“Parker. No one calls him John.” Even saying his name brings a familiar pain to my chest. I wonder if, even now, he’s forgetting me, forgetting us—the girl who died, the girl who went crazy—sifting us down through layers of new memories, new girls, new kisses, like sediment slowly compressed at the bottom of a riverbed. “He’s in New York.”

“No, he isn’t.” She’s stacking items from the refrigerator on the floor now: carrots, soy milk, tofu, vegan cheese. “I saw his mom at the grocery store this morning. Nice woman. Very calm energy—cerulean, really. Anyway, she told me he was home. Where is that ginger? I’m sure I bought some. . . .”

For a second, I’m too stunned by the news to speak. “He’s home?” I repeat dumbly. “What do you mean?”

She shoots me a quick, knowing look over her shoulder before returning to her search. “I don’t know. I assumed he came back for the weekend. Maybe he was homesick.”

Homesick. The ache in my chest, the space hollowed out by Dara and deepened, refined, when Parker left, is a kind of homesickness. And I realize: Parker was once home to me. A year ago, he would never have come home without telling me. Then again, a year ago he didn’t know I was crazy. I hadn’t gone crazy yet.

“There they are. Hiding behind the orange juice.” Aunt Jackie straightens up, brandishing a knob of ginger. “How about a smoothie?”

“Maybe in a little while.” My throat is so tight, I couldn’t choke down a sip of water. Parker is less than five minutes from me—two minutes, if I were to cut through the woods instead of going the long way—and yet as far away as he’s ever been.

We kissed this summer. He kissed me. But my memories from that time are distorted, like stills pulled from an ancient movie. I feel as if it all happened to someone else.

Aunt Jackie squints. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” I say, forcing a smile. “Just a little tired. I might go lie down for a while.”

She looks as if she doesn’t quite believe me. Luckily, she doesn’t press. “I’ll be here,” she says.

Upstairs, I head to Dara’s room—or what was once Dara’s room, and now will become a guest room, clean and impersonal and inoffensively decorated, with framed pictures of Monet prints hanging on walls painted Eggshell #12. Already, it looks much bigger than it ever did, both because it has been cleared of all of Dara’s things and also because Dara herself was so big, so alive and undeniable. Everything shrank around her.

And yet in only a few hours we’ve managed to erase her almost entirely. All of her things—bought, received, painstakingly selected; her tastes and preferences; all the random stuff accumulated over years—all of it sorted, trashed, or packed up in less than a day. How easily we get erased.

The air smells a little like burned sage. I tug the open window even farther and suck a deep breath of the clean air, the smell of summer turning slowly into fall—growth turning to mulch, the greens and blues faded by sun into amber tones.

As I stand there, listening to the wind sing through the withered leaves of the rosebushes, I notice a splash of vivid color in the lower branches of the oak tree, as though a child’s red balloon has become entangled there.

Red. My heart skips up to my throat. Not a balloon—a piece of fabric, knotted around a branch.

A flag.

At first I think I must be mistaken. It’s a coincidence, or a visual trick, some piece of trash inadvertently blown into the branches. Still, I find myself running downstairs, ignoring my aunt, who calls out, “I thought you were taking a nap,” and bursting out the front door. I’m halfway to the oak tree before I realize I didn’t even stop to put on shoes; the ground is cold and wet beneath my socks. When I reach the oak tree and see the FanLand T-shirt swaying, pendulum-like, on the breeze, I laugh out loud. The sound surprises me. I realize it’s been a long time—maybe weeks—since I laughed.

Aunt Jackie’s right. Parker’s home.

He opens the front door even before I can knock, and even though it has been only two months since I’ve seen him, I hang back, suddenly shy. He looks somehow different, even though he’s wearing one of his usual nerdy T-shirts (Make Love Not Horcruxes) and the soft jeans still traced with ink from where he got bored in calc senior year and started doodling. “You cheated,” is the first thing he says.

“I’m a little too old to fit through the fence,” I say.

“Understandable. I’m pretty sure the fort has been commandeered by old patio furniture, anyway. The chairs launched a pretty major offensive.”

There’s a beat of silence. Parker steps out onto the porch and closes the door behind him, but there are still several feet between us and I can feel every inch. I tuck my hair behind my ears, feeling, for just one second, the pattern of imagined scars beneath my fingers, the way it felt to be her.

Guilt, Dr. Lichme told me matter-of-factly. On some level you believe you were permanently damaged by the accident. Guilt is a powerful emotion. It can make you see things that aren’t there.

“So you’re home,” I say stupidly, after the silence stretches on a second too long.

“Just for the weekend.” He takes a seat on the old porch swing, which creaks under his weight. After a moment’s hesitation, he pats the cushion next to him. “It’s my stepdad’s birthday. Besides, Wilcox called and begged for my help shutting down for the season. He even offered to fly me back himself.”