The streets are practically empty, but I imagine I hear footsteps thudding behind me. Chasing me. I push myself faster, dragging my injured leg down narrow lanes and dark alleyways, over cool cobblestones.
The sun has only just begun to peek over the tops of crumbling buildings, casting everything around me in gold and shadow. A few stray partygoers stagger home from the festival. Some laugh and sway on too-high heels, voices sharp as broken glass. The rest gaze vaguely ahead, too wrecked to notice anyone outside of themselves.
Their presence calms me. I slow to a fast walk and check over my shoulder, looking for Francesca’s green-tinged hair in the shadows. But she hasn’t caught up to me. Yet.
I keep expecting someone to stop me, ask me what happened. But I blend in. Just another wasted party girl coming back from the festival, covered in corn-syrup blood. No one gives me a second glance.
I release a dry sob when I finally reach the door to Mara and Harper’s apartment. My entire body sags, collapsing against it. I’ve never been so relieved to see anything in my life.
I manage to gather enough energy to lift my arm and bang my fist against the wood. “Harper!” My voice is scratchy. Raw. “Harper, are you there? Please!”
There’s a creak of floorboards behind me. I whirl around, heart pounding in my ears. But the stairwell stays empty.
I bang harder, using both fists now, fingers twitching. What if they aren’t here? They freaked the last time I disappeared. What if they’re out looking for me now?
My heart skips—
And then the door creaks open and Harper is standing in front of me, still wearing her devil’s horns and teddy. Blinking.
“Berkley?” She pulls the door open wider, and I stumble inside, anxiously checking over my shoulder one last time. No Francesca.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Harper’s head jerk up and down, taking in my ripped underwear, the mud, the blood. A shocked giggle bursts from her mouth.
“Looks like you had quite a night.” Scandalized shake of her head and then, as though it’s just occurring to her, “Bad girl. We were so worried. We looked everywhere for you.”
Her voice is lilting, singsong. She’s drunk. She spins in place, falling backward over the arm of the couch and landing on the cushions with another snort of giggles.
For a moment, I just stare at her. She stayed at the party. She and Mara took shots and grinded on strangers while I was stabbed and drowned and burned. They held hands and danced to Italian techno while I ran for my life, Giovanni’s screams still echoing in my ears.
I should be angry. Furious. But the feeling that rises inside of me is something else:
Jealousy.
All I wanted was a normal summer. Not even a whole summer—a normal two weeks. Some girls get everything. Why couldn’t I have this?
A tear hits my cheek, and I wipe it away, angry. There’s no time to feel sorry for myself.
“Harper.” I grab for her shoulder, but she squirms beneath my fingers, making a face.
“Fucking ow, Berk, that hurts!”
“You have to listen to me—”
A bleary Mara walks into the room, rubbing her eyes with a fist. She’s already changed into an oversized NYU T-shirt, and the ragged hem hangs past her knees.
She’s moaning, “Harper, I thought I told you—” And then her eyes land on me and widen. “Jesus! Where the hell have you been? We looked, like, everywhere on earth for you! You could have told us that you were going to run off with—”
She bites back the rest of that sentence, eyes flicking over the deep gash on my leg, the cuts hatched across my cheeks. Her expression twists. “Is that real blood?”
Harper blinks at us from the couch, her mouth going slack. She slurs, “How could that be real?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I say in a rush. “We have to pack and . . . and someone should check flight times and . . .” I know I’m not making sense, but my breath is running wild, my heart vibrating in my ears. Everything inside of me is screaming hurry.
Run. Move. Get out.
I feel another jolt of disappointment for my lost summer in Italy, but there’s no time for that now. I start moving toward the hall that leads to my room. “I need five minutes. You guys call a taxi.”
Harper and Mara share a look they think I’m too stupid or too panicked to see.
“Are you guys even listening?” Cool anger surges through me, making my fingers twitch. They had all summer here. What do they have to be pissed about? “We have to go.”
“We don’t understand, sweetie.” Mara doesn’t seem to know what to do with her face. She juts her chin out at a stubborn angle, mouth twitching in a strange half smile. “Why do we need to go? Who hurt you?”
She speaks in a little-kid voice that makes me want to slap her.
I force myself to breathe. “Something happened at the party last night.”
Harper sits up too suddenly, knocking a pillow to the floor with her knee. I can see her mind working against the booze still dulling her edges. “Wait, did that Giovanni guy do this to you?”
“I’m calling the police,” Mara says, ever practical. She already has her cell out, fingers tapping at the screen.
“No!” I grab it from her, but my hands are shaking and it slams to the floor, a crack spiderwebbing across its screen.
Mara scowls. “Damn it, Berk!”
“Giovanni didn’t do anything.” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. That jealous feeling is coiling tighter, wrapping itself around my lungs. All I wanted was to be normal.
“Look,” I try again, “there isn’t time to explain right now. We have to get out of here, okay? Can you please just trust me on this?”
“You said that already.” Mara crosses her arms over her chest, her voice gone cold. “Berkley, you’re not making sense.”
“I would make sense if only . . .” A sob bubbles up my throat. Normal, I’m still thinking, desperate. I just wanted normal. Not epic. Not amazing, just normal.
How the fuck did it go so wrong?
Gasping, I try again. “I’m trying to make sense. I just need you to trust me . . .”
“Calm down, it’s okay.” Harper is suddenly in front of me. She runs the backs of her fingers along my arm, like she’s calming a spooked dog. “Look, it’s, like, five o’clock in the morning. There’s no way there are any flights right now. Why don’t you go take a shower and get changed and we’ll sit down with some tea and talk this all over, okay? It’ll give you a little time to sort things out in your head.”
Sort things out in your head.
I feel a jolt slam through me. That means I don’t trust you, clear as if she’d actually spoken the words out loud. It means we think you imagined everything.
It means you’re still crazy, bitch.
Of course they would think that. I spent all night getting tortured, but of course they would assume I imagined it all. They have no idea what things have been like for me, not just for the past few days, but for the past year—for my whole life.
Life isn’t fair. Nothing is fair.
I back the rest of the way down the hall, feeling for the door to my room behind my back. Harper’s face closes off. She matches Mara’s folded arms.
“You need help, Berkley,” she says in a different tone of voice, the last of her drunkenness softening the edges of her words. “We both think so.”
I release a hiss of breath through my teeth, like I’ve been hit. “I need to go home.”
A wry laugh from Mara. “Yeah, I think we can all agree on that.”
“Then help me!”
Harper says, “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
“You aren’t telling us what’s going on,” Mara adds.
“No, help me go. We should be packing. We should be—” Banging shudders through the apartment, cutting me off. I flinch and jerk my head around to stare at the door. My nerves flare. Someone’s at the door.
Francesca.