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“I don’t know…” I whisper as I blink against the bright light. I wrap the blanket tighter around me and avoid looking the officer in the eye. “I can’t remember…”

“Harper?” Zayla says questioningly.

“Hmmm…” I lift the mug toward my mouth to take a sip.

Her brows furrow. “I asked if you saw her that night? I know you said you don’t know her, but now that you’ve seen a photo of her, maybe you can remember seeing her?”

I stare at the television. Ivy’s photo is still on the screen, clear blue eyes, bright smile—happy is the word that comes to mind.

I shake my head. “I don’t think I saw her.”

Zayla frowns, as if this news somehow means the case will never be solved. “I really hope they find her. Maybe she just took off with some guy or something. Maybe her parents didn’t like this guy and so they ran away together.”

I don’t bother commenting on her romanticizing fantasy, because in reality, it’s more than likely just that. A fantasy she’s building to help her deal with the reminder that darkness lives in this world. And at any moment, it can creep out from the shadows and steal someone away.

* * *

I manage to cram some studying time in before I have to go take the test. My thoughts are more preoccupied than I’d like them to be, though, thanks to the call I had with my brother where I gave him an update of what happened yesterday at the storage unit.

“She had to be buying drugs, right?” he replies.

“I don’t know,” I say. “She could’ve been, but she had some at home. Well, she did until I flushed them. But she didn’t know about that at the time.”

“Did you tell her you did it?” he asks.

“No.” I could call her, but I’m kind of waiting it out to see what happens.

If she asks me if I did anything with the drugs, I’ll admit that I did. But honestly, I don’t think she will since if she does, she’ll have to admit she’s doing drugs again.

At the end of our conversation, my brother and I make plans to visit home at the end of the month and have a birthday dinner with our dad. We debate whether to invite Zoe, which means Liam will probably come too, and my father isn’t a fan of him. Because of that, we decide not to invite Zoe, and make a promise to keep the dinner a secret from her. Hopefully all goes well, but a drop of worry resides in me that she’ll find out and be hurt.

But I do my best to disregard that, and focus on acing my psychology exam. My psychology class is one of two classes I have for the day and it’s the last one. The first one is oceanography and while I’ve never been into science, I find the class interesting. Per usual, I arrive a few minutes early and drop down in a seat that’s toward the back of the room. I pull my phone out to check my messages to which I have none. My mind wanders to my sister and what she could be doing. I decide to scroll through her Instagram account to try to find some answers. But all the photos she posts are all posed pictures of her kids, herself, or her family at a restaurant, in the backyard, at a lake. If I didn’t know my sister and Liam, I’d think they had the perfect marriage, if I believed perfect existed. But perfection isn’t real and neither are my sister’s smiles.

“So how’s your crazy friend doing after her bitchy emotional meltdown?” someone says as a shadow falls across me.

When I glance up, my lip twitches at the sight of Brooks starting down on me with a smirk on his face. This class is fairly big and I never noticed him in it before. But I didn’t really pay attention to him before either.

“Or was she just PMSing?” he adds, his smile broadening.

God, when is this guy going to get a clue he can’t take me on?

I lean forward and cross my arms on top of the table. “Maybe she was, but what’s your excuse?”

Confusion briefly fills his eyes. “For what?”

“For being a little bitch,” I say. “At least Zayla has a legit excuse for acting bitchy, but what’s yours? Too many steroids maybe? I’ve heard that those can cause intense mood swings.”

His nostrils flare. “What’s your hell is problem?”

“What the hell is my problem?” I gape at him. “I’m sitting here, minding my own business, and you come over and harass me and then have the audacity to ask me what my problem is?”

The muscle in his jaw visibly twitches and his lips part, but Wylder shows up right at that precise moment, slaps a hand down on Brooks shoulder, and stops him from utter whatever foul words he’s about to say.

“Did you forget what we discussed?” he says to Brook while throwing me an apologetic look.

“Just because we discussed it doesn’t mean I agreed to it,” he grumbles with his arms crossed.

“Dude, you’re already on probation. Don’t risk getting into trouble again or your ass is going to get kicked off the team,” Wylder says to him while giving him a pat on the shoulder.