“I heard it’s a ghost from the old mine,” said Shepherd. It was finally lunchtime, yet no one had changed the subject about the fires. It was all anyone at school seemed to want to talk about. “Over a thousand people died getting coal from the seam under the rail yard. You can still see the souls screaming in the flames.”

Leila frowned and stabbed at her salad. She made her lunches for the week in batches, throwing lettuce, tomatoes, roast chicken, and croutons into mason jars with homemade vinaigrette at the bottom so as not to get everything at the top of the jar soggy.

This level of domesticity horrified her mother, who had left Argentina in search of a life free of patriarchy and gender norms. Bianca was even more incredulous, insisting that buying lunch at school was just easier. But their father had always supported Leila’s interest in homemaking, and the crust of sourdough bread she’d made from scratch helped settle the queasy feeling she’d had in her stomach since hearing about this face in the flames.

The ghost Shepherd described sounded exactly like the demon — no, dream  — she’d experienced last night. The one that had felt like a real person sitting on her chest, keeping her from moving.

“No way,” Shivani said loudly next to her, buoying Leila. “You guys are full of crap.”

“Seriously!” Shepherd said, his face solemn. “Ask Delilah Meade — her house is right next to the rail yard, and she said the laughing kept her up all night!”

Shivani whipped her head around to Delilah’s table, where the girl known for taking the gymnastics team to state was deep in conversation with eight other girls, their faces wide-eyed and rapt. “Okay, well, clearly she’s on board with this whole conspiracy too,” Shivani relented.

Leila could see Shivani’s face recalculating, not sure what to think anymore. Shivani was always the most suspicious person in the room. Leila would have asked more questions too, if she hadn’t been so shaken by the fact that she seemed to be the one with the most experience with this so-called demon.

“Happy belated birthday, babe,” Foster said, sliding into the seat on her other side. He squeezed a warm, muscular arm around her, and Leila remembered to smile. She looked up at Foster, at his strong chin and adorable dimple, and nuzzled him back. “Sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday,” he said quietly to her. “But we can celebrate after school today, okay?”

“Okay.” Leila nodded, giving him a small smile.

“Meet me in the parking lot,” he added. He gave her a kiss, his lips soft and familiar, just before the bell for next period rang. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Leila replied automatically.

Leila spent her free period after lunch looking at YouTube videos, like she usually did once she finished her schoolwork. They soothed her, and she always bookmarked her favorites for later. She even found a video on how Nordic women did laundry before electricity was invented and made a note to buy something called borax. I was born in the wrong century, Leila thought glumly. It wasn’t the first time she’d had that bitter realization.

“Oh my god,” Shivani sighed, rolling her eyes from the desk next to Leila’s. “You’ve gone full cottagecore.”

Leila quickly closed her laptop. “It’s not cottagecore; it’s slow TV. There’s a difference!”

“I burned toast over the weekend,” Shivani confessed. “I have no idea how you do all that homemaking stuff.” She tossed her hair, her expensive perfume overtaking the natural rosemary spray Leila put in her own.

Leila laughed. Shivani always poked fun at Leila’s hobbies, but never like Bianca, in a way that made Leila feel defensive. If anything, Shivani admired Leila’s resourcefulness. Frugality was not one of Shivani’s strong suits.

“Nandani is coming back for winter break,” Shivani sighed.

Leila’s heart hiccupped. Shivani’s older sister, Nandani, was always a tricky subject.

Leila knew she liked boys; she liked how they smelled and felt, but Nandani had always been this shining, bright light that made Leila weak in the knees. The way she felt for Foster and Nandani was just so, so different. Foster was all sharp angles and heft. She liked the feel of his weight on top of her, but she also longed to feel the soft skin of Nandani. What did that mean? If Shivani ever found out about Leila’s pathetic crush on her sister, Shivani would probably feel even worse about living in Nandani’s shadow. How many times had Leila peeked through Nandani’s door at Shivani’s house, watching her curtain of black hair cascade over her schoolbooks?

Leila pushed the thought away. It’s not even a crush, Leila convinced herself. More like admiration.

“Shiv, you know you’re just as smart, right?” Leila said, hoping it would help her brain stop obsessing over Nandani’s smooth skin and kind eyes and — 

Shivani snorted. “My goal is to get into a school with a good fashion-marketing program. Hers is to cure cancer. I think it’s safe to say I am not as smart as her.”

Leila shook her head. “Okay, maybe not book smart. But who else could organize prom with two weeks’ notice when the senior class president got mono? Or get the entire school to pronounce my name correctly instead of as ‘Leela’? Or, or… set me up with Foster!”

“I’m still not sure I did you a favor setting you up with Foster,” Shivani said quietly, interrupting Leila’s deep, secret ache. “I don’t like the way you are around him. You seem… like… like Leila at thirty percent or something.”

Leila’s heart twitched. Was it that noticeable? Lately it felt like she had just been going through the motions with Foster, worrying that whatever spark had been between them was now gone. She hadn’t counted on her best friend noticing, though.

“Am I wrong?” Shivani asked, cutting through the silence of Leila’s whirring thoughts.

“I…,” Leila began. How to explain to someone like Shivani, who had already applied early to Fashion Institute of Technology, about her dream of staying in Ayers and starting a family? How she needed Foster for that? It didn’t matter how Leila felt if the end goal was so clear.

“I know,” Leila murmured, trying not to draw the attention of their free-period teacher, Mr. Lasseter. “Things have just been… weird lately.”

Shivani nodded. “I can tell. You seem even quieter than usual. Who’s gonna back me up at lunch when Shepherd starts spouting off nonsense?”

Leila’s serious face cracked a tiny bit, the smile peeking through. “He still thinks corn is a fruit.”

“It’s a grain! God, if he mentions one more conspiracy theory about the barn fire I’m gonna throw a corndog at him.”

What little smile Leila had begun to show clamped shut. Barn fire. She shivered, something in her body recoiling at the memory of that night. “You can hang at my house if you need space when Nandani is here,” she said quietly.

“Thanks,” Shivani said. “Do you think your dad will make that crunchy rice thing for me?”

Leila frowned. “You mean tahdig?”

“Yeah!” Shivani shouted.

“Shhh,” Mr. Lasseter called from the front of the room.

“Oops,” Shivani whispered. “Yeah, that. I want to eat that. But not just as a side dish. For like, the whole meal.”

Leila tried not to laugh. Shivani was one of the few friends Leila brought home to eat their family’s more “interesting” food. Then again, crunchy carbs covered in fat was delicious no matter what the culture.

“I’ll ask, but no promises,” Leila said.

“Thank youuuuu,” Shivani sang, already perking up. The bell rang. “All right, time to prepare for two weeks with my overachieving sister,” Shivani said grimly.

“Tahdig,” Leila reminded her. “Crunchy rice. My place. Whenever you want.”

Shivani gave her a hug. “Thanks, bestie.”

“See you soon.”

The two parted ways for the rest of the school day. When the final bell rang, Leila met Foster at his parking spot, the one reserved for his prized Jeep Wrangler. She exhaled, cueing up the daydream that always calmed her whenever she was having a rough day: her and Foster raising their cute kids in Ayers, the two of them getting a fixer-upper on the other side of town, Leila with her kitchen garden and Foster, wedding band on his finger, gripping a plump child. Her heartbeat went back to normal; the cold air began to soothe instead of sting.

Foster would get a job at his dad’s construction company, and she’d stay home and raise the kids, pickle vegetables, and mend whatever was in the basket they’d put next to the fireplace for shirts with holes in them. It was a fantasy to Leila, a secret, shiny thing that kept her steady. There was no way she’d voice this desire out loud, no way she’d admit to her friends that her dream was to become a mom and a wife.

She could already smell the sweet, milky scent of a baby’s head. She smiled at Foster and could see how his blue eyes would play out in their first kid. Surely, that had to be love.

“Hi.” She smiled, stepping up and over onto the passenger side.

“Hi, babe,” Foster said, grabbing her hand over the gear shift, planting a warm, familiar kiss on her temple. “I was thinking we could go to The Grove today.”

Leila’s hands went clammy. The Grove. The Grove was an empty clearing on her side of town where a lot of teens in Ayers went to “neck,” as they jokingly called it. Leila didn’t mind doing that stuff with Foster, but she didn’t exactly enjoy it, either.

But that’s how babies are made, Leila, she reminded herself. One day you’ll go off birth control and that’ll be how you start a family.

She couldn’t help her lack of enthusiasm, though. For Leila, sex with Foster was like looking at rice in the pantry. She had no feelings about it, good or bad. As if reading her hesitation, Foster quickly added, “I just wanted to give you your birthday present there.”

Leila nodded tightly. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

Foster smiled and they sped off, the weak winter sun making it feel like evening despite it being barely four o’clock. They arrived at The Grove ten minutes later, their conver­sation consisting mostly of Foster talking about their friends at school, what sports everyone was doing in the off-season, and how he couldn’t wait to play football for Ayers College. In short: all the things they usually talked about.

Leila rested her head against the cool glass window, glad that she had this familiar drive to clear her thoughts after the disturbing fire-related news from lunch. Her head swam, wondering what had been real last night and what had to have been a hallucination. The weight of the demon on her chest had felt so real. Then again, every vivid dream did.

Too soon, Foster put his Jeep in park by the old ring of oak and hickory trees. The sun was setting thanks to mid­winter, and they were the only ones parked there. Her house was a half mile away, through the thicker part of the creek bed that marked the border of their property.

“Happy birthday, Leila,” Foster said, holding out a small box. Leila flinched. It looked like the jewelry box her parents had gotten her, the one with the iron ring.

She opened it tentatively.

This was a ring as well, but it was an Irish promise ring, the kind with a heart nestled into a woven metal band. She’d seen other girls at school wear them, the heart pointed a certain way to denote a promise kept or a girl waiting to promise someone else. Instinctively, she knew this ring was more acceptable than the thick iron band she’d been gifted yesterday. She slipped it on her finger.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

Foster smiled. “Glad you like it, babe.” Then, he went in for the kiss.

Leila knew a gesture like this would lead to a long, drawn-out make-out session ending with Leila murmuring, “No, not now,” and Foster sighing, saying something like, “But I just love you so much.”

They’d done it before, but the thought of doing it in his cramped back seat was too uncomfortable to bear today. This time though, Foster was the one to pull away first.

“So, I was hoping you could show me that barn. Now that we’re nearby.”

Leila froze. “What?”

“You know,” Foster said, walking his fingers innocently up her arm in what he probably thought was a cute gesture. “Since you live so close to it, and all. I just wanted to check it out. See what happened.”

Leila bit her lip. There weren’t any firefighters left, but there still was caution tape saying DO NOT ENTER. What would the Elmhursts think, with someone prowling their property?

“Pleeeeeeease?” Foster wheedled. “I wanna see this face, or whatever. See if it was at this fire too.”

This face. The face that had haunted her dreams last night. The face that had sneered at her in her bedroom. Leila cringed at the thought of going back to the barn, conflating last night’s fire with the demon from her dreams.

“How about we go to my house, and you walk from there? I have to talk to my dad, anyway,” she said, hoping Foster would believe her lie. Her parents weren’t going to be back until dinnertime, but he didn’t have to know that. She just didn’t want to see that barn again, and her body felt clammy at the thought of being near that burnt-out shell, her body paralyzed, her eyes barely able to move, her limbs like lead — 

“Yesss, I knew I could count on you, babe!” Foster said, squeezing her arm.

He turned the ignition and launched the Jeep through the old logging road that cut into Leila’s family’s back field. He parked in her driveway and hopped out, running to open Leila’s door like he always did, no matter where they were, or how long she’d gotten used to driving with him. Can’t it be okay to want this? she wondered.

“You go on ahead,” Leila said, unable to even look at the next field over. “Just meet me back here when you’re done.”

Foster smiled at her and kissed her forehead, and Leila watched him stride through the dirt to the other side of the dim expanse. He was so sure of himself, so determined. Would she ever feel that way about herself?

She turned to go back to the house but caught a glimpse of the barn by accident. In the waning light, it looked even more menacing. She inhaled and walked inside, scrubbing the dream from her mind, once and for all.

And then she heard a scream.