For a quick second, she actually felt guilty, as if she was cheating on Jake. Then, of course, she felt like an idiot. A delusional idiot.

She wrote back: I’d like to see one try.

Then she dialed April’s number.

April picked up on the first ring and was talking before Gemma could even say hello.

“Thank God, finally, I’ve been calling you for, like, five hours. I thought you said your parents caved, but your mom is freaking out, she said you basically ran away, I mean, seriously, I’m talking about National Guard, Armageddon-level freak-out, if screaming were a superpower, she’d seriously be eligible for her own franchise—”

“Did you tell her I was with you?” Gemma asked quickly. The idea of her mother screaming—or even raising her voice—was both difficult to imagine and also terrifying. Her dad was the screamer. Her mom was the apologizer, the mediator, the smoother-over. The nothing-a-glass-of-wine-and-a-Klonopin-can’t-fix kind of person.

April snorted. “Do you think I’m a complete amoeba? Of course I did. Except I started running out of reasons you wouldn’t come to the phone. First I said you were napping, then that you’d gone out for a swim, then that you were in town getting coffee, and then I had to stop picking up the phone. I’m talking serious harassment here, she’s probably called, like, twenty times—”

“I’ll call her, okay? I’ll call her right now,” Gemma said, and April let out a big whoosh of air.

“Please,” she said. “Before your mom calls in a SWAT team. My grandpa will kill me if they trample his geraniums.” And then, in a different voice: “Where are you? Are you okay? How did you even get down here?”

“I’m in Barrel Key, not far away,” Gemma said, avoiding April’s last question, tracing one of the fish patterned on her coverlet with a finger. All the fish were identical, and all of them had the same anatomical error, an extra fin on the back that gave them a vaguely prehistoric look.

“But what are you doing there? I thought you were coming to stay with me.”

“I am. Tomorrow. And then I’ll tell you everything. I promise,” Gemma said, before April could protest. She’d already lied so much in the past twenty-four hours. She couldn’t stand lying to April, too. But what could she say to explain? Oh, no big deal, someone threw a Frankenstein mask through our window and then a random psycho tried to nab me from a gas station and I think it’s because my dad’s old company is kidnapping children and testing chemicals on them and he might have known about it all this time. “Just trust me, okay?”

April sighed. “Swear you’re not holed up in some seedy motel meeting a stranger named Danger66 who claims to be a French exchange student looking for an English tutor.”

Gemma looked around the room, and decided it definitely counted as a seedy motel. “I promise I’m not meeting a stranger named Danger66,” she said. “I promise I’m not meeting any stranger.” Jake Witz blinked momentarily in her mind. But he didn’t count. She’d sought him out, not the other way around. Besides, she couldn’t believe that someone who looked like Jake Witz could be dangerous. She’d been fed a steady diet of Disney growing up. The evil ones were always ugly. By the same logic, she knew that she was destined to be the charming dumpy sidekick for life: only skinny girls got to be leads.

Her next phone call went far less smoothly. April was right. Her mom was in full-on panic mode. Gemma had never heard her mother so upset, except for one time when she was a little kid and decided to smash up her mom’s favorite necklace with a hammer to see whether diamonds were really the hardest substance on earth.

“I don’t believe you. I really don’t believe you. I would never have expected it, never in a million years—after we specifically told you—”

“Mom, calm down.” Gemma was annoyed not by the injustice of her parents’ rules but by the fact that her mom had automatically assumed she would always obey. Just like she’d obeyed as a kid, shivering in those hospital beds, swallowing pills when she was told to swallow them, waking up with new scars, new evidence of damage. “It’s not a big deal, okay?”

“Not a big deal? Not a big deal?” Kristina seemed to be gasping the words. “How can you even say that? Do you know how worried I’ve been? How worried your father’s been?”

“Yeah. I’m sure he’s been crying into his PowerPoint.” The words were out of Gemma’s mouth as soon as she thought them.

Kristina drew in a sharp breath. Then she said, in a quiet voice, “For your information, your father is on his way back from Shanghai right now. As soon as he lands, we’re getting on a plane and coming straight down to get you—”

“Mom, no.” Gemma was surprised that in an instant, all her anger was gone, and instead she was suddenly on the verge of tears. She took a deep breath. “Please,” she said, because she knew that fighting or yelling wouldn’t help. “I’m not in trouble. I’m safe. I’m with April.” She no longer felt guilty about lying. If Jake was right about what they were doing at Haven, her father must have known about it, and had spent his whole life lying—her mother, too. It was like she’d heard him say: he’d done nothing. “Please let me have this, just this once. Let me be normal.”

Kristina sighed, and Gemma knew she’d said the right thing. She imagined her mother cradling the phone against one shoulder, unscrewing the cap of one of her pill bottles and shaking one into her palm, starting to calm down.