I’m dizzy now and shaking, my eyes damp, but the pressure on my chest has lightened. I feel empty, like a flimsy outline. “I’m trying.”

“Listen to me.” Alice crosses the room and roughly takes my hand in hers. “I’m older than you and, no offense, way smarter. You’re not missing something. You’re not broken. Your grand identity will not be revealed to you like a bolt of lightning. It’s okay to be scared. Your big feelings are powerful. But it’s not okay to hide, especially when what you want more than anything is to be known. Don’t shut down. Stick this out. Woman up, tell your parents what you’re doing, and stay until we finish this.”

I drop my face into my hands. It’s hard to look at her right now. I feel transparent, horrifyingly naked and not in the comfortable way I do when I’m with Beau. It’s more like I’m in a room made of mirrors and stark light. “What if I can’t, Alice?” My voice comes out quivering, and I realize how afraid I really am. “What if I do everything I can and it’s still not enough, and I lose Matt or Beau or Dad or Jack? What then?”

I look up at Alice. Her face has softened; she almost looks like a different person. “I don’t know, kid,” she says. “But the only promise you ever get is this very second, and if you leave Union now, you may never see Grandmother again. You may never again see the parallel-universe-traversing boy who’s in love with you, and you may never again see whoever’s about to die. And even if you’re the one calling that shot, it’s going to hurt like hell.”

“My mom’s not going to go for it,” I tell Megan when she calls the next afternoon. I’ve just woken up after another long night at the studio and a break during which I drove Jack over to the football field in my pajamas before coming home and dropping back into bed. I’m in desperate need of a shower and sheet-washing, but I can find the energy for neither. “She’s not going to let me miss this trip. She lives for this trip. In her mind it’s a sacred family pilgrimage. The rest of the year is just filler.”

“Well, she’s got to come to terms with you doing your own thing eventually,” she says. “The Cleary family cannot always be one big, happy, five-limbed starfish that goes everywhere and does everything together. Case in point: College. Marriage. Jobs.”

“College, marriage, and jobs will come and go—in the end, only this trip will remain.”

“Trust me, your mom will drown in happy tears when she finds out you willingly went to see a counselor,” Megan insists. “Plus I’m coming home for a weekend before school starts, so if you stay, we’ll get to hang out. Please do it. When your mom gets home tonight, just ask. If for no other reason than we’ll have another weekend together. And you might save someone’s life. And Beau Wilkes.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I’m trying to think of something better, but that’s all I’ve got. Hey, by the way, have you heard anything new about Matt?”

“No,” I say, stomach tightening. “Joyce told me she’d call when the doctors decide when to wake him up, and every time I ask how he’s doing she replies with an idiom not even Google has heard of. Like, when the clouds part, the patient cow yields the best milk, keep praying.” We’re both silent then, and I busy myself with the familiar stray threads on my quilt. “Is Alice right? Have I been hiding instead of living?”

Megan sighs softly. “I don’t know, Nat. But if you were, who could blame you?”

My throat tightens, and I nod as if she can see me.

“Let’s talk about something happy. Tell me about Beau or something. How are you feeling about him?”

“I’m bad at talking about my feelings. Clearly. I just got thrown out of a therapist’s office.”

“I’m not asking as your counselor,” she says. “I’m asking as your best friend. That’s basically like talking to yourself. If I were there, I’d know from looking at you, because I do see your soul. But we’re apart, and now I’m reduced to the communication methods of the rest of the world, so you have to tell me. Feelings, et cetera. Short response. Go.”

“Um, warm?”

She laughs. “I’m sorry. That’s a good answer.”

“And nothing is funnier than a good answer about your feelings!”

“No, it’s really good. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just—of course you’d go straight for temperature.”

“Ugh, this is hard.” I know what I feel, but saying it aloud feels risky, as if I’m daring the world to come at me. Like talking about a nightmare or wearing all white to a barbecue. Once you say something, it’s just out there, where the Universe can use it against you. “God, I am a slow train wreck of inaction, or whatever she said. Alice is right.”

“You’re going to counseling, aren’t you?” Megan says. “You’re getting hypnotized and you’re staying up all night dancing and you’re fielding text messages from Matt’s parents and you’re trying to be there for Jack and I wouldn’t put it past you to send a decoy on vacation so your mom can have her perfect trip while you stay home and kill yourself trying to save someone’s life. Sure you’re scared and you have trouble opening up, but you’re not a slug, Natalie. And you’re putting yourself out there with Beau. That has to count for something.”

“Beau and I literally come from different worlds,” I say, frustrated. “So why am I putting myself through this? I mean, on the one hand I can’t even tell my best friend how I feel about him, and on the other, I can’t make myself stop going there with him.”

“Nat,” Megan says, the pounding of her feet against the treadmill slowing. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“He does make me feel warm,” I say. “And safe. He’s . . . even. I doubt I could ever shock him. And he knows about Grandmother and the two worlds, and that makes me feel understood. Like, less alone than I’ve ever been. Like we’re somehow two parts of the same thing.” That’s what I’ve been scared to say. That’s why I’m afraid to want him, and also why I can’t make myself stop. “I don’t know. He’s gentle. He’s so gentle that I feel like crying when I think about it, and I don’t really understand that but it’s the truth and I don’t want to lose him but I’m going to, and somehow, even with the guilt about Matt, it’s still worth it to me to spend every minute I can with him.”