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Sunk with defeat, I left the store, my mind spinning with ways to earn some extra cash. Dog walking, babysitting, maybe a waitress job at a local diner.

I could do it.

With my thoughts scattered, I strolled down the mall aisle and did a double-take when I passed by another store that caught my attention.

I stopped, glanced up at the sign.

Then my heart started thumping again.

Not overthinking it, I walked through the entrance and marched over to a kiosk that was brimful of video games. I grinned, scanning the new releases.

Resident Evil.

The game came out last month, and Reed had told me he’d wanted it.

Plucking one off the shelf, I headed toward the checkout counter and handed the clerk three twenty-dollar bills to pay for the fifty-dollar game. As he went to place it inside a bag, I stopped him. “No bag, please. I’ll put it in my purse.”

“Kay,” the teenager said.

Ten minutes later, I was browsing through multicolored nail polishes with Tara, the game hidden at the bottom of my purse.

“Did you buy anything?” she wondered, her palms full of nail polish selections in every shade of blue. Midnight, pastel, periwinkle, and even a color that resembled the bright blossoms of morning glories.

I shook my head through the lie. “Nope. Everything was too expensive.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah.” I forced a smile and grabbed a lipstick off a shelf. “What do you think of this color?”

She glanced at the deep-plum shade. “Sexy,” she decided.

“I think I’ll get it.”

As we browsed eyeliners, mascaras, and brow palettes, Tara kept stealing glances at a girl beside us who was tossing glosses into her shopping basket.

“Do you know her?”

Tara frowned, blinking at the girl, then shook her head and moved down the aisle. “I thought I knew her, but that’s impossible. She lives in Charleston.” She took me by the hand. “Come on.”

“Was she an old friend?”

“Yeah, I guess. Some weird stuff went down shortly before we moved here. Creepy teacher stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed, her expression darkening in the same way mine probably did when woeful memories snatched me up without warning. “One of my teachers was being gross. It was this whole big thing. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

I went to protest, to ask for more context, but I understood not wanting to live in those dark moments. Pursing my lips, I nodded and let it go.

We paid for the makeup and met Whitney at the food court a short while later, eager to gorge on heaping plates of Chinese food that always tasted so much better at the mall.

“You look happy, Halley.” Whitney popped a plastic fork in her mouth as mall browsers chatted around us and Jewel’s You Were Meant For Me echoed through the food court. “Did you find something to buy?”

I squeezed my purse in my lap and sent her a shrug as my heartbeats skittered between my ribs. “Just a lipstick.”

CHAPTER 10

Reed joined me in the kitchen that night as I put together a Mexican casserole, stirring the ground beef mixture in a saucepan. My sling had finally been removed, allowing me to really dive into one of my favorite pastimes: cooking.

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