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When 17-year-old Arbor Hayes' best friend turns up alive after a mysterious six-month disappearance, she must piece together the fragments of her story to make sense of what happened. But as clues e...
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The air rushes from my lungs.
I get up too fast and the room takes an unsteady spin. But my feet stay planted. My eyes fixed.
The girl's lips quiver at the corners like she's trying not to smile. "You okay, Hayes? That wasn't one of your more graceful moves. I hope you're doing better on the soccer field than you are off."
Apprehension hums through my veins. This girl is barely recognizable, but who else could it be? "Emma?"
"Were you expecting someone else?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "I'd have come over sooner, but my parents are watching me like a hawk. I finally told them I was going to sleep and not to bother me."
She says this like they shouldn't be concerned. But Emma from before would have basked in their attention. She always complained about her parents' crazy work schedules and how they were never home. That's why she spent so much time over here.
Her gaze slides around my room, taking it in. The selfies of us in various stages of playfulness, framing the full length mirror on my closet door. The soccer trophies, and medals dangling from red, white, and blue cords along the shelves. Cooper crouching on my bed, hackles raised, his pale blue eyes narrowed and untrusting.
"You've got to be kidding me," she says. "Your mom finally let you get a cat?"
My heart thumps in my ears. All I can do is stare, until the stretch of silence grows too long to ignore. "Dad convinced her. After you —" I stop short, shiver, cross my arms. Too unnerved to say it in front of her, like she's not aware she's been gone. "I wanted to adopt from a kill shelter, so he drove me to Columbus a few months ago to look around."
Emma chuckles and shakes her head. "You always did have a soft spot for the less fortunate. Remember when we were kids and you found that mangy puppy in the woods and brought it home? You tried to convince your mom it was lost, but it turned out to be a baby coyote. I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw it sleeping on her couch!"
How could I forget? I was grounded for an entire weekend for approaching an animal I didn't know. But after all this time, this is what she wants to talk about?
I can't do it. I can't have this normal-sounding conversation and pretend like nothing happened. But I'm not sure what to say, where to begin—even though I'd practiced a hundred times in my head.
"Are you—okay?" My voice is feeble in my ears, just like the rest of me. As though someone has sucked out all my energy and I can barely hold myself up.
Emma's lips purse, like she's considering my question. "I suppose that depends on what you mean by okay." She doesn't elaborate. Instead, her brows rise as she studies me. "You cut your hair."
My hands fly to the dark-blonde waves around my shoulders. "Um—yes. Eight inches before school started."
She scrutinizes me carefully, inspecting all angles. "It looks good. It's been a long time since I've seen it above your waist."
