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A few minutes later we’re out the door. We take an Uber because Bailey insisted, and I don’t have the energy to argue about the fourteen dollars tonight.

The driver doesn’t speak while our town zips past the window. Dark storefronts and the occasional porch light flickering with fake cobwebs and plastic skeletons. Our town is small enough that everyone knows the Winter name, and they lower their voices when they say it. Small enough that a nineteen-year-old server knows better than to look too long at the corner booth at the diner where three men sit every Tuesday.

I try not to think about them or the rumors that circulate through the diner like cigarette smoke… enforcement, territory, bodies that don’t get found. I try not to think about the way the air shifts when they walk in, how the normal conversations hush without anyone deciding to quiet them. I serve their booth, and I don’t make eye contact. I don’t forget a single order, and I pray that they never notice me.

The party is at the community center on the edge of town, the parking lot already overflowing with cars. Music pulses through the walls before we even reach the door. Bailey grabs my hand and squeezes.

“See?” she says. “This is going to be fun.”

I force a smile that feels wrong, but Bailey doesn’t notice. She’s already pulling me toward the entrance, through the sea of bodies, into the noise and smell of spilled beer and cheap perfume.

Inside, it’s worse than I expected. The lights are too bright, while the DJ plays something with a bass line that vibrates in my chest. There are vampires, witches, superheroes, and someone in a full rubber horse head that shouldn’t be as funny as it is. Bailey spots the drink table and drags me toward it.

“Two beers,” she says to the guy working the keg, and he hands them over without carding either of us. Small-town parties. No one gives a shit.

The beer is warm and tastes like metal. But I drink it anyway. The second one goes down easier. By the third, something inside me unlocks. Bailey pulls me onto the dance floor, and I let her. Let the music move through me without thinking about tomorrow’s shift or the rent due in eleven days or the way my feet ache in these cheap flats I wore because the costume didn’t come with shoes.

For an hour, maybe two, I’m someone else. Someone who dances without calculating the cost. Someone who laughs when Bailey spins too fast and nearly knocks over a guy in a pirate costume. Someone who forgets, for whole minutes at a time, that the life waiting outside this building is too small, too hard.

Then my bladder reminds me I’ve had three beers and no water.

“Bathroom,” I say into Bailey’s ear. “Come with me.”

She’s talking to a girl in a cat costume. Something about community college classes…I don’t know… I can’t follow. “Go ahead,” she says. “I’m going to grab us more drinks.”

“I don’t want more drinks.”

“Then I’ll grab us water.” She grins at me, already turning away. “I’ll be right here when you get back. Promise.”

I hate letting her out of my sight. And the moment she walks away, the feeling is almost immediate. A cold knot in my stomach that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the fact that Bailey is the only good thing I have. And I’m constantly terrified of losing her. But she’s eighteen, not eight. She can stand at a drink table for five minutes without me hovering over her.

“Five minutes,” I say.

“Five minutes,” she agrees, already waving at someone across the room.

I push through the crowd toward the bathrooms, the music muffled yet loud enough to vibrate the floor beneath my feet. The line for the women’s room is six people deep. I wait, shifting from foot to foot and trying to stay aware of everything that’s happening around me. The bunny ears keep sliding forward, and I push them back up, knowing how stupid I must look.

The bathroom is a single stall with a broken lock and a mirror smeared with handprints. I pee as fast as I can, not touching anything I don’t have to.

When I come out, the hallway feels longer than I remember. The music sounds different from this angle, with more bass and less melody. I walk back toward the main room, scanning for blond hair and white polyester, my ears tuned for Bailey’s energetic laugh.

I don’t see her.

I panic, moving faster, pushing past a group of zombies and a couple making out against the wall. A guy in a werewolf mask steps into my path, and I step around him without apologizing. The drink table is where she was. The cat costume girl is still there. But Bailey is not.

“Hey,” I say, grabbing the girl’s arm. “The girl I was with. Blond. Bunny costume. Where did she go?”

The girl blinks at me, slow and drunk. “What?”

“My sister. She was right here. Where did she go?”

“I don’t know,” the girl says, yanking her arm back. “She was here a minute ago. Maybe she went to the bathroom?”

“She didn’t,” I snap at her, my tone edged with panic I can’t hide. “She was getting drinks. She said she’d be right here.”

“Sorry,” the girl says with a shrug.

I move through the crowd quickly and with purpose, calling Bailey’s name. My voice is drowned out by the music and laughter, by the pointless conversations happening around me that don’t mean shit. She’s not by the DJ booth. She’s not on the dance floor.