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I swear.

“My life is a mess. I’m a mess. Just drop the chivalry act. You aren’t making me leave to keep me safe.”

“Yes, I am, Lia.”

I’m paying every day for the wish I made to keep you safe.

“You deserve to have a life that isn’t a museum of out-of-date tech.”

“Maybe that’s what I want, ever think of that?”

“You think so, but it’s not.”

“You don’t know what I want.” She storms past me through the doors I now recognize to be the double doors to the gymnasium at Catchington High.

I do. And if I can’t say it, I’ll prove it instead.

11

NATALIA

The one where they almost fuck.

Don’t worry, it’s coming…pun intended

I walk into the next level of this virtual maze bearing good and bad news.

As a pessimist I feel it’s only right to share the bad news first…we’re in hell.

No, not the fiery pits associated with hell. I wish. That would be preferred. But a version of hell all the same.

Don’t fret, not all is lost, there is some good news. It appears this place has a peculiar sense of humor since this time around I won’t be spending the harvest dance alone, staring at the clock, wondering where Rennix is. Oh no, this time we will exist together at the same time in a fucked-up simulated version of it.

He’s here, by my side, swooping me off…the ground and over his shoulder?

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t run away.”

The mixed signals are getting outrageous at this point. First, he wants me to go, now he wants me to stay. Pick a lane and commit already, for fuck’s sake.

Rennix moves us across the gymnasium with me thrown over his shoulder. It’s an exact replica to how it looked the night he disappeared. Like a cliché of every high school gymnasium to ever exist, just more festive with balloon archways scattered about.

Finally when we approach the bleachers he stops, placing me back onto my feet.

“Stay right here.”

Before I can argue with him or point out that he’s being very bossy—not that I’m complaining; he may be one of the only men I’d accept direction from—he runs off behind the bleachers.

Just when I thought this day couldn’t be any more strange or a blast from the past, he reemerges with a sight for sore eyes.

“Is that an iPod?”

“Sure is.”

I extend my grabby hands for him to hand it over. I was distraught when mine stopped working. I searched high and low for it when I moved out of my mom’s house. The relief I felt when I found it stashed away in one of the many filled-to-the-brim Payless shoeboxes I have shoved in my closet was short-lived. It lasted all of a couple hours after I charged it, and I’ve missed it every day since. There was something magical about being able to get lost in music without the temptation of veering off course and scrolling socials or being inundated with emails and notifications.

“What gives? Hand it over,” I say with a pout that gets me…absolutely nowhere.