Six. Be Ready.

The first thing Gray knew was warmth.

The bourbon was still in him, but this was smaller. It stayed on his mouth for one breath.

Then it was gone.

His eyelids tightened. He did not open them.

He was dreaming. He had to be. Nora had spent the whole summer making sure he could not get within arm's reach of her, and now her mouth had been on his, and the porch still smelled like wet grass and her father's bourbon.

Yesterday afternoon, his father had rewritten everything Gray thought was his. Last night, Nora had sat beside him and talked about their twelve years as if nothing had broken. Then she had kissed him. At least one thing was not going to change.

He was not going to answer that kiss half-drunk on a porch. He would answer it in the car, with seven hours of road to Hawthorne and nowhere for her to go.

So he stayed still.

Somewhere far off, her voice said his name and the word goodbye. The boards shifted. A car door closed.

The nine-hour drive and the bottle pulled him under, and he folded all of it into the dream.

When he opened his eyes, the sky had gone white.

The sprinkler next door had shut off. He had slept sitting up against the porch post, and when he straightened, the healed cut under his shirt pulled from his left shoulder all the way to his collarbone.

The blue cup stood beside his boot.

NORA'S. DO NOT TOUCH.

The step beside him was cold.

He looked at his watch. Five fifty-one.

She had gone inside to shower, he told himself. To change. To pack whatever she had put off packing, because Nora always put off packing.

He knocked on her front door. Nothing. He tried the knob. Locked.

He went down the steps and looked through the front window.

There was nothing in the living room. No couch. No rug. No lamp on the side table, because there was no side table. The morning light went all the way to the back wall and found nothing to stop it.

He stood on the lawn and did not move.