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The rest of the week goes by in a blur. Toren doesn’t speak to me during my math class, but he doesn’t speak to anyone else either. Except for a pretty brunette that works with him, which annoyingly makes my fists clench in my lap. Involuntarily.

After a tense-as-usual Friday dinner, my dad lets Carson drop me off at my town house. We don’t speak, and the music he plays is overly loud, a thrumming bass that makes my head hurt. I have to sit on my hands most of the drive to keep from covering my ears.

Still, there’s a slight pep in my step as I dart up the driveway, fiddling with the lock so I can spill into the warm heat of our front room.

Ours—because I don’t live alone anymore.

“Hey there.”

Paloma, my new roommate, is standing in the kitchen, a box on her hip as she grins softly at me.

I didn’t want to admit that Toren’s ad or post—whatever it was—had worked. A very nice woman called me with information about a girl my age, in my year, looking for a safe place to stay.

My father’s countdown to finding a roommate was nearly at a close, so maybe I’d been a little desperate when she showed up at the town house. She was apprehensive, but I’d managed to convince Paloma, which I’d bragged about a little at dinner with my dad. I think he was ready to force me to move into his rented home when I announced I’d finally found someone—though leaving Toren out of it entirely.

I think I’d surprised both my dad and Carson in finding someone for a midyear move-in. But I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

Paloma’s bright, honey-blond hair is looped up into an effortless messy bun, brown eyes crinkled with her smile, peachy lips ticked up in the corners. Her skin is a light pinkish gold, like she’s been in the sun even though it’s winter. She’s taller than me, though that’s not saying much, decked in leggings and a tank top that emphasize the voluptuous curves of her body. She’s so pretty it makes me feel like a kid. Or a weirdo openly admiring her.

I’ve just . . . never seen someone so beautiful.

“Hey,” I say, realizing it’s been too long by the wrinkle invading her brow. “I . . . how is it going?”

We haven’t spoken since the day she visited, and part of me was nervous she wouldn’t come back after I bombarded her, but she had. And now she’s moving in.

She shrugs her shoulders. “Can’t complain. I don’t have much stuff of my own.”

It’s not an answer, at least not one that I know what to do with, so I nod and smile wider—so wide my cheeks hurt.

I should have practiced this.

“Did you eat?” she asks, heading upstairs and calling over her shoulder. My dad would call that rude or bad manners, and it makes me feel almost giddy. Like I’m getting away with something wrong. “I’m starving and was thinking of ordering a pizza since there’s no food yet.”

I follow up behind her, though she didn’t ask me to—still dressed in my skirt, nylons, and heeled boots. I haven’t even bothered to take off my short peacoat.

The inside of her room is different from mine. Everything is mostly in boxes, but it feels warm and inviting. There’s not much on the walls, which makes me feel slightly self-conscious. Still, she didn’t seem to think my room was weird or different.

“I’m hungry,” I say, sitting on the end of her bed only after she tells me to. I’ve just come from dinner, but I spent most of the night swirling pasta around my plate and only speaking when directly asked a question. “Pizza sounds really good.”

“Great.” She puts her box down and grabs her phone off the dresser to put in our order. I agree to everything she says, not really hearing the choices while inspecting all the things across her room. The small stack of poetry books on the bedside table. A cluster of mixed metal bracelets and rings on the desk edge like she discarded them in a pile. A worn stuffed animal—a bunny—propped against navy and blue pillows along the headboard. No photographs. No artwork. An oversize sweatshirt with a ripped-up sleeve tossed over the back of her desk chair.

I take it all in slowly. Trying to catalog everything like a cheat code in becoming her friend.

I wonder if she has a lot of friends—she seems like the type of girl who would. Pretty and popular, similar in so many ways to the girls who were nice to me in high school, though their reasons weren’t so nice.

A twinge of anxiety pinches, which is a good reminder. To be wary, at least for now.

Just a little.

“Should be here in twenty minutes,” Paloma says, looking up from her cell. “Where’ve you been?”

“I, um, had a thing with a friend,” I lie, wanting to ram my head into the wall. A friend? I could have said anything else, and it would’ve been more believable.

But I don’t want to tell Paloma about Carson or the constantly looming presence he and my dad have over my life. I don’t want to admit to her that I was sitting silently at a too-clean dining room table while they discussed my future like I wasn’t even there.

Desperate to change the subject I ask, “What did you do?”

She gestures to her room. “Mostly just unpacking.”