| photo by Elia Pellegrini from Unsplash |

The landmarks around the entrance to my neighborhood are starting to look familiar. I'm pretty sure Noah should make a right turn after we pass the gas station with the green sign. His blinker confirms my suspicion and my eardrums throb along with the ticking. I close my eyes and concentrate on the warmth of his hand. His fingers are threaded through mine now. The pressure of his grip is constant, like he never wants to let me go—but I don't think our story is going to have a happy ending.

My weight shifts slightly forward, and then back against the seat when the car comes to a stop. I open my eyes and I'm confused for a moment. I guess I was expecting a dingy house with unhinged shutters. Beer bottles scattered on a weed-infested lawn. But no, this is not the stereotypical house of a drug dealer. It's immaculate. With crisp yellow paint and a large front porch that looks warm and inviting—despite the backdrop of menacing sky and waterlogged trees.

Noah releases my hand to unbuckle his seatbelt. He shifts sideways and his eyes brush past mine on their way to the back window. They stay there, fixed. Like all those multidirectional creases carved into his forehead. A muscle in his jaw goes tense and relaxes. It flexes again and holds for a moment and I catch myself clenching my teeth as I watch. I'm copying him. Clench. Release. Clench. Release.

Until Samantha's car pulls in, jerking to a stop a little too close to Noah's rear bumper. She gets right out—with her pink polka dot umbrella and a wide-eyed stare that says, "What the hell are you guys waiting for?"

"I don't want you here," I tell Noah. "But it's not because I want to hide anything from you. I just...it would be easier. For me. If I could keep it separate—the mistakes I made before the accident, and the way I feel about you now."

Noah closes his eyes, blocking me out completely this time as he twists back around to open his door. He gets out of the car and just stands there, getting pelted by angry raindrops, before he squats down, steadying himself with a hand braced on the cracked vinyl seat he just vacated. "I can't leave until I know you're safe," he says, his blues eyes dark. Like the unrelenting cloud over his head. "And after that..." He shakes his head. "I can't make any promises."

I unlatch my door, with trembling hands, and meet him at the front of his car. We follow Samantha's lead, splashing along the street curb, to a smooth concrete driveway. The front door opens as we herd up the porch steps. By a guy with unruly brown hair, green eyes—and a full freaking beard. His gaze jumps, narrow and nervous, taking the three of us in. But then he focuses on me. Drew the drug dealer gives me this alarmingly intimate welcome-back smile that makes my stomach turn. In the worst possible way.

I fist my hands and lock my arms against my sides, fighting an urge to punch that stupid grin off his fuzzy face. "What have you done to my sister?" I ask.

"Hey—whoa," he says, head jerking back. Then he waves us inside his house with an impatient swipe of his hand. "Your sister was rummaging around in my car. I only let her in here because she said you sent her. Then she started crying hysterically and I couldn't get her to leave."

Drew leads me through a short hallway, to a spacious kitchen that opens into an over decorated family room. Lindsay is curled up, looking small and pitiful on a love seat covered with aggressively floral fabric. "Are you okay?" I ask, squatting to get a better look at her eyes. Which are definitely red. "What are you on?"

"Nothing," she says, feeble and unconvincing. "Did you talk to Samantha?"

"Don't lie to me, Lindsay—not anymore. Did this guy give you drugs—weed or something stronger? Did he touch you?"

"What the hell?" Drew barks. "Christ, Ally, I think you know me better than that."

"No, I don't," I say, standing—shoulders squared, accusing finger pointed. "I don't want to know a grown man who gets off on getting little girls high."

"Shut up, Ally."

My sister has unfolded herself. And I can see now that she's written liar, in capital letters, on the tops of both knees. "You don't know what you're talking about," she says—sounding a little more like the angry girl who confronted me in the dressing room.

"And you don't know what you're doing—obviously. You can't come over here, dressed in your tight little shirt and your skimpy running shorts, hoping to impress this drug dealing...man. Do you have any idea what he might do if he manages to get you high enough?

"Isn't that what you did to me?" I ask, turning to Drew.

His green eyes are squinty, and his furry top lip is drawn into a sneer—but it's not anger. He's horrified by the words that are spewing from my mouth. Which means they're probably not true. "What did you do after I didn't show up that night?" I ask anyway—because I can't seem to stop myself. "Is that when you decided to take advantage of my little sister instead?"

"Shut. Up!"

Lindsay is standing. Her eyes are wide and wild, and her hands are fisted. "It was you, Ally. All you. You got those joints from Drew—and when I caught you smoking, you got me high so I wouldn't tell Mom and Dad. You're the idiot who started doing drugs to escape your problems. You're the one who needed help. You need it now, more than ever, because you live in a freaking fantasy world—and Mom is right there with you, trying to plug you back into a life that never existed."

"Hey, ease off," Samantha says, wrapping an arm around me. I shrug away from her—away from the added weight on my shoulders. The unbearable pressure of her arm touching my neck.

My temples are throbbing. And my scalp feels like it's stretched too tight over my skull.

Nausea hits me hard. The acid climbs my throat before I can think to ask for a bathroom. I gag and cough a slimy string of bile into my cupped palms.

"Should I turn off the lights?" Lindsay asks, her voice panicked. "Did she bring her purse inside?"

"I don't think so," Samantha says. Way too loud. "Dodge, get in here!

I fold myself down. To a rug that's obnoxiously patterned. The light in this room is subdued—thank God—but I have to close my eyes against the violent swirls of color under my knees.

"Are you getting a migraine?" Lindsay whispers. "Don't you have medicine in your purse?"

Yes and yes. But I don't want it.

There's a frantic shuffling of flip-flops. A creaking door hinge. And more whispering. Loud and urgent. I want to cover my ears but my hands are disgusting. I need a sink. Or...

Someone's knees pop as they squat in front of me. Gentle hands pry open my palms and swab them with a damp cloth. I catch the scent of strawberry and open my eyes, just enough to find the word liar, written in heavy black ink.

"I'm so sorry," Lindsay whispers. But it's not fair, because there's so much more that needs to be said. So many questions. And I swear, I'm not trying to escape this time.

I don't want to take my medicine.

I try to say it out loud—to release the pressure, relieve that burning sensation in my chest—but my sister shushes me. "We can't be here when Drew's dad gets home. He'll call Mom—and he'll kick Drew out of the house for good this time."

The air stirs as she moves away from me. I cross my arms against the chill, conscious of my damp shirt and the borrowed bra. Samantha's bra.

Drew's dad must have kicked him out the first time for selling drugs. So. The name Samantha mentioned in the text, the person she was worried I was going to end up like is her brother. She saw me walking down the street with Drew the day I lied about being sick.

And I had to know what kind of guy he was. I knew the trouble he caused for Samantha's brother—for her entire family—and I hung out with him anyway.

I hug myself tighter, rocking forward. But what I really want is to crawl underneath this hideous rug and disappear. Warm hands cup my elbows. Urging me to stand. I open my eyes because it's wrong: the size and strength of the grip, the musky smell. 

"Don't touch me," I say, pulling away from Drew—who looks less manly to me now. The skin behind that beard is pimpled. His jaws are round and boyish.

He backs off, wounded by my rebuke, and Samantha moves in to steady me. "Dodge's car is gone," she says. Quiet and remorseful. "But I have your purse. He left it on the porch."

My knees give a little. I clutch Samantha's arm to steady myself and she whispers, "I'm sorry, Ally."

But I'm not, I swear. Because I never wanted him here.

Except he was. I'm pretty sure he stepped into Drew's foyer. And then everything happened so fast—and I don't know when Noah left. Did he hear anything Lindsay said? Did he hear everything—and does he believe her?

Do I?

Tension pinches the muscles in my shoulders. Pain drills into my temples. "That joint," I say—because I need to know before the migraine shuts me down. Lindsay didn't think twice about lighting up in front of me because smoking weed was something we did together. Something I taught her. "The joint was mine. And the flask?"

"We can't do this now," Lindsay says, shooting a panicky glance at Drew. "Here. Go ahead and take your medicine." She's holding a pill in her open palm. Her other hand is fisted around a glistening glass of water I want desperately, because my mouth is so dry it hurts.

I grab the cool glass with both hands and guzzle its contents. A mistake, I realize, the second Lindsay takes it back to the kitchen sink for a refill. I breathe in through my nose, trying to soothe my churning stomach. To buy myself some time. "How much?" I ask Drew. "How often? Did you and I...are we...?"

His green eyes blink in rapid succession and he looks up, over my head. "What the hell is going on?" he asks.

"You didn't hear about her accident?" Samantha asks. Making no effort to hide her contempt for him.

"Lindsay mentioned it but—"

"She hit her head, lost her memory of the last three years, and she's trying to piece her life back together. So she needs to know what the two of you were doing together—besides smoking pot?"

Drew shakes his head, still not catching on, and Samantha sighs. "I saw the two of you walking down the street," she says. "It looked to me like you were holding hands."

"Oh," Drew says. His eyes shift to mine, and his skin pales as he exhales a curse. "Christ, Ally, I'm..."

He's shocked—and disappointed, obviously. Because what Samantha saw was true. Drew and I were... "What?" I ask him. "What else? Did we..." I shake my head, because I can't say the word. I can't even think it.

"She wants to know if you guys were having sex," Samantha says—and I cringe, because no. That is so not what I was going to ask.

"Whoa," he says, hands up. His eyes flit over to mine. Panicky, like he's been caught.

So he when shakes his head, I don't believe him.

"We kissed once or twice," he says, "but it wasn't like that."

"So you were just selling her drugs," Samantha says, seething. "Aren't you supposed to be on probation?"

"I gave her a joint now and then." Drew emphasizes the word gave like that makes it better somehow. "But most of the time she just smoked with me. That's how we started hanging out," he adds, turning to me. "I ran into you one night when I was out on one of my walks. You were sitting on the curb crying and I offered you a hit."

"What about Lindsay?" I ask.

"She came out with you one night, but I didn't see her again until she started coming over here last week. She asked for some weed, but I said no."

My knees flat out buckle this time. Samantha tries, but she can't keep me on my feet.

Lindsay must have come over here the day she told me about her green-eyed crush. Which was the day after I caught her smoking my last joint. And I could've stopped her. All I had to do was tell Mom and Dad and just...deal. With whatever. Why did I think I could summon some wiser, braver version of myself? "Did that girl ever exist?"

"What girl?" Samantha asks.

I don't answer because Lindsay is back with more water and that stupid freaking pill.

"No," I tell her. Because I'm not going to take any more drugs. Not ever. "What does that mean?"

"I didn't say anything, Ally. You're not making sense."

"Mom," I say. "Plugging me into a life. A fantasy?"

The glass of water I chugged surges up from my stomach. Laced with acid that singes my throat on its way to the colorful rug. "Shit," Drew says. Then a door slams and he curses again. Except it wasn't Drew. The second one came from a man in a business suit—an older, tidier version of Drew.

Mr. Watterson tosses his briefcase at the kitchen table on his way into the family room. Then he slows his pace, creeping toward me with open palms. Like he's approaching a rabid animal. "Is this girl on drugs?" he asks.

"No," Lindsay says. "She's getting a migraine."

Wrong. The migraine is here. I wretch again, and Drew's father takes a step back. Nothing much comes out this time, but it's not over. Because my stomach is roiling and the jackhammers are working their way through my skull—and I probably had sex with Drew, the drug dealer.

So please, God. Just let me die right here.

"Is this the Clark girl who was in the diving accident?" Mr. Watterson asks. So. Excruciatingly. Loud.

Everyone answers him at once—every single one of them calls out the word yes. Then there's all this shushing and whisper-screaming, and monster-sized feet, stomping around on the floor.

My strawberry-scented sister appears with the pill. And oh my god I want it—so bad. I want the whole freaking bottle.

I take the one I'm offered with the tiniest sip of water, and throw it right back up. My second attempt—minus the water—stays down, but I know it's too late. One pill will never be enough. I was so stupid not to take it when Lindsay first offered it to me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"Shh," she says, squeezing my hand. "Mom is on her way."

No, not Mom. Not yet. "Please," I say, clamping my hand around hers as hard as I'm able, hoping she understands the urgency. I need to know what it is I'm missing before I have to face Mom. "What fantasy?"

"We sat there in that joke of a family meeting with Dr. Greene," she whispers. "You talked about our life in North Carolina—about how awesome it was—and Mom just smiled and nodded. But that's not how it was, not for either of us, Ally. You're remembering it wrong."

Well yeah. It's not like there's not a clean break in my memory. I get a lot of things mixed up. "Hit. My head," I say.

"Yes, Ally. You have permanent damage and loss of memory that may never come back. But there are things you definitely remember—like your so-called friendship with Kara. You can talk about specific events and give accurate details—but the feelings you remember are wrong. I looked it up on the Internet and I think you might have a memory bias."

Bias? "I don't..." What does that even mean?

"It's not something you're doing on purpose, Ally. I think deep down you just need to believe things were better for us than they actually were. But you and I weren't friends in North Carolina. The closest we've ever come to anything that resembled friendship were the nights we snuck out of the house together to get high."