Author/Uploaded by Sarah Lyu
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Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UPAlready a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. For Gene, who showed up every day and stayed until the end of visiting hours PART I 1.I’d give anything to be the girl people see when they look at me: Chase Ohara, student council president, captain of the best cross-country team in the state, and clear favorite of her teachers. Expected valedictorian, voted most likely to succeed. A future with her last name etched in gold atop skyscrapers, multimillion-dollar bonuses, Congress or the Supreme Court perhaps. Or insider trading scandals if she goes astray.They look at me like I have this—this power. Like I’m in control.What they don’t know: It’s 2 AM on the fifth night in a row that I haven’t been able to sleep and the world feels like it’s spinning away from me. I get up from bed and the ground sways.I think about that Chase, the one people think they know. I used to feel like her, or more like her. Like I could do anything, be anything. Like life was laid out for the taking and all I had to do was reach.Now I reach for the Altoids tin in my bag, shake it. I’m low, but not desperately so. I pop it open and drop a small pink pill onto my tongue, swallow it dry.At my desk I wait for it to take effect, hoping for the rush, that small burst of electricity. For it to lend me its strength as I stare past my laptop screen to the printout pinned to my wall. “It’s not the end of the world,” my mom had told me when she found out, but she didn’t know what she was talking about. “We won’t tell your dad.”I told him myself on our next weekend together. Dad remained silent, but his expression said it all, and in that instant, I 2.A call comes later that night after I finish two essays, a Calc problem set, and a Physics lab report before finally dozing off at my desk, and I lift my head to see Jo Vestiano’s name lighting up my screen with a picture of the three of us—me, Lia, and Jo, Lia’s mom—all grinning, a snapshot from better days. “Listen, I’m sorry to call so late.” It’s almost four in the morning. “Have you heard from Lia?”“No,” I say, suddenly wide awake. “Why?”“She’s missing,” she says, her voice cracking.“What do you mean?” My breath catches.“It’s been almost three days. We don’t know where she is. She’s not answering her phone—she’s just, she’s gone.” Jo’s crying now, sniffing and trying to hide it. “I know the two of you…” She doesn’t finish, leaves our breakup unsaid. I think of Hunter and wonder when she found out, if Jo called her right away. If she knows where Lia is. Almost three days. I have to be one of the last people to know. I try to remember if I saw her Thursday or Friday at school, but I come up empty.Before Lia and I were together, we were best friends, a friendship that stretched back to the age of six, when my parents moved into the house across the street from hers. Back in May when she ended things, she set all that history on fire. It’s been six months of being left out in the cold, watching my life through frosted windows.“Has anyone been out to Montauk?” I ask finally.“What?” she says. “Yes. We checked the boat. She’s not there.”“Oh.”“Did she say something? About Montauk?”“No,” I say, shaking my head even though Jo can’t see me.