Saturday afternoon, my phone buzzed with a text from Marnie: Hey Connecticut. Hangsies today? 2ish? Your house?

I’d spent the morning hiding out in my room, avoiding Mom and Jonathan. In spite of my resolution to swear off, um, hangsies and live a miserable, isolated existence for the good of everyone around me, the boredom was already getting old.

So I replied, Sure.

A half hour later, Marnie steered a pale blue convertible BMW into the driveway. The top was automatically closing itself over her head as I came out to meet her.

I was curious to see what she’d wear outside of school. Based on what little I knew of her, I’d imagined her to be an all-black-and-combat-boots type. But she was wearing skinny jeans and a ruffly white tank top with flip-flops. Her sunglasses were sparkly blue. I was a little disappointed, to be honest — I’d expected something more dramatic.

She checked out my outfit, too, which had to be a huge bummer for her. I had on an olive-green long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of overalls my mom had owned since the early ’90s. My hair was in a low, sloppy bun. My feet were bare, but during my time alone that morning, I’d painted my toenails bubble-gum pink.

So I had that going for me, I guess.

Marnie hugged me, then stood back. “You look like a boy,” she said. “Not in a bad way. A cute boy.”

My mother, whose plans for the day consisted of making some crazy-elaborate dinner, was in the kitchen when we went inside. Mom seemed to like Marnie, but she also seemed a little thrown by her cynical vibe. Mostly, my mother seemed relieved I’d made a friend — that I wasn’t doomed to life as a shut-in chasing around imaginary dripping sounds in the night.

Jonathan, thankfully, was off scouting a location for a movie, so I didn’t have to deal with that potentially awkward interaction. I gave Marnie a quick tour of the house — she didn’t seem impressed, though she did say that the pool was “decent, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

I actually found it comforting, the way Marnie scoffed at things. It was like she knew the world was messed up, so what was the use of trying to pretend it wasn’t?

We hung out in my room for a while and Marnie filled me in on all the major Langhorn gossip, starting back in eighth grade. She was happy just to have an audience, and I was happy just to listen. She didn’t ask any hard questions about my life in Connecticut or how I was adjusting to California. It was so much easier than having to conceal what I was really thinking.

For a moment, I actually considered confiding in her. I could start by casually mentioning that the house was a little spooky, and I heard strange-ish sounds sometimes — I even thought I’d seen something in the pool. But where could I go from there? Would I really tell her about the visions and voices? It was such a small, slippery slope from strange-ish to crazy. And Marnie was my only friend.

So I kept my mouth shut.

After examining the nautical-themed paintings on my walls and proclaiming them “droll,” Marnie suggested we go for a drive, on the condition that I change out of the overalls, which I happily did. When we presented the plan to Mom, she was pretty reluctant — especially as the car in question was a convertible, and therefore not reinforced with giant bars of steel and airbags popping out from every angle. But eventually she must have remembered that it had literally been years since any of my peers had invited me to do anything at all, and she agreed to let me go.

Marnie cranked up the radio, and I swallowed the urge to ask her to ease off the accelerator as we zoomed through the neighborhood. When we made it out to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the traffic forced her to slow down, and I relaxed a little, tilting my head back to stare at the ribbon of sky above us.

“Laurel,” as Marnie called it, was a narrow road that curved through the hills between Hollywood and the Valley, which I knew nothing about except that Jonathan seemed to resent ever having to drive there.

The canyon felt like its own little world, a stripe of coziness tucked away from the sprawling city. Houses clustered tightly together, their front doors only a few feet from the road. Their backyards were steep hillsides covered in pale green grass and thickly flowering desert shrubs. In some places there was nothing but exposed rock, washed bare by mudslides.

Power, telephone, and cable lines crisscrossed overhead like party streamers, dripping with tendrils of ivy. In some places, the trees and shrubs grew so close to the road that I could have reached out and grabbed them. On every corner was a sign that read NO SMOKING IN THE CANYON. A hawk circled lazily overhead.

You could totally see why the hippies flocked here in the ’60s and ’70s. With its sharp turns and slabs of uneven concrete, it was a little dangerous feeling. And dirty.

Basically magical.

We drove all the way to the Valley, which, contrary to my expectations, looked like a pretty regular place. We stopped at an old-school diner called Du-par’s for coffee and doughnuts with sprinkles, like two normal teenagers. Normal. It was a beautiful word … a beautiful feeling. Spending time with a friend, talking about school and TV shows. There were no voices in my head, no hallucinations. I felt an intense, almost wistful gratitude….

Probably because I knew it would never last.

It was closing in on dinnertime, so we got in the car and made our way back into the hills. Marnie sang along to a country song about a guy who’d been waiting for his wife to come home from the grocery store for ten years. The breeze was cool, and the air smelled clean, like pine trees.

When we reached the house, Marnie parked in the driveway, then turned to me. “Watch out, Willa,” she said, an impish little grin on her face. “You’re starting to lose your deer-in-the-headlights look. Are you actually enjoying yourself?”

I laughed. “Maybe miracles do happen.”

“Want to come over?” she asked. “I was thinking about watching Kiss of Death. Apparently it’s super twisted.”

I tried to think of a gracious way to say no way on earth, but before I could speak, the world went white.