I rubbed my head as I looked up into the bright, moonlit sky. The total eclipse was obviously over. I was sitting on one of the lounge chairs on the deserted terrace, cuddled up inside a cashmere throw. I could smell the thick, smoky air from the bonfire wafting up from the yard below and the band was still playing. Confused, I shook my head to clear it and looked around. I dug my fingers into my hair—I couldn’t feel a goose egg or even any pain. But I was pretty sure something on the outskirts of normal had just happened. I had been walking across the terrace, I’d heard a footstep, and then—plop.
Taking a deep breath, I reached inside my pocket and rubbed a finger over my moonstone. It was cool and smooth and instantly made me feel more at ease. When I wrapped the stone inside my palm, the outline of a dream flickered through my head. Something about Will and me and the eclipsed moon and . . . that was it. As quickly as the scene appeared in my head, it was gone again. It felt a little like déjà vu, but not. A memory and a dream and a wish, all bundled up together into one strange little package.
“You’re pitiful.” Suddenly Velvet appeared beside me, her voice dripping hate like icicles. “Seriously, why don’t you just let him go?” Velvet didn’t let her true colors show that often, but when she did, they shone bright. “What are you doing up here, Lucia? This is my parents’ private terrace.”
“I got lost,” I said, vaguely recalling what had happened. I’d gone up a set of stairs, ended up on the wrong part of the roof, and fainted or something, totally missing my birthday eclipse.
“You got lost? Or you were sneaking around?” Her voice escalated, and her hands clenched into fists. “You need to learn to stay away from things that aren’t yours.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. Did she think I was trying to steal something? Whatever. I had much more important things to deal with at the moment, such as: What on earth had just happened to me? The total eclipse was supposed to have lasted around an hour—was I out for that long? I quickly glanced down at my phone. Yep, fifty-seven minutes. If this were a TV show, losing an hour of my life might not seem that odd. In the grand scheme of my life, however, a misplaced hour was somewhat unsettling.
“Where. Is. Will?” Velvet said, glaring at me.
“I don’t know where Will is, Velvet. He’s obviously not with me.” He’s your boyfriend, I wanted to remind her. Maybe you should keep a closer eye on him or you’ll lose him the way I did. Though my mouth opened as if to speak, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—say it out loud.
“He was up here with you,” she spat. Her teeth were biting down on her lip so hard that her whole lower lip went white. “I saw you.”
Velvet knew Will had come up to the roof with Anji, Jonathan, and me—so why was she acting so weird? Had she seen something that made her suspicious? I glanced around, searching for hidden cameras. She would do that sort of thing. Velvet was a paranoid type of person. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Stop acting jealous and crazy, Velvet. If I want to talk to Will, I’ll talk to him. You have no right to boss me around anymore.”
Velvet reacted like I’d slapped her. I realized this was the first time I’d ever talked back to her like that, and I relished how good it felt. She narrowed her eyes and said, “I could make your life much worse than it already is, you know.”
“Seriously, Velvet, why are you being like this?” I asked. “Why do you need to be so mean?” Velvet scowled at me, and I immediately felt guilty. I muttered, “Sorry. I’m just having a really weird night.”
She stared at me for a moment longer, then turned away. She was obviously upset. About what, I had no idea.
“Are you crying?” I asked, shocked.
“Ugh,” she blurted out, reeling around to face me with a sneer. “Obviously I’m not crying.”
But I knew her well enough to feel pretty certain she had been close. I had only seen Velvet cry once before. It had been a few years ago, but I’d never forgotten, because it was so unusual. Velvet had never been the kind of kid who was coddled and nurtured and wrapped in blankets when she tripped or felt sad. So she had learned to cope, to deal.
But one day, when we were ten, Velvet had cracked, and I’d seen something inside her that scared me a little. We’d been sitting at the pool, dangling our legs in the water, and I’d noticed that Velvet had shaved her legs. Her leg brushed against mine in the water, and it felt slimy and naked, strange next to my own. It suddenly seemed that Velvet was all grown up, and I was still a little girl, my legs soft with downy fur. It was strange how something as simple as shaved legs could set two girls apart, but I remember that was the day I’d realized just how different we were. How different our lives were. My mom would never let me near a razor, would never let me shave my legs, and I’d said as much to Velvet.
She’d looked at me, then down at her own legs, and inexplicably started to cry.
“What’s wrong?” I’d pleaded, scared that my strong, confident friend was hurting. “Did you cut yourself?”
“No,” she’d said harshly, giving me that look that reminded me how stupid I could be around her. “I didn’t cut myself.”
I’d ducked my head, embarrassed that, once again, I just didn’t get it. I’d never seemed to get it with Velvet.
“Did I ever tell you I was an accident?” she had said finally, kicking her legs in the water. Her purple-nailed toes floated up toward the surface, and I could see tiny yellow flowers painted on each one. The one on her big left toe was chipping. “My parents never even wanted me.”
“That’s not true,” I insisted, reaching for her hand. “You’re perfect. Of course they want you.”
Velvet shrugged but let me take her hand. “I heard them fighting. My mom told my dad that having a kid was a mistake. She said everything would be different if she had never gotten pregnant.”
“But she did get pregnant. With you,” I said, not understanding how anyone could regret someone as beautiful as Velvet. “And your life is so perfect. They give you everything.”
Velvet choked on a laugh through her tears. “They give me everything, but they don’t even notice I’m here,” she said. “Your mom would know if you shaved your legs. My parents wouldn’t even notice if I was gone.”
“That’s not true,” I insisted. We both knew she was just being dramatic. “They love you.” She ignored me and dove into the water. She never said anything about it again—and I never asked.
“Velvet,” I said now, standing up to touch her shoulder as we lingered there together on the roof. “Are you okay?”
She shoved my hand away and snapped, “Don’t touch me!” Then she was gone. I waited a few minutes to give her some space, and then followed her down the little rooftop stairs. I easily found my way outside. The party was still in full swing, and most of our class had spilled out across the enormous lawn. When I sat down on a bench at the edge of the party, I read through several text messages from Anji and Jonathan, asking me where I was. I texted them back, letting them know I was waiting outside, ready to get out of there. Then I texted my sister and asked her to pick us up. I hoped she would hurry.
As I wandered through the yard, no one noticed me. The band had finally wrapped up and gone. Some kids had already been picked up by their parents, but dozens remained—sprinkled in clusters of friends around the lawn and down by the creek at the bottom of Velvet’s yard. Will and some of his friends were poking at the bonfire, attacking one another with charred, sticky marshmallows. Velvet held court among the girls, who tried to flirt and capture the boys’ attention.
From afar, I could hear some of them talking about meeting up for a bonfire near the river the next night. Everyone planned to gather at Jake Sumter’s house. His sprawling backyard butted up to the river, and they could cross to the sheltered area under the footbridge. I was instantly jealous. Will’s friends and Velvet’s friends had merged over the summer while I was gone. I thought about how I used to be part of that group. But I was only included because I was with Velvet. Without her, I had discovered, I was no longer welcome. I left the backyard. I didn’t want to know what I was missing. There were many times I’d wondered: If I had Velvet’s confidence and power, how would my life be different?
While we sat out front, waiting for my sister to pick us up, Anji and Jonathan quizzed me about where I’d been. “We were worried about you,” Jonathan said. “You never came back. You’re the only person we really know at this party, and when you didn’t come back—” He shook his head. “I mean, what the heck, Lucia? Where did you go?”
“We thought maybe you had become one of Velvet’s minions again. Ditched us,” Anji said. She looked over at me, beseeching. “You didn’t, did you?”
“No.” I forced a laugh. Because she’d told me, I knew Anji fretted about what people thought of her much more than she let on. For some reason Anji worried that I was going to abandon them for Velvet. I hadn’t ever told her and Jonathan the specifics of what had happened between me and Velvet and Will. It wasn’t like they could change anything, so what was the point of complaining about it? But I knew I’d never do to them what Velvet had done to me. “Definitely not that.”
I wondered how much I should tell my friends about my strange night and the lost hour. I wasn’t hurt, just a little scared and weirded-out. What if I told them and they thought I was crazy? “I guess I just somehow ended up on a different part of Velvet’s roof,” I said lightly, ignoring the voice in my head that told me I should confess everything. “I got lost. Then I didn’t want to miss the eclipse, so I stayed there until it was over. I’m sorry.”
“Was Will with you?” Anji asked. “Or did Velvet tug his leash and finally get him to heel by her side?”
I looked at her. “Will wasn’t with you during the eclipse? Where’d he go?”
“Beats me,” Anji said. “He left to look for you after you didn’t come back.”
I let that sink in. If Will wasn’t with Anji and Jonathan, where was he? I thought back to my conversation with Velvet, then tugged at the memory of the strange dream I’d had while I was asleep or knocked out or whatever. But I couldn’t extract any more details.
“The eclipse was crazy cool,” Jonathan said. “So orange!”
I nodded vaguely. Even though I hadn’t seen the total eclipse, I knew that some things about that night had definitely been crazy. I was disappointed that I’d somehow missed seeing my own birthday eclipse, but my big concern was how a whole hour of my life seemed to have evaporated into thin air.
What was going on?