Maybe that’s why I’m not mad at Rachel. Because Rachel can’t help but make it known when she’s trying to hurt you, just like she makes it known when she cares about you. The look on her face, in that horrible moment at Matt’s house, told me she was horrified that I had walked in, upset that I had seen them together, distressed that she’d been caught with Matt Kincaid. She hadn’t meant to hurt me, but that almost hurt worse. Rachel, it seemed, still had the inclination to protect me. Matt did not.

“I don’t know what Rachel and I are anymore,” I tell Coco, “but we’re not enemies.”

Coco nods silently for a few seconds, then stands. “Anyway, I wanted you to know I’m on your side. About the whole Matt thing.”

“Thanks.” I manage a weak smile, and she turns to go. “Hey, Coco?”

“Yeah?”

I’m not sure how to say this without it getting back to Mom and her putting the pieces together, which I don’t feel ready for, but I want Coco to hear it. “Sometimes you change your mind about a person,” I tell her. “Or your feelings for them change, or they change, or, I don’t know, you just want to make a different decision. And that’s always okay. You don’t owe anyone anything. You know that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” she says.

“I mean, like with Matt. I wanted to date him, and then I didn’t want to anymore, and some people made me feel guilty for that. As if he just deserved whatever he wanted, and I was being selfish for not giving it to him.”

“Are you talking about sex?” she asks matter-of-factly.

“No,” I say. “Yes. Kind of. I’m talking about everything: dating, kissing, sex. All of it. You never owe another person something, no matter how nice they are to you. Relationships aren’t transactions.”

“Mom already covered all this,” she says, “in the grossest, most uncomfortable way you could imagine. I thought I was prepared for it, but you honestly can’t imagine how bad it was.”

“Oh, trust me,” I say. “I can. I got that talk immediately after my first date with Matt.”

Coco scrunches up her dainty eyebrows and crosses her arms. “I guess you get more of it than me and Jack, huh?”

“More of what?”

“That Mom-the-psychoanalyst crap.”

“I hate to break this to you, but I’m pretty sure I’m the origin of that particular alter ego.”

Coco glances over her shoulder at the door then lowers her voice. “You mean ’cause of Grandmother.”

Wow, right there, out in the open. It’s the first time Coco’s ever brought my alleged hallucinations up to me. “Yeah, her,” I say. “And just the whole adoption thing. Perhaps you’ve noticed our expansive library on that topic.”

Coco rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I think Mom just cares too much.”

“We’re lucky,” I reply, thinking about Megan’s obscenely rich but virtually absent parents, Rachel’s single mom who’s worked the night shift as long as I can remember, Matt’s dad screaming at him from the sidelines during football practice despite Coach’s pleas for him to leave.

“I know,” Coco relents, turning back toward the door. “But still. Like, give us some room once in a while. Maybe don’t try to tell me about sex while I’m eating a bagel.”

I laugh. “Hey,” I say, stopping her again. “Thanks again. For being on my side.”

“We’re sisters,” she says. “I know you’d be on mine.”

14

“You look horrible,” Alice greets me the following Tuesday.

“Thanks,” I say. “I wanted to fit in with your interior decorating scheme.”

“Have you been sleeping?”

“No,” I tell her. Having still not heard from Beau, I’ve had a particularly easy time occupying my mind with things other than sleep at night.

“Good girl,” she says.

I tell her about Mom’s feet disappearing in the bathroom, and a slew of littler things—flickers of changing colors, flashes of trees where they shouldn’t be and construction sites where there should be buildings. I also tell her about Brother Black and Brother Red, and how it was all I could think of after Matt acted like a completely different person at the movie theater, even going so far as to pretend he didn’t know me. Not to mention the terrifying feeling I have that maybe he actually had forgotten me. “I mean, could he have a split-personality disorder or something?”

Alice wobbles her head uncertainly. “Without more information, I couldn’t guess. But, like you said, it could be that Grandmother knows something about Matt, or about your future, events that are going to happen to you. Or the story could be a complete coincidence. We’re getting closer, though. I can feel it.”

Thursday brings my first hypnotherapy session. I’m both nervous and hopeful. I can’t help feeling that if there’s something dark hidden in my past, there’s probably a reason I’ve forgotten it. I guess that’s the point, though. Once I find and face this hidden memory, Alice expects there to be some sort of reaction—the exact kick in the proverbial pants that I need to get Grandmother back. I’ve been sleeping more and more during the day, staying awake all night, waiting for a flash of her face, her wrinkled hands, her gray shawl in the rocking chair, but I’ve had no luck.

When I step into Alice’s office that morning, the first thing I see is Dr. Wolfgang, a white-haired hypnotherapist who’s been living in the area for three decades but still has a German accent so thick he might as well be speaking without using his tongue. Alice seems to catch every syllable, but I have to use context clues as he prepares for the session. When Dr. Wolfgang says something that sounds like “Gerrfansittanonzecurch,” Alice’s eyes flick forcefully toward the leather sofa, and I take the combination to mean “Go sit on the couch.”

I shuffle a bunch of papers aside and plop down. Dr. Wolfgang drags a stool toward me and sits down, leaning over his own belly. His scratchy voice, speaking words I rarely catch, quickly lulls me toward something like sleep, but next thing I know, I’m coming to, feeling like someone just spritzed me with cold water. Alice looks annoyed, and Dr. Wolfgang looks bored.

“How’d I do?” I ask.