved us into gulags. I sit where the guards can see me—where I can see them—where I can see everything. I watch the water, I watch the waves. I watch more than water, more than waves. I look for cracks.

There’ve been no cracks. The guards’ routine has forever been solid, impenetrable, the only reason I haven’t yet made a break for it. I will, though. I am a bird, determined to fly despite clipped wings and splintered feet. This cage of an island won’t hold me forever.

One day, when the war ends, I will eat ice cream again. I will run barefoot on the beach without fear of stepping on a mine. I will go into a bookstore, or a coffee shop, or any of the hundreds of places currently occupied by Wolves, and I will sit there for hours just because I can. I will do all of these things, and more. If I survive.

I am always ready for a way out, always looking to leave. I carry my past wherever it fits: tucked in at my back, hanging from my neck, buried deep in my pocket. A tattered yellow book. A heavy ring on its heavy chain. A vial of blood and teeth. My empty hands are my advantage—with nothing but my own skin to dig my nails into, with no one left to cling to, I’m free to take back this war-stained world. If everything goes as planned, that is.

It may not be obvious to anyone else, but things are changing. I see subtle signs of it everywhere, for better and worse all at once. Where there used to be only two guards at this beachfront station, now there are four. Where the guards once stepped casually around certain patches of sand—they’ve been loud and clear in warning us of the land mines buried there— they now step carefully, single file, if they even leave their station at all. Until last week, their post was equipped with a blood-red speedboat. Now they’ve traded sleek for simple, a no-frills green sailboat in its place meant to disadvantage anyone who tries to use it to escape. As if any of us could make it that far without being blown to pieces.

This quiet shifting of routine assures me the rumors are true.

Someone escaped last week, people say. Someone else plans to try. Today, tomorrow, next week, next month, I’ve heard it all. The rumors aren’t about me—I’d never be allowed to sit here now, watching as always, if they were. This worked out exactly the way I hoped, that my being close to the beach triggers the assumption that I am up to nothing, nothing at all out of the ordinary. To change my routine would be suspicious.

Now I wait only for the guards to turn their backs on me, as they sometimes do, when they go for coffee refills inside their bare-bones old beach tower. They are far too comfortable with me looking comfortable. Too confident I’ll stay put. They keep their eyes trained on the seawall, on those who’ve taken a sudden interest in the sunrise.

The boardwalk has been lonely for the better part of two years, but not now. Not yesterday, either, or the day before. Whether the others are plotting an escape or just hoping to glimpse one, who knows? This is undoubtedly the best spot for either, I figured that out my first week. From every other side of this island, the water leads straight back to mainland Texas. Better open ocean than that.

These fresh faces that peek out over the seawall and divert attention away from me—it’s good, and it’s not. Anyone could make a run for it at any time. The Wolves will redouble their security measures when that happens, no doubt, rain bullets and bombs over the entire camp. I can’t be around when that happens. I need to make a run for the boat today, this morning, now, or I might never get the chance.

I have to be first.

Dawn breaks, a hundred thousand shades of it, so brilliant the sky can hardly contain it.

Two guards go inside their post, and the third turns—this is it this is it this is it—but then the air shifts. It starts with a seagull, warning on its wings as it flies straight for the ocean, like it wants to get far, far away. The two remaining guards meet eyes. I hear the rumble of footsteps, not from the beach but from beyond the seawall at my back, toward barracks and breakfast and the silk lab I’ve left behind.

A distant explosion shakes the entire island. Two more follow on its heels, five more after that. Gunfire, like a storm—so many blasted bullets I lose count—screaming, chaos. It’s louder with every second. Louder and closer.

I freeze, every muscle in my body stiff. I’m too late, a split second too late—someone must have attempted escape from the wrong side of the island.

Looks like I’m not the only one who wanted to be first.

All four officers are out of the post now, running their tight zigzag pattern through the sand, toward the noise, careful not to blow themselves to pieces. They don’t look my way as they pass.

I should have gone for it in the dead of night, shouldn’t have waited for perfect timing—there is no perfect. These bullets and bombs are the consequences, I’m sure of it, security measures on steroids. I’ve missed my chance.

Or maybe not.

The green sailboat bobs idly at the end of their dock. No one has stayed behind to guard it.

I shift, about to make a break for it—but then that miserable seagull settles itself on the sand in the wrong place and sets off a mine. The earsplitting explosion is close enough to scare me still. Smoke and feathers obscure the guards’ sandy footsteps, obliterating my only clue as to where the safe path is. Before last week, when they planted hundreds of fresh mines, I could have run it in my sleep. Not now.

People come spilling over the seawall, five and ten and fifteen, more with every second. If they’re desperate enough to run this way, straight toward the sand and the mines, I don’t want to know what they’re running from. I scramble to the edge of the boardwalk. There’s an opening below it, where wind has blown the sand away from the posts and planks. I will wait this out and try again, or I will die. It’s a tight squeeze, just enough room for me but hardly enough room to breathe. My breaths are shallow anyway, shallow and quick. Sand sticks to the slick sweat on my neck and cheek, coating the entire right side of me. The grit is everywhere: inside my nose, between my teeth, behind my eyelids. But I breathe, never having felt so alive as I do in this moment, so close to death.

The noise is inescapable now, the sound of the desperate as they run from death to destruction. Footsteps pound the boardwalk, shaking it. If it gives out, I will be splintered and crushed beneath it.

Sand scatters under the first pair of brave feet, not terribly far away from me. Two more pairs follow, and ten more after that. Then twenty.

The mines spray sand and skin high into the air. All over the beach, explosions burst like fireworks. Yet the feet keep coming, winding through pillars of smoke until—pop!—they are forced to stop.

It isn’t pretty. It is a sickening, revolting mess.

Something heavy slams into the boardwalk, directly above me. The boards creak, sagging so low they press into my shoulder blades. Quickly, the pressure recedes—but then there are fingers, long and tan and delicate, curling over the plank’s edge two inches from my face. A noise almost slips out of me; I bite it back.

Shots ring out, cracking wood, deafening and close. I don’t feel anything—but would a bullet burn like fire, or would it be a blast of numb shock? The fingers grip tighter, knuckles white even in these shadows, and then they are gone. I shift, as much as I can in this tight space, and see three perfect circles of sunlight streaming through the wood just past my head.

Another shot rings out, and then, just like that, darkness overtakes the light—there is a thud above me, even heavier than the first, and a limp arm hanging over the boardwalk’s edge. A limp arm clothed in crisp, tan fabric that would blend into the sand if not for the blood.

An officer. An officer is down, and they will find him, and if I stay where I am I will be covered in his blood as it drips through the cracks.

I could run now. I could follow the footsteps of the dead, step only in places where the sand has been tested. I could make it to the sailboat, if I am smart. If I am smart and quick. I could finally, finally sail to Sanctuary.

I inch out of my hiding place, careful to stay low. An enemy of an officer is a friend of mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe—I still need to be as careful as possible, and quiet. A blast of saltwater breeze hits me, cool against damp sweat.

“Wait.”

I freeze, though I’ve obviously already been seen.

“The guards are making rounds,” the voice says. Soft, urgent. “They’re not close, but they’ll see me if you run.”

I turn my head, just slightly, enough to look at her. She’s petite, Asian—I don’t recognize her. Her long, tan fingers ravage the fallen officer’s pockets. Could this girl really have killed him, David against Goliath?

“Here,” she says, tossing me a lanyard heavy with keys. Clever, an attempt to share the blame if someone sees, because why else would she hand over this freedom? Not that I’m complaining—I don’t plan to be around long enough for blame. She stuffs his ID tags into her pockets and tucks his pistol into the back of her shorts. “I’m coming with you.”

The pistol makes me nervous, but at least it isn’t aimed at me. “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

She tilts her head to the beach, to the sickening display of blood and bone before us. “I know you’re not staying here,” she says. “That’s all I need to know.”

“Is it clear yet?” Still crouched on the low side of the boardwalk, all I can see is the girl, and the officer at her feet. Even this much blood turns my stomach, but I keep it together. I have to.

“Clear enough that we’ll have a head start. People are avoiding this beach now. . . .” Her eyes drift to the mess of death in the sand. The tide doesn’t reach far enough to lick any of the blood away, and neither of us can look for more than a few seconds. “It’s only a matter of time until they’re all killed. The guards won’t be distracted for long.”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay. We can do this.”

“We have to do this. What else is there?”

She’s right. And it isn’t like I have anyone to go back for, not anymore. I take a deep breath. “Follow—”

“Crap, they’re on the seawall—they see us. They see us! Go!”

I spring to standing and take off. The smoke has cleared, not completely, but enough. I don’t look behind me to see if she’s there. I don’t look at what remains of all the people I might have eaten breakfast with later this morning. I only look ahead, at the ravaged sand, darting left and right like the officers did when they first noticed the air shifting.

Bullets burrow into the sand, into bodies already dead, into a wake of people who trail behind us. So many bullets from only—I risk a glance—two guards. I dodge their shots, keep running until the sand is smooth ahead of me, untested. I stop short, not sure exactly how to proceed, and the girl from the boardwalk barrels into me. It’s everything I can do to keep from losing my balance, from taking one wrong step that could end everything.

But of those who’ve fallen in with us, only two stop. The others push past us, sights set on the sailboat. Between their footsteps and the spray of bullets that follows them, the sand is broken—and they are dead—in a matter of seconds.

I suck in a breath, choke on sand and smoke, but force myself to keep going. The boardwalk girl follows, along with the two girls who stopped with us. I recognize both their faces from the seawall, peeking over, today and yesterday and the day before.

I lead the way, fast as I can. The guards’ boat isn’t far now. If we press on we might actually make it. More shots ring out, but this time they’re fired by the boardwalk girl, directed at the officer who usually guards the boat—bullet and blood, he collapses before he can make it back to the dock—then at the other guards who chase us, their pistols dead. This girl is an impressive shot, unsettlingly so. She keeps pulling the trigger long after she runs out of bullets.

No one shoots at us anymore.

No one follows us at all.

But I keep running. I can’t stop. We’re past the minefield now, into guards’ quarters—where the guards would be if they weren’t dead or hunting—and down the endless dock where their boat is tied up.

I climb up and over the boat’s side, collapse just long enough to catch my breath. I’m vaguely aware of the three other girls as they join me, one of them a blonde who works to untie the knotted rope, our only anchor to the dock. The sky starts to sway as the tide pulls us out to sea. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to think. Everything hurts.

It is worth it.