questions at its center. She took a photo of the blood splatter.
She was about to follow Gillian when she saw it, a red glitter out of the corner of her eye by the window, under the curtain.
“Let’s go,” said Gillian from the laundry room. “We’re going to get arrested—again.”
They couldn’t get arrested, not with Lily here. Greg would kill her.
She pulled back the curtain. There in the mesh of the carpet was a bright red crystal heart about the size of a quarter. The blood started rushing in her ears, the room tilting a little. No. It wasn’t possible.
“Rain!”
She grabbed it and shoved it in her pocket, chasing after Gillian.
“What were you looking at?” asked Gillian as they exited into the yard. “You’re white. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just thought—Nothing.”
“Hey.” Gillian stopped her, her bright blue eyes turning on Rain like interrogation lamps. “What’s going on?”
“I’m—not sure.”
The fine lines around Gillian’s eyes deepened, her brow furrowing with worry.
“Rain, what aren’t you telling me?”
But then another ping on her phone had Gillian pulling her toward the street. The sedan, which had been moving slowly up the street, sped up and disappeared from view.
“Sorry,” said Josh as they approached. “False alarm, I guess.”
“That’s okay,” said Gillian. “Not much to see after all.”
There were things that no one knew about her. Not Gillian, not Greg. Not even her father. In fact, there was only one person who knew her completely. That secret self, that stranger inside, hid the crystal heart in her palm, clenched her fist around it so tightly it started to hurt.
TEN
“Didn’t your mom teach you to be nice?”
“My mom told me not to talk to strange men in the woods,” she said.
She wasn’t scared yet. But Tess was; she took hold of Rain’s arm. But really, she was still Lara then, Laraine Winter. Laraine was a name her father made up, part Lawrence, part Lorraine, his parents. He’d insist always to people, continuously annoyed by their failure to do so, that it be pronounced LAH-raine. Not LOR-raine, which is how people always said it. He was annoyed when she started calling herself Lara.
It’s common, he’d sniff.
That’s the point, she said. I just want to be like everyone else.
The name wasn’t exotic or cool the way he imagined it. It was just—awkward. She hated it. But her father didn’t like to be edited.
Her mother spoke up. Let her call herself what she wants to, she said. Not everything is about you.
“Lara,” whispered Tess, pulling her close.
The dog blocked their path from the bridge. And as he stood there, panting, with a thin line of drool trailing from the curl of his lips, she felt the first lick of fear, a desire deep and primal to run for home.
“Call your dog off,” she said.
Tess was making a small sound. The three of them joked that Tess was Piglet, and Lara was Tigger. And Hank, of course, was Eeyore, sometimes Pooh. At another moment, she would have laughed about that sound Tess was making. Except it wasn’t funny.
“He won’t hurt you,” said the man.
He was disgusting. Big and slovenly, dressed all in black, with a bushy, unkempt beard and thick black-rimmed glasses. With effort, he’d pulled himself from his crouch. He was enormous, too, well over six feet tall.
“Call him back,” she said, this time making her voice deeper and louder, the way her mother had told her. Say no like you mean it, Mom had taught her. A certain kind of man doesn’t hear any other tone. “No” shouldn’t ask for permission to exist. There’s no question mark after it.
But the man just laughed. It was almost a giggle, childish. She and Tess had their arms looped together, and in unison they started stepping backward, eyes trained on that dog. As they put distance between them, it bared its teeth, growl growing deeper. Tess started to cry.
“Tess, don’t run,” she whispered. “Whatever you do. Don’t run.”
“Oh,” said Tess, a single note of pure fear. “Oh.”
“You better stop moving,” said the man. He lumbered his way up the bank. He would never be able to catch either one of them; she could see that. That’s why he had the dog. Tess had practically fused her body to Rain’s, and Rain gripped her tight. Her heart was a bird in the cage of her chest, throat sandpaper. Acutely she felt her own smallness, their isolation. She looked around for help. They were alone.
The black dog moved closer. Rain felt Tess pull away, start to unlace