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“I guess I just feel like it.”

“Well, unfeel.”

“
Unfeel?
Is that a word?” She laughs at the look I shoot her and says, “Okay. Answer this. Did you tell him all about the nightmares and the panic attacks?” Her voice gentles. “Did you tell him about your mom? Or about how worried you’ve been about your dad and his drinking?”

I take in a breath, ready to answer, and then I stop. Carly knows all that. Some, because she lived through it with me. Some, because she knows me so well I don’t need to tell her. The stuff about Dad’s drinking, because I confided in her. In the beginning, she even helped me count the bottles on the counter and the ones in the fridge.

But Jackson doesn’t know—at least, not everything. Parts of it we’ve talked about. And parts of it, like the anxiety stuff, I think he pretty much figured out. But some of it, I just didn’t talk about because . . . I just didn’t. “Not all of it, no.”

“Why not?” Carly asks. “Shouldn’t you tell him everything?”

“I . . .”

“Double standard much? He’s supposed to bare all for you”—she pauses and looks at me and grins—“which I’d like to be present for if it’s all the same to you. Anyway, he’s supposed to bare his soul for you, but you get to keep secrets?”

“They’re not secrets. It’s just, I can’t tell him everything. I don’t always think about explaining stuff like that. It’s just part of . . . I don’t know . . . part of
me
. And other stuff, I guess I don’t think he really needs to know. Or maybe I don’t think he’d want to know.”

“And you don’t think maybe it’s the same for him?”

“No, it isn’t the same. The stuff he doesn’t tell me is different. It’s important. It’s—”
About the game.

And I can’t tell Carly that.

So I’m doing exactly what Jackson does. Keeping secrets. Or, at least, avoiding certain topics. Because sometimes that’s just the way it is.

I sigh, thinking about our argument and about Jackson, the way he was there for me, the way he came to me when I needed him, when Carly needed him, instead of going after the girl with the green eyes.

“I made it all about me,” I say, covering my face with my hands. “I knew he had a rough evening, too, and I just focused on my stuff.”

Rough
doesn’t begin to describe it. On top of everything we all went through on that mission, Jackson had to deal with being responsible for all our lives and facing down a shell wearing his dead sister’s face.

I could have cut him some slack.

I could have started the argument another day.

I just didn’t think. No wonder he said he wanted some time to himself. Why did I do that?

“What’s wrong with me?” I ask.

Carly rolls facedown and slides off the bed headfirst so she ends up half-on, half-off, supporting her torso on her straight arms, her face above mine.

“Nothing’s wrong with you. Actually, you’re the least wrong that you’ve been in two years. Couples argue sometimes. No biggie.” She slides the rest of the way off the bed, so we’re lying side by side. “It’s not like he broke up with you. I mean, he didn’t, did he?”

“No.”

She rolls on her side and stares at me. “Do you love him?”

I study the ceiling, trying to decide how to answer. Do I want to say it out loud? I’ve told Jackson that I love him, but that was under duress while he was dying in a deserted building in Detroit after he took a Drau hit meant for me. And I qualified that declaration by telling him I didn’t forgive him, that he had to live so he could beg forgiveness. On the romance scale, that’d have to score a negative ten.

And maybe I’ve said it once or twice since then in a joking way—I can’t even remember if I have or not. But I haven’t actually
said it
said it. Maybe I’m afraid to love him. Or maybe I’m just afraid to admit it out loud.

Bad things seem to happen to people I love.

I haven’t told anyone else how I feel about him. Not even Carly.

“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to answer. Not out loud. But you have to answer it in your own head. In your heart.” She pauses, then says in a slow, sonorous tone, dragging out each word, forcing a huffing exhalation into each vowel, “Love . . . means never . . . having . . . to say . . . you’re sorry.”

“Did you seriously just say that to me?” I surge up and grab a pillow off my bed and whack her with it. She grabs another and whacks me. “Did you really just tell me that love means never having to say you’re sorry?”

She’s laughing so hard, she’s gasping for air as her pillow smacks me upside the head. I get her on the arm. She gets me flat across the back.

In the end, we’re both gasping and snorting as we let the pillows drop.

“I love you,” she says. “There, I said it.”

Everyone leaves.

She almost left me tonight, almost died. I never would have had these moments with her, never would have had the chance to tell her. Just like I’ll never again have the chance to tell Mom. But I have the memories of a thousand times I did tell her, and the thousand times she told me. Those memories matter. “I love you, too, Carly,” I say.

She puckers up and makes kissy-face noises. “I really do forgive you for killing my fish,” she says.

“I really do forgive you for bringing that up yet again,” I say.

She shrugs. “You deserve it.”

“You plan to milk it for eternity.”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay.”

She grabs me and hugs me, and I hug her back, holding tighter than I probably should, the memory of her lying on the floor covered in blood too fresh, too raw.

There’s a tapping at my door. “Miki? Carly?”

We both flop on the bed. “Come on in, Dad.”

He looks at the pillows on the floor, then at us. If I look anywhere near as bad as Carly, whose hair is standing out in all directions from static electricity, then Dad’ll have no trouble figuring out what we’ve been doing.

“I’m heading out to get milk,” Dad says. “Do you want a ride home, Carly?”

“Yeah, thanks, Mr. Jones. My mom’s not speaking to me. Again. So calling her for a ride probably isn’t my best plan.”

“Right. Okay.” Dad holds up his index finger, punctuating each word. “Ready to go when you are.”

I STAND AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW AND WATCH THE EXPLORER pull out of the drive. Carly opens the window and hangs her arm out to wave wildly. I wave back, feeling like the whole night was surreal, but it isn’t until the car disappears around the corner that I slump against the wall.

It’s like Carly took all my energy with her when she left.

Between the Drau, and Carly almost dying, and the fight with Jackson, there just isn’t much left of me. I should take a hot shower or flop in front of the TV and watch a show or maybe just crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

But I don’t do any of those things. I stay where I am, my cheek resting against the window frame as I unpack the crazy that’s crawling around in my head like a bunch of centipedes.

I start with the things I know.

The Drau pushed through into my world, my real world.

Everything the Committee said about how big of a threat they are is true.

Carly almost died.

Someone healed her, but Jackson doesn’t believe it was him. Which leaves the possibility that the respawn did the trick. Except, Carly isn’t part of the game. She doesn’t respawn. And even if she did, it wouldn’t explain the hint of Drau gray I saw flash in her eyes.

Which brings me to all the things I don’t know: Who healed Carly? Exactly how trustworthy is the Committee? If the green-eyed girl is a shell, why does she keep helping me? Because the Drau want to use me as an original donor?

I guess Jackson could be right about that, but if that’s what she wants, she could have fought my team the first time I met her, when I was lying on the ground, bleeding, dying. She could have fought them and killed them—maybe—and taken me then. But she chose to run away.

A quick tapping snares my attention, and only then do I realize I’m drumming my fingertips against the windowsill. I force myself to stop. Then I force myself to mentally catalogue what I know, starting from the beginning. I end up with questions and more questions, like an infinite circle spinning around.

But at least I have a few answers now, too. I know more about the game and about the Committee and their limitations. I know more about myself, my weaknesses, my strengths.

The chill from outside penetrates the glass. I shiver, but I don’t move away. It’s like I’m waiting for something but I don’t know what.

Lie.

I do know.

I’m waiting for the prickle of awareness that will tell me Jackson’s there, on my street, watching my window. I’ve felt it before, more than once. Not in a creeper way. He had good reasons. I kind of wish he’d find a reason right now.

Once, he left me a gift—a copy of my favorite manga, wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the weather—on the flat roof of the overhang that covers the front porch.

Once, I looked out my window to find him sitting cross-legged on that same porch roof, his honey-gold hair gleaming in the moonlight, shades firmly in place, even at night.

That was the night he snuck in my bedroom window. The night he lifted his shirt and bared his abs—and his navel—to prove to me he wasn’t a shell.

The night he kissed me for the first time.

Not on my lips. That came later. The first kiss was something else entirely.

I remember it. I remember the way he grabbed my wrist and turned my hand over, then lowered his head and pressed his lips to my palm.

I remember the shock of electricity that danced through me.

Then he moved his lips to the crease of my wrist. I stood perfectly still, my blood hammering through my veins.

I remember the way he made me feel; I’d never felt like that before. I wanted him to do it again. Instead, he climbed out the window and took off into the night.

I close my eyes now and press the inside of my wrist against my mouth, wishing Jackson were here, wishing we hadn’t parted the way we did.

He just faced down what amounted to his sister’s ghost. I hate that I know he has to be suffering. And I hate that I know I added to his pain. I wasn’t there for him, didn’t offer much in the way of comfort. I’m not feeling very proud of that.

I grab a hoodie, climb out my window, and sit on the roof with my back pressed against the bricks, just like Mom and I used to do when I was little. We’d sit out here and stare at the stars. She’d try to name them. She didn’t always get them right, and it really didn’t matter.

Staring up at the stars now, I can’t help but wonder how many of them support worlds like Earth. Worlds like my ancestors came from. Or the Drau.

I wish Mom were here right now. I wish I could talk to her. I wouldn’t be able to tell her about the game, but I could tell her about the gray fog, the panic attacks, the way I try so hard to control everything in my life, as if that will keep me safe.

I could tell her about Jackson.

She could help me figure it all out.

But she isn’t here, and I haven’t felt this alone in a really long time. I haven’t let myself feel this alone.

I play with my phone, trying to decide if I should call him or not.

Not.

He said he needed some time on his own.

An hour? A day? A month?

There’s no one for me to ask.

I love Dad so much. But I can’t talk to him the same way I talked to Mom. It’s just different. They’re different.

I bend my knees up and hug them. “I miss you, Mommy,” I whisper. “I miss you so much.”

It isn’t until I’m shivering from the cold that I realize Dad’s been gone way longer than the twenty minutes it should have taken him to drop Carly, get milk, and make it back home.

Maybe he got caught up talking to Mrs. Conner when he dropped Carly off.

I pull out my phone and call him. Through my open window, I hear the faint sound of his ringtone inside the house. He forgot his phone. Again.

And the battery’s probably almost dead. Again. He has a habit of forgetting to charge it.

I duck back in through the window and head to his room. No phone on the dresser, but there’s a low oval dish that Mom used to keep potpourri in. I stare at it for a minute, really seeing it for the first time in ages. It’s full, but not with aromatic leaves. There are matchbooks in there.

I exhale a shocked breath. Dad wouldn’t smoke. He wouldn’t. He quit as soon as Mom was diagnosed. I don’t believe he’d start again.

I pick up a matchbook and open the flap. All the matchsticks are there. Same with the next one and the next. So he’s just collecting them; he’s not using them. I run my fingers over the glossy covers. Blue Mill Tavern. Dante’s Inferno. La Ronda Bar. Elk Bar. Dad must like that one; he has at least a dozen of their orange matchbooks.

My stomach clenches. I feel like I’m going to puke. All those nights Dad’s been out, he hasn’t been going to AA meetings. He’s been going to bars.

Is that where he is now? Is that why he’s so late?

I remember what Dad said to me back at the beginning of September, the words playing through my thoughts.
I don’t have a problem. It’s all under control. I’m not one of those after-school specials, passed out on the couch, with three empty bottles of gin on the floor.

No, he’s not passed out on the couch. And the bottles aren’t gin. They’re vodka, like the one I found in his office when I was vacuuming.

He’s been lying to me. Lying to himself.

Am I supposed to forgive him for that? I need him. And he’s nowhere to be found. Not even when he’s sitting right across the dinner table from me.

I give up on finding his phone and stalk downstairs to the den. I pace to the front window, pull back the drapes, and stare at the empty street. Then I pace back to the couch.

I dial Carly’s number. She doesn’t answer.

I put my phone on the coffee table, line it up parallel to the converter, rearrange Dad’s fishing magazines so they’re perfectly straight. With a cry, I draw back my arm and swipe the surface, sending everything tumbling to the floor.

Then I pace back to the window and just stand there, waiting for the flare of headlights.