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“You failed?” I ask, biting my lip as I inevitably slip closer to her. She nods but doesn’t look away from the page she’s currently entranced with.

School has always come easily to me, every subject really. I wasn’t a genius or anything, but I always aced my classes. I was the kid who didn’t have to study, who remembered things and eased through classes like second nature.

And math was my best subject. I fucking love numbers.

Lily was always the one who struggled. With her intense hyperfixations, it was difficult sometimes for her to care too much about doing well in school. Her dad tried to use his praise and condemnation to create an almost Pavlovian response in his only daughter, but it hadn’t worked.

“I, um . . . yeah.” Her fingers rub back and forth over the keypad of the calculator in her palm, accidentally pressing nearly every button in her anxiety. “Just the pretest. So I just need to make sure I ace this one tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t you ask me to help?” I say, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice.

She darts her eyes at me, narrowing them nearly to slits. “You pretend I’m not even in the class. Besides, you’re the TA.” Her voice drops quieter then as she turns away from me. “And I figured you already knew.”

I didn’t know, because I’ve been avoiding every piece of her I could. And now she’s suffering because of it. I manage to keep the apology threatening to leave my lips inside, attempting yet again to hold tight to my steadying anger toward her. It’s safer than the other thing, the soft side of me that was always nurtured by her hands. I’ve buried that version of myself deep. I don’t know if I’d know how to be that anymore.

“Why aren’t you at Harvard anymore?” I ask, softer. “The truth this time, Lil.”

Her cheeks flush.

“I flunked out.”

I nod. I’d suspected but I wasn’t sure. Her dad had insisted on her attending the Ivy League, no matter her difficulty at the high school level. At the time, we made all sorts of plans that meant she wouldn’t be stuck there.

Coarse, used brushes and the smell of oil paint. Hockey skates by the door of a small house, just enough room for the two of us.

You and me, forever, Lil.

“And why did your dad bring you here?” There’s a chance she doesn’t know the answer, that he brought her here without her own knowledge. But I’m not sure which outcome is worse.

“He needed me close to keep an eye on me.”

It’s not the answer I’m expecting and it’s enough to make me pause.

“Why?”

“I haven’t been doing so well.” Lily shrugs, eyes floating around the room, unfocused.

“What do you mean?”

She swallows tightly and shrugs again. “Sometimes I’m just sad. I don’t want to get out of bed or I sleep a lot. I forget to really eat or leave the house. I want to finish school, so we . . . compromised.”

“Compromised?”

She clears her throat and fiddles lightly with the blunt ends of her hair.

“He said . . . I was acting like my mom.”

Alarm bells go off, bright warnings echoing in my mind. I try to stay calm, as if her words aren’t sirens flashing. As if my stomach isn’t dropping to my toes, like I’ve stepped too close to the edge of a high-rise.

“Yeah?”

I know about Lily’s mother. I might know more than Lily herself does, about the tragic LaBlanc history. The bright affluent family who went dark after the wealthy matriarch committed suicide. The rumors that her five-year-old daughter went missing in the aftermath, wandering away from the house when there had been no one to watch over her.

And where did they fucking find her again?

My stomach somersaults again looking at her.

After the whole ordeal, Christopher LaBlanc had shuttered the doors to the estate, keeping her inside—safe. They were an oddity. The mansion on the hill. The princess in the tower. The ghosts of the old house on Hawthorne Street.