Sawyer shuddered and pulled her curtains closed. She slipped slowly back into bed, pulling the covers to her chin, her eyes wide, focused on the ceiling. She willed them to shut but then her mind kept spinning. She rolled over onto her side. Her eyes—suddenly very used to the darkness—flicked over her nightstand, the stack of books lying there, and settled on the prescription bottle shoved behind this week’s US magazine. Sawyer sighed and rolled over, clamping her eyes shut.

And then she rolled back.

“No, I hate that stuff,” she muttered. “It makes me feel freaking crazy.” She flopped back hard against her pillow and pulled another one over her face.

As her parents leveled their “news”—divorce, split homes, a move for Dad to the outer regions of housing tract hell, the “chance of a lifetime” for Mom that moved her across country, they doted on Sawyer and looked at her with troubled expressions. And when a new car and promises of a “good, new start” didn’t make her smile—or sleep at night—it was Dr. Johnson, one hour a week of “and how does that make you feel?” and finally, the Trazadone.

After tossing and turning for another twenty minutes, Sawyer was in the bathroom, filling up a glass of cold water and popping a dose of the medication.

“Just so I can get some sleep,” she mumbled to her sallow, sunken-eyed reflection. Then she crawled into bed and fell into a restless, heavy slumber.

THREE

Chloe fell into step with Sawyer as they walked down the junior hall the following morning. “So I didn’t hear from you last night.”

Sawyer worked the straps on her backpack, her eyes on her shoes. “Sorry. I got busy.”

“Were your dad and Tara howling at the moon or something equally metaphysically odd?”

Sawyer thought about the lone shoe, about Detective Biggs perched on the edge of her couch. “Did a detective come to your house?”

Chloe stopped cold, spinning to face Sawyer. “Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“A detective? No. Never. But the DEA came out to bust my neighbor’s pharmaceutical business once.” She wagged her head. “Leave it to the Feds. Always trying to take down the small businessman. Hey.” She reached out and pinched Sawyer hard on the arm.

“Hey! Ow!”

“You’re zoning out on me.”

“I know, DEA.”

“It was funny. You didn’t laugh.”

Sawyer forced a smile as big as she could muster. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“So unload.” The final bell rang and Chloe shrugged, her hand on the door to her English class. “Later.”

* * *

It was dark by the time Sawyer made the turnoff to Blackwood Hills Estates. The days were getting shorter, and though Sawyer usually liked the crisp, cozy days of fall, the impending darkness now felt like sheets of doom across the empty housing development. Her father kept promising that the streetlights that now reached out like cold, stiff hands toward the sky would be lit soon. Soon, Sawyer figured, probably meant when another family moved into the housing tract.

Now Sawyer’s headlights made only dim slits in the blackness, obscured even more by the bales of fog rolling over the brand new blacktop. That was the thing about living in a town that billed itself as “oceanside adjacent.” No real ocean views but all the ocean fog and the occasional brackish scent of filthy bay water.

Sawyer zipped through the blackened streets, sighing as she passed empty house after empty house. The Dodd house was the first to be populated, though it sat at the very back of the housing tract. It rested on a gentle slope, and once the rest of the neighborhood was full, the house would have an excellent view of twinkling lights before the miles of cypress trees beyond. The brochures called Blackwood Hills a “forested oasis.” Sawyer called it an annoyingly long distance from civilization and creepy in the dark.

The porch light glimmered at the front door of the Dodd house, and Sawyer picked her way through rocky dirt and a maze of landscape flags and spray-painted future walkways. She sunk her key into the lock, kicked open the front door, and dropped her backpack on the marble foyer floor.

“I’m home.” Her voice echoed in the empty house, ricocheting off the sixteen-foot ceilings and through the new drywall. “Dad? Tara?” Sawyer expected a massive spray of pink or blue balloons or—God forbid—one of each, but there was nothing save for the boxed remains of her old life butting up against her parents’ wedding gifts and cheery stuff for the baby. She toed a floppy giraffe and stepped over the boxes, flipping on the lights in the kitchen.

“Hello?”

Sawyer sucked in a sharp breath, hearing the racing double-thump of her heart when she saw the note on the kitchen table, propped up against a bottle of sparkling cider. She clawed at her chest and laughed a weird, maniacal giggle when she recognized her father’s precise writing on the note.

“It’s a girl!” she read out loud. “Just think of all the things you can teach your new baby sister. Tara and I have gone out to celebrate. There’s pizza in the freezer. Love, your always proud, Papa. Papa?” Sawyer snorted, flicked the note, and eyed the cider.

“Brilliant.” Sawyer flicked on her cell phone and walked to each corner of the professional-grade kitchen, eyes glued to her cell screen. She balanced on one foot near the bay window and then hopped up on the granite countertop, looking for a cell-phone signal. She let out something halfway between a groan and a growl and snatched the landline phone from the wall.

“What kind of place doesn’t have cell service?” Chloe said the second Sawyer picked up.

“Hell, Calcutta, and Blackwood Hills Estates. Scratch that. I think Calcutta’s gone fiber-optic now.”

“So, convo—wait, what did you call it?”

“Convocation.” Sawyer smiled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one?”

“No, I’m the scrappy bootstrap one who will win a scholarship for her writing prowess, making everyone in the trailer park titter.”

Sawyer jutted out one hip. “Titter?”

“It’s a TP thing. You tract home chicks wouldn’t understand. So, are we hanging out or not?”

Sawyer’s lower lip pushed out. “Doubtful. I’ve got sparkling apple cider and an apparent baby sister.”

“Cider?” Chloe sputtered into the phone.

“And a baby sister on the way.”

“And they expect you to toast the mutant spawn with sparkling cider?”

“I don’t think she’ll be a mutant. Tara’s gorgeous.” Sawyer looked around the eco-green kitchen. “And so very environmentally correct.”

“Whatever,” Chloe said, rattling cellophane on her end of the phone. “You know what goes well with sparkling cider?”

“What’s that?” Sawyer asked, pouring herself a mammoth bowl of cereal and rearranging herself on the glazed granite countertop.

“Beer.”

Sawyer wrinkled her nose, crunching her cereal. “That sounds gross.”

“You want me to head over? If I leave now I can be there by next Tuesday.”

Sawyer frowned. “No, thanks. I’m not feeling company-worthy right now. Can we convocate next week?”

“Wow, convocate?”

“I think I just made it up. Anyway, I think I’m just going to eat my celebratory pizza chaser after my cereal, take a bath, and resign myself to failing Spanish.”

“Que bueno. Have a great night in the graveyard of American dreams.”

“Try not to let your Airstream rust.”

Sawyer set her bowl in the sink and changed into her pajama pants, turning on every light in the house as she went. Though a new build, the Dodd house still settled and creaked in ways that made the hair on the back of Sawyer’s neck stand up. She turned on the television and cranked the volume, letting the canned laughter and faux family’s voices fill her empty house.

* * *

The rest of the week passed uneventfully with no new notes and Sawyer burying herself under a mountain of college applications and midterm prep. So when the door of her Spanish class opened the following Friday afternoon, Sawyer was knee-deep in Spanish verb conjugation hell and didn’t look up.

“Flower-grams!”

Sawyer’s heart ached, remembering last year’s onslaught of fundraising carnations. She and Kevin had just started dating and he had showered her—a dozen per class—in pink and white beribboned flowers, each bearing a special message: I love you, You’re beautiful. Those flowers were pressed in a cardboard box marked “Sawyer’s Room” now, right next to the note she thought was her favorite—a fuzzy bunny rabbit drawn on binder paper with the words I’ll never hurt you printed across it. Sawyer swallowed back a lump, hid her moist eyes behind her book.

Maggie was the head of the flower fundraising forum, and she marched into the classroom now, beaming in a waft of carnation-scented air, her minions flanking her, arms laden with blooms.

“Mr. Hanson, members of the junior class. As you know, our flower-gram program not only raises school and personal spirit—”

“I think I feel my lunch being raised,” someone muttered.

Maggie shot daggers. “As I was saying, these flower-grams raise spirit and cash for our junior prom. So, if you’re one of the few who don’t receive a flower today, there are still three more days to get yours.” Maggie donned a dazzling, pageant-worthy grin and narrowed her eyes at Sawyer. “Or consider sending one to yourself. No one but you and I will know, and it’s for a good cause.”

Sawyer rolled her eyes and went back to the verb to play.

“Now, without further ado, your flower-grams.”