The Northern Reserve Academy was located off of Route 53 in the very most Northwestern corner of Wisconsin, nestled in between two state parks that appeared to be identical from the rural highway on which we drove. At ten in the blindingly bright morning, Henry and I drove in circles twice around the complex of enormous brick buildings, observing. Like the Dearborn School for Girls, Northern Reserve was set back from the street in a somewhat remote location, not close enough to any main roads or strip malls to have made an escape by any student particularly easy. The school had a large track, just like the high school in Weeping Willow, but unlike the track back in my hometown, the one at Trey's military school was enclosed by a chain link fence seven feet high with rusty razor wire at its top. As bad as Dearborn was, Northern Reserve seemed much more like a prison.

We told ourselves we were staking out the territory, making a plan. But during our second pass around the building, I knew what we were really doing was panicking. My eyes scanned frosty window panes on the school's three floors as we drove past. I allowed myself to imagine that I might catch a lucky glimpse of Trey daydreaming out the window in one of his classrooms, and upon seeing me, he'd know it was time to slip away and run through some unguarded laundry room door or cafeteria loading dock to meet us outside. But the roads that framed the school's property were simply too far away from the actual buildings to catch a glimpse of anyone moving around inside. We slowed the truck down on our third drive around the campus when we saw two single-file lines of boys crossing a courtyard briskly without jackets from one building to another. The lines were flanked in the front and back by guards wearing uniforms and heavy winter coats.

My heart swelled for a split second—it would have been perfect if Trey had been in that line and seen our truck—but out of all the boys marching through the snow in those two lines, wearing crisply ironed white, short-sleeved button-down shirts with shaved heads, none of them appeared to be Trey. Catching my first glimpse of Trey's classmates, I felt a little afraid for him. He had never mentioned feeling intimidated by the other guys in his classes at his school, but some of them appeared to easily be twice his size. It was hard to believe that all of the boys in those two lines were under the age of eighteen—they looked like men compared to all of the guys I knew back in Weeping Willow.

"We should park somewhere and make a plan," Henry said, turning left instead of right to bring us back onto the highway rather than loop around the school a fourth time. "If a big pick-up truck drives around a school building four times in a row on an otherwise empty road, someone's bound to notice."

"Agreed."

In a McDonald's parking lot ten minutes away in the very small town of Superior, Wisconsin, we sipped coffee in silence, both of us knowing that time was slipping away. In a matter of hours, classes would be wrapping up at the high school back in Weeping Willow, and the junior class would be boarding rented buses bound for Michigan. We really couldn't afford to waste time developing some kind of master plan to spring Trey out of school, but we really couldn't drive off to Michigan without him, either.

"I don't see how we're going to get his attention from outside the school," I finally said. "I mean, unless we do call in a bomb threat or something, but that's got to be illegal, and it's random enough that he might not realize it's us."

"Yeah," Henry agreed. "Bomb threat is out of the question. I'm already eighteen and if cops get involved, I won't be sent to a military school, it'll be much worse. What if we just get someone to go inside and tell him we're waiting for him? Like an electrician or a delivery man or something. Or a janitor! Janitors must work there at night, right? If we wait until the evening?"

I agreed that sending an outsider in with a message seemed like a good idea, but it had its flaws. "Well, we'd have to pay them. No one is going to help two kids hanging around outside a military school by delivering a message to someone on the inside for free. And then, even if we found someone to take our money, there's no way they would know which kid was Trey unless they were in the school, interacting with students, every single day. I mean, if we said he was a thin white guy, around five-foot-eleven, with blue eyes and a shaved head, there are probably like, a hundred guys who fit that description inside the school."

Just like at Dearborn, there had been a parking lot along one side of the tallest building, presumably where guards and teachers parked close to the school's administrative office, and a separate parking lot around the back of a large one-story building. That building probably contained the cafeteria, and the lot back there was most likely where delivery trucks dropped off big shipments of rice, oatmeal, and other bulk grocery items. Each of the buildings had side doors, but it would have been foolish for us to think they might have been left unlocked. The worst part of the entire Northern Reserve setup was that the entire school was surrounded by a tall fence, and the entrance to the main parking lot had a guard station. The only part of the campus that seemed like it might be a possibility for infiltration was the track, since a large set of double doors opened onto it (presumably the school's gym was on the other side of those doors), and it was unmonitored due to the three feet of snow covering it. But the tallest fence on the school's property encircled it, and as primitive a means of security as razor wire was, it was effective. I sure as heck didn't have any desire to risk cutting myself up by trying to climb over it in an attempt to reach those double doors.

"You're right, you're right," Henry said, still thinking about who we might be able to bribe to enter the school. The fact was, because the guard station was positioned at the entrance to the parking lot, there wasn't a suitable, out-of-the-way place where we could have discreetly propositioned someone on their way onto school property. The parking lot around the back by the cafeteria was cut off from the street by a fence; the only way to get a vehicle back there would have been to enter through the front gate, pass the guards, and drive along the small roads weaving in between the school's buildings.

"So hopeless," I muttered.

"Has Trey ever mentioned, like, times of the day when he crosses in between buildings, or gets, like, a recess or something?"

"Yeah, but that was before it got cold out," I said. If it hadn't been winter, this entire operation would have been much easier. Trey would have been allowed outside for thirty minutes after lunch time and most likely would have walked laps around the track for an hour during his gym period. He'd even once told me that when it rained, kids still went outside after lunch and just tried to stand in areas where they'd be sheltered from the rain because otherwise they wouldn't get any fresh air for the entire day. But if course it was winter, our mission wouldn't have been so urgent if it wasn't ski season, and if the boys of the Northern Reserve Academy weren't going to be stepping outside at any point to see us, then...

"Henry, do you have the pendulum?" I asked suddenly.

He nodded in the direction of his pick-up's glove compartment. "That thing freaks me out a little."

I popped the glove compartment open and withdrew the pendulum that Laura had sold us. It took me a few seconds to unknot the metal chain, but then I let it dangle from where I pinched it between my thumb and my index finger. When it finally came to a rest, I felt a little bad asking it the question on my mind. I stole a side glance at Henry and asked, "Pendulum, will Henry be able to get inside Trey's school without being noticed?"

"Hey now," Henry cautioned. But despite Henry's protest, the pendulum swung in its circular clockwise motion, indicating that indeed, it predicted he would be able to slip into Trey's school successfully. "I could get in just as much trouble trespassing on military school property as I could for phoning in a bomb threat, McKenna."

Ignoring him, I then asked, "Pendulum, will Henry be able to get back out of Trey's school with Trey without either of them getting caught?"

The pendulum continued to swing in its circular fashion without wavering or slowing down.

"Aw, geez, McKenna," Henry groaned, evidently not on board with my line of thinking. "This sounds like an awful plan."

"The pendulum thinks it sounds like a great plan," I argued. "Come on, Henry. I know it's not exactly your secret fantasy to sneak inside a boys' military school, but if we can't wait for Trey to come out, then one of us needs to go inside and get him, and I really don't think a girl with Platinum Ice hair is going to go unnoticed in there."

"And how do you suppose I might sneak inside?" Henry asked.

Twenty minutes later, in an aisle at Kmart where an almost unbearable easy-listening version of  Luther Vandross's Here and Now was playing on the sound system, Henry flipped through a rack of white short-sleeved button-down shirts trying to find one in a size Large to fit across his broad shoulders. He hadn't stopped grumbling or talking about how there had to be some other way, but I knew he'd follow through with it. In another aisle, he plucked a package of white V-neck undershirts from a shelf, and then I followed him toward a rack where black dress trousers were on display.

"I'll wear this, but I won't have any of those pins or anything that those guys at the school were wearing," Henry said. "I mean, I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb no matter what."

Henry's lack of a black name tag to pin on his breast pocket was less concerning to me than the other very obvious difference between him and all of the other boys attending the Northern Reserve Academy. Henry had thick auburn hair, as thick as Olivia's had been, but wavier, like his father's. As much as I hated to think about that beautiful hair finding its way into a wastepaper basket, I had to say, "Henry, I think we might have to cut your hair."

"Oh, I know," he said, not sounding thrilled. "I'm not going into that school without shaving my head. I really don't want to go to jail, McKenna. I can't stress enough that starting my first year of life after high school as a freshman at Northwestern and ending it in a men's prison would really not be cool."

We approached the empty checkout area carrying Henry's new outfit, an electric razor, and a family-sized bag of Royal Fudge Stripe cookies. "Don't judge," Henry warned me in reference to the cookies as the tired-looking, middle-aged cashier scanned our purchases. "If there's any chance I'm going to spend time in a jail cell today, I can't face that kind of drama without a belly full of Keebler."

"That'll be one hundred and nineteen dollars, and fifty-nine cents," the cashier told us. Henry handed her his mother's American Express card, and I cringed when I caught a glimpse of it as the cashier accepted it. On it, the name ELIZABETH RICHMOND was embossed into the green plastic. Any cashier paying close attention would have immediately asked Henry for identification since it was rather obvious that his name was probably not Elizabeth. I held my breath, hoping that the cashier would ring up the charge without saying a word.

"You know," the cashier said, causing my heart to basically stop as she waited for the receipt to printout for Henry to sign. "You look kind of like that girl."

"What girl?" I said, immediately blushing and wondering if I'd become an overnight news sensation, or if the cashier was about to flatter me and inform me that I looked like a celebrity.

"That girl on the news," the cashier said, confirming my fear. "The one from that school who went missing."

I giggled nervously, wishing Henry hadn't just made a joke about ending up in jail before the end of the day. "Oh, yeah, that girl," I said. "That's awful about what happened to her."

"The police think she ran away from her school in Michigan and maybe tried to hitchhike away," the cashier said, studying Henry as he forged his mother's signature on the credit card slip. "She seemed like a real messed up girl. Got into all kinds of trouble down near Suamico in the fall."

"Oh, I saw just a little while ago that they found her body," I said, freaking myself out a little by lying about my own death. "They're investigating one of her teachers at that school."

Henry thanked the skeptical cashier with a confident smile before we rushed back out to the parking lot with our purchases. "God, that was a close call," Henry said, starting the engine of his pick-up truck and evacuating the Kmart parking lot quickly. "I guess your escape from school is on the news now."

"Yeah," I said dreamily, not wanting to think about the full implication of my name and picture quite possibly being on the news all across the country. I sincerely hoped my mom wasn't freaking out and wished there was a way I could contact her and let her know I was fine. But there wasn't—if I sent her an email, the police would be able to trace the IP address to northern Wisconsin, and if I called her, they'd be able to trace the call.

It's just a few days, I promised myself. This will all be over in two or three days.

We returned to McDonald's and I agreed to stay in the pick-up truck while Henry ventured inside to use the men's room, hoping that the bathroom would have an outlet into which he could plug the electric razor and do away with his hair. I sat in the cab of the pick-up truck listening to news radio nervously, paranoid that I would either hear a radio broadcast about my own disappearance, or police sirens approaching the McDonald's parking lot. It was almost noon and I was already exhausted from having gotten up so early. It would take us at least another ten hours to drive from Trey's school all the way to the ski resort where the kids from Weeping Willow would be staying in Michigan, so I was growing uneasy about where we'd find ourselves at nightfall, and where we'd sleep that night.

"Not a word," Henry said firmly when he climbed back into the pick-up truck and immediately reached for his bag of cookies. Even though Henry seemed like he was in a bad mood, I could tell he wasn't genuinely angry. I wondered if Henry was even capable of having a truly dark moment, the kind of dark moments that I had seen wash over Trey so very many times when he'd talked about his father or about the dreams that had tormented him since childhood.

He hadn't shaved his head completely bald, but had left a few millimeters of auburn stubble all the way around. He'd also closely shaved the light scruff he'd had on his jaw in an attempt to look a little younger, which barely counterbalanced how much older than eighteen he appeared to be with his head shaved. Henry looked like a different guy all together—tougher, more dangerous. I smiled to myself. I, alone, was seeing a side of Henry Richmond, high school tennis star, that no one else from Weeping Willow had ever seen, including Michelle Kimball, who had dated him for two years. The smile I was trying to suppress eventually pushed its way onto my lips. I never, in all of my years of elementary school, junior high, and high school, ever would have thought I'd find myself on a secret mission, incognito, with handsome Henry Richmond, heartthrob of his class.  The entire situation was kind of unbelievable and I flushed with embarrassment when I remembered back to what a terrible crush I'd had on him back in my freshman year of high school.

We filled the tank of the pick-up with gas at a nearby station, and as we drove back toward Trey's school, our conversation turned toward serious plan-making.

"So, how am I going to get in there?" Henry wondered aloud. He certainly looked the part of a Northern Reserve student, but the problem was that he was on the outside of the fence.

"Climb the fence?" I half-heartedly suggested, not really believing for a second that Henry would ever make it over that tall fence before a guard saw him.

"No, really," Henry said. "Maybe you should ask the pendulum."

The challenge in asking the pendulum was that it would only respond to questions that could be answered with yes or no without becoming confused. I ran through the list of doors on the school buildings I remembered from our drives around the campus earlier that morning. "Pendulum, will Henry be able to successfully get into the school through the back door near the cafeteria?"

The pendulum began slowly moving in a counter-clockwise circle. "That's a negative," I informed Henry as he drove through the small town back in the direction of the military school campus. "Pendulum, will Henry be able to enter any of the dormitories at the Northern Reserve Academy through side doors?"

The pendulum continued steadily swinging around in its counter-clockwise loop.

I sighed. "I don't think it can tell us."

"Maybe I should just walk right in through the front door," Henry joked. "Like, just walk right up to that guard near the parking lot and say, hey, let me in. I'm not sure how I ended up outside, but I need to get back inside."

Shrugging, I said, "Pendulum, will Henry be allowed into the Northern Reserve Academy if he walks up to the guard and asks to be let in?"

The pendulum remained in a solitary position dangling from my fingers. It didn't move at all. "I don't know what that means," I admitted apologetically to Henry .

"Maybe it wants us to keep asking it questions, because even if I can get into the school through the front door, I definitely won't be able to get out that way," Henry surmised. I thought perhaps he was giving the pendulum a little too much credit for its strategic planning skills, but what did I know? Maybe Henry was right, and the pendulum was looking out for us.

We had reached the reform school, and because we still hadn't formulated our plan of action, Henry continued on the rural highway past it.

"Pendulum," I said, growing desperate, "are there any areas of that fence where someone has already cut a way to pass through?"

I held my breath as the pendulum slowed down to a stop, and then began moving in a clockwise direction. "No way! Pendulum, would you be able to show us exactly where in the fence Henry will be able to get on and off campus?"

Yes.

We agreed to drive around the school once more, slowly, giving the pendulum time to point us in the right direction. On our approach, we noticed two more single-file lines of coatless boys walking from one building toward the cafeteria, which made us realize that it was lunchtime—quite possibly the most ideal time of day for a boy who wasn't really enrolled at a school to slip into the mix unnoticed.

"What's it saying?" Henry asked, trying to keep his eyes on the slushy road.

The pendulum was swinging back and forth, pointing toward the school in the direction of the track on the far end of its swing.  "I think it means the track on the other side of the campus. Pendulum, is the break in the fence near the track?" The pendulum resumed its clockwise loop—yes.

I was beginning to feel like we were vultures hovering over the campus as we slowly made our way around to the other side. "Pendulum, can you show me where the break in the fence is?" I asked again to make sure it understood what I wanted from it. It began swinging back and forth, suggesting that the break in the fence was at the far end of the track, at the furthest point away from the school building.

"There?" I asked as we slowed nearly to a complete stop and the pendulum began swinging higher and higher.

"Great," Henry muttered. "That's, like, right in plain view of anyone who happens to be looking out any window on campus overlooking the track."  He had a good point. If the break in the fence had been closer to the building, it would have been impossible for anyone on higher floors in other buildings to have seen someone pass through it. But if there was really a break in the fence where the pendulum was suggesting, Henry would have to walk the entire length of the track to reach it, making him highly visible, especially against the bright white snow.

"Do you think I should get out and just check to make sure the fence is really open there?" I asked.

Henry wrinkled his brow, looking across the quiet campus through the window on my side of the truck. "I don't know. It seems risky. Someone could be watching us right now." He pressed on the gas and we began moving forward again. "Maybe we should have gotten something to cut the fence at Kmart. We could go back."

"I think going back to Kmart and seeing that cashier again would probably be the dumbest thing we could do. We'd be better off looking for a hardware store or something."

Back on the quiet rural high way, Henry pulled over onto the shoulder to search on his mobile phone for the nearest hardware store. "This says the closest one is in Duluth. That's twenty minutes from here."

I sighed deeply, weighing all of the factors that might impact whether or not Henry and Trey would make it out of the Northern Reserve Academy successfully that day. Even if we drove all the way to Duluth to buy something to cut the fence around the school, there was no guarantee that we'd be able to cut it fast enough to make a difference if someone was chasing Henry and Trey. It was already lunch time, and we had no way of knowing how long the students would remain in the cafeteria, with most of the guards' attention focused there.

"I don't know, Henry. I think we just have to go for it right now." My gut was telling me that there was no point in putting off what needed to be done.

"Are you sure? Can you ask the pendulum?" he asked.

I held up the pendulum, which had grown warm in the palm of my hand. "Pendulum, will Henryneed something to cut the fence in order to escape from this school's property?"

The pendulum assured us that he would not.

"Okay," Henry said, looking over his shoulder at the school behind us, over the snowy tree tops lining the rural highway. "I think you should probably stay here, in the truck, with the engine running. You know, just in case we need to make a fast getaway, or if any cops approach you and ask you to move the truck."

"Alright," I agreed, not liking the idea of potentially having to drive Henry's enormous truck one bit. "So, this is it?"

"Wish me luck," Henry said with a quick smile. He wiggled out of his winter coat before he hopped out of the truck and slammed the door behind himself. I slid over to the driver's seat and watched him grow smaller in the side view mirror as he trotted in his fake uniform back toward the highway turn-off to the street which led to the front gate of the school. I couldn't imagine what kind of yarn Henry was going to spin to the guard about how he'd managed to get himself outside the fence, but I trusted that he would figure it out. With my right hand, I placed the pendulum gently in the pocket of Olivia's winter coat, and looked around the area through the truck's windshield. Trey's school was very close to Lake Superior, and it was bitterly cold there, even colder than it had been in Weeping Willow.

Minutes passed, and my blood began to run cold. What were we doing? The whole idea of going to Michigan, probably only to get ourselves in even more trouble, seemed completely asinine. Alone in the truck, without Henry to keep me company, I started getting really scared. It had been a while since the spirits that had been trying to stop us so fervently a little over a week earlier had sent us any drastic warnings. Even if Henry and Trey were to somehow get out of Northern Reserve (which was seeming increasingly less likely the longer I sat in the truck waiting), surely the spirits were going to pull out all the stops in trying to prevent us from reaching Michigan. I was probably in extraordinary danger just by sitting there alone in the truck. Just thinking about all of the potential threats to my own life made me a little wary that Henry had parked the truck not too far from a very tall, very old tree with snow covering its branches. Each time the wind blew, I saw tiny snowflakes drift off of that tree's branches, and it occurred to me that if the tree were to fall, it would crush the cab of the pick-up truck, and me inside of it.

I took the pick-up truck out of park mode and eased lightly on the gas to move forward by a few feet. Almost forty excruciating minutes had passed since Henry had hopped out of the truck. There was no reason to keep the engine running other than to heat the car—I was just wasting expensive gas—so I turned it off. It occurred to me to ask the pendulum what was going on, and if Henry and Trey were okay, and then I noticed the police car in my rearview mirror, pulling up right behind me on the shoulder of the otherwise empty road.

"Crap," I muttered. "Crap, crap, crap."

I didn't have identification on me—no driver's license—and even if I'd had identification, it would have given my name as McKenna Brady, which surely was a name that every police officer across the Midwest had on the tip of his tongue that day. My heart began pounding and I fought the powerful urge to just start the car, slam on the gas, and drive away as fast as I could. But I couldn't drive away... then what would happen to Henryand Trey if they made their way back out to the rural highway without coats and I wasn't there for them? There was no option; I was just going to have to pull myself together and get rid of the police. If that meant I allowed the cops to drive me away and throw me in a jail cell until my mother drove up to Superior to pick me up, then that's what would have to happen. I'd just leave Henry's keys in the ignition so that he and Trey could continue on to Michigan without me. Mischa's life was in the balance. It was no time to chicken out.

Rationally, I licked my dry lips, and tried to settle my nerves as, in the rearview mirror, I saw the policeman step out from the driver's seat of the police car and begin walking toward me. My breath was jagged and nervous. Calm down, calm down, I commanded myself. Act natural. The policeman walked around the driver's side of the truck, and I lowered my window, cringing as a blast of cold air hit me in the face.

"What's the problem here, miss?" the policeman asked me, whipping off his aviator sunglasses to take a better look at me.

I held up Henry's mobile phone in fake frustration. "I think I'm just lost," I lied, assuring myself that he had only pulled over to question me because I was idling on the side of a highway. He was simply concerned, nothing more. "I thought I was going the right way to Duluth, but I think I took a wrong turn."

I hoped he couldn't actually see the screen on Henry's phone, since I didn't know Henry's security pin to unlock it, which was totally going to destroy my story if the policeman attempted to provide me with directions by using it. The policeman scrutinized my face. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with a little bit of ginger-colored stubble and a short mustache. My eyes darted up toward the rearview mirror because I was curious to see if there was another police officer riding shotgun in his car, and while I was pleased to see that there wasn't, a funny noise escaped from my chest when I saw the slim frames of two boys step out onto the rural highway from the road leading to the Northern Reserve Academy in the distance, at least three hundred feet behind the parked police car.

I pretended to cough to cover up the surprised huh sound I had made and smiled as innocently and helplessly as I could at the police officer.

"And my phone is about to die," I added, hoping this might prevent him from offering to show me where I'd veered off my course by using the map on the phone.

Run, guys, run! I telepathically tried to communicate with Henry and Trey. I was both overjoyed and completely distraught to see that they'd made it safely out of the school. Surely they must have seen the police car parked behind Henry's truck. They had to know that it would be extremely bad for a policeman to catch a glimpse of two boys wearing military school uniforms running away from their school in the snow.  I didn't dare look in the rearview mirror again because I didn't want to give the police officer a reason to look glance toward his car, where he'd definitely see them if they hadn't ducked into the trees.

"Well, you must have taken a wrong turn to have ended up over here. What you want to do is head on up to the corner there, and turn right on Belknap Street, and then follow that until you reach Highway 53 again and turn left," the policeman told me, pantomiming how I should turn the truck with his hands.

"Right on Belknap and then left," I repeated, hearing my voice tremble nervously. "Okay, got it. Thank you so much." I rested my fingertip on the power button on the driver's side door of Henry's truck to be ready to raise the window as soon as the police officer sent me on my way.

"You really shouldn't be lingering around here," the policeman told me. "There's a military school just beyond these trees, and they've got some real dangerous boys at that school. Every once in a while, one of them gets some big idea about running off. You look like a smart girl, so I probably don't have to tell you this, but if you see anyone trying to hitch a ride around here, don't stop for them. Keep your doors locked. This isn't the safest area for a pretty young girl like yourself to be driving around alone."

"Oh, I didn't know," I said, my eyes huge, pretending to be terrified by what he'd told me. "Wow, I had no idea. I'll be careful."

The policeman nodded at me, tilted his navy blue hat, and began walking back toward his car. With the index finger on my left hand, I pressed the button to lift my window again, and I stared straight ahead, desperately trying to catch my breath. I started the truck's engine, and took one long, purposeful glance in the rearview window, hoping that I wouldn't see Henry or Trey. I didn't see any trace of either of them, but I did get the sense that the policeman was going to stay parked behind me until I pulled off the shoulder of the road and corrected my course toward Duluth.

Flipping on my left turn signal to merge back onto the completely empty road (figuring it couldn't hurt to be a prudent and courteous driver since a policeman was watching me and he had no way of knowing I'd already had my license revoked for reckless driving), I drove toward the corner as I'd been instructed, and noticed that the police officer was following me. "Of course you're going to trail me," I said under my breath, flipping on my right turn signal. I turned, as he'd told me to, onto Belknap, and began driving through Superior, passing the houses and stores that Henry and I had already driven past numerous times that day. Ahead on my right, I saw a bagel shop, and sent a swift prayer to heaven that the policeman would turn into its lot to get himself some lunch. However, he continued following me, and I tried not to start crying as I realized there was a very legitimate possibility I was going to have to drive all the way to Duluth—twenty minutes—before I could double back to fetch Henry and Trey. That meant they'd both be outside without coats for over forty minutes. It was only around ten degrees outside; there was no way they could possibly remain outside for that long.

I passed a small shopping center, lingered at a light, passed a Domino's pizza, a church, and some train tracks. It seemed like I was on some kind of endless suburban odyssey, driving further and further away from where I so desperately needed to return. Finally, I saw the police car turn into a gas station behind me without even using his turn signal, and I was so overwhelmed with relief that I let loose a small victory scream. I turned left at the next corner and looped around the block, promising myself that I wouldn't cross paths with the policeman again and give him a reason to wonder why I was driving back toward the military school.

When I reached the stretch of the rural highway where I'd last seen Henry and Trey, I slowed down to a stop in approximately the same place where the police officer had approached me. There was no sign of Trey or Henry. I let the truck roll to a stop even though I was on high alert since if the police officer were to pass back through this way a second time and see Henry's silver truck, I would have some serious explaining to do. I looked around wildly. The wind blew softly, stirring the snow on tree branches and causing it to blow around in the air like pixie dust, sparkling against the dark pine needles of the trees.

"Come on, guys," I said hoarsely, wondering if they thought I'd gone for good. Wondering if they'd just walked back to Trey's school, defeated by the freezing temperatures. Wondering if I'd have to go to Michigan to take on Violet by myself. I bit my lower lip. This was every shade of not good. Henry and I had already risked so much... and to have everything ruined by a pesky, well-intentioned police officer...

Then, suddenly, I saw movement in the trees on the east side of the road. I saw two white shirts emerge from the dark trees. Henry and Trey both stepped forward onto the road, rubbing their bare arms wildly and shivering. They looked both ways before rushing across the two empty lanes of the rural high way toward the car. I was so happy to see both of them that I threw the truck into park mode and leapt from the driver's seat. It had barely been two weeks since the last time I'd seen Trey, but it felt like years had passed. I knew the moment our eyes met that after this trip to Michigan, we couldn't be apart any longer. If that meant we would have to run away together, then we'd make arrangements after we dealt with Violet. Trey broke into a careful run on the icy road and threw his arms around me, pressing his open mouth to my lips before I even had a chance to say a word.

"Oh, it's totally cool to just make out right in front of me. Just pretend like I'm not here at all," I heard Henry wisecrack as Trey placed his freezing cold hands on both sides of my face and continued to kiss me as if I were oxygen he needed to live.