I found her standing beside my car, arms folded tightly against the small bulk of her green jacket. She pulled her black hair behind studded ears, her attention fastened on the ground.

I didn't know what it meant, to see Thalia waiting for me. It had been five days since I'd texted her, a message of which had never received any response. I was suddenly aware of how many weeks it had been since we'd last really spoken, which left an uncomfortable sense of awkwardness as I approached her, as if I were coming towards a stranger and not someone I'd once roasted marshmallows and made forts with.

At the sound of my footsteps, her dark eyes flashed up. She was biting the corner of her lip nervously, a knot between her brows, her expression touched with melancholy.

I wished words didn't have the habit of abandoning you when you really needed them.

"Hey," I said, as if this were normal. Once, it had been. I reminded myself that while many things had changed, Thalia was still Thalia. She had the same memories as I did.

She tried for a tentative smile. "Hey."

A beat of silence passed between us, palpably strained .

She shifted, like she was trying to get comfortable. "Got your text," she said, crossing and uncrossing one combat boot over the other. She shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry I didn't reply. I figured it would be better to talk in person."

I nodded. I didn't bother to mention the date, or ask why she'd thought to wait nearly a week. None of that mattered. She was here, at least, which was more than I'd been expecting. And she was talking.

That had to count for something.

I was suddenly glad that I hadn't left school alongside Bellamy or Octavia; this was something that needed to be fixed, or, in the very least, aired out. Better to do that in private, especially if the problem Thalia had was truly with the Blakes.

"How've you been?" I asked, trying for nonchalance.

"Good," she said. "How about you?"

Something about this felt surreal. Familiar yet foreign, like the pieces were all right but the setting was off. Maybe it was just the juxtaposition it provided, the contrast between my life now and what it had been, not too many months ago. There was just enough change to make what had once been comfortable suddenly . . . not anymore. Like trying to fit back into an old pair of shoes.

"Good."

Her eyes swept over me. "Good. You look . . . better. Happier, I mean."

I didn't know happier was the right word.

Suddenly Thalia blew out a breath, as if she were just as exhausted over this pretense as I found myself to be. She dropped her arms. "Clarke, I'm sorry." She pressed her fingers into her temples. "This whole thing got so messed up. It was all stupid. What I said . . ." her eyes went skyward, as if searching for the right word. She didn't find it.

"What was it really about?" I asked, crossing my own arms and leaning my hip against my car. "Because I don't think it was just because I friended a freshman. Was it Bellamy?"

She tossed up her hands, visibly agitated. "No! Well," she shrugged. "Maybe it was. A little. I mean it made sense to me then. Now I just feel like an idiot. It just . . ." she hesitated, mulling over her words. "I was . . . hurt. I mean, we'd been friends for so long, and after Finn . . . I was mad when I saw you hanging out with Bellamy. First because, yeah, I didn't totally trust him, what with having heard you get drunk and all that. He's kind of enigmatic, you know?"

I resisted the urge to smirk at her description.

"But then I saw you with his sister and I . . . This is going to sound petty," she forewarned, "but I just . . . I started to get jealous. Because she made you smile and even her brother, who I swear has the glaring potency of Cyclops, no offense, was making you feel better, and I think I was starting to feel a little replaced because I sort of believed that . . . I was the friend who should've been making you feel better."

I looked at her, absorbing her words. The sincerity of them I could see reflected in her eyes. I thought back to when my "friendship", if it could've even been called that yet, with Bellamy had begun, off to its dangerously rocky and borderline malevolent start. The arrival of Octavia. The utter devastation of Finn's death and its ruins that still, in more ways than one, lay around the both of us.

I tried to see what it must've looked like through her eyes, and grimaced.

Regardless of the technicalities, I couldn't deny that it looked a lot like leaving.

I blew out a long breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. A breath I may as well have been holding for months. "I wasn't fair to you, either," I told her. "What you said . . . Yeah, it might've been a little petty of you," I used her own word, "but you were genuinely concerned, too. So was my mom. And Principal Jaha," I threw in, knowing how she would respond to this detail. My lip curled up at the memory. "He even gave me his Rubik's cube."

Thalia's reaction did not disappoint, and one of her eyebrows shot up. "Is that some sort of euphemism for something?"

"No. It was a real Rubik's cube."

Her face bunched together as if compressed by some invisible force, completely baffled. "What a weird man."

This time, I allowed the smirk to bloom, full force."Point is . . . it wasn't just me who lost Finn. You lost one of your best friends, Thalia. And I'm sorry for not seeing that you were worried about losing me, too."

A tentative smile spread across her face. "So . . . we're okay again?" she asked, her voice as hopeful as a child's.

I matched her smile. "Yeah. We're okay."

In the next instant, Thalia was looping her arm around my neck. "Thank goodness, because I was about to go out of my mind if someone didn't start talking to me about heart pericardiums and atria soon . . ."

**************

"Octavia, I can't."

"Because Bel got mad last time? Shocker. I don't think you should've even told him."

It had been a week since Octavia's clandestine meeting with Jae, and already he was back, asking for more time. I could tell Octavia didn't like it. I didn't need to ask Bellamy if he liked it. I definitely didn't like it. In fact, the idea of talking to Jae myself had occurred to me more than once this morning, but that likely fell into the "getting involved" action category that Bellamy had so astutely defined, yet again, as off limits.

To my dismay.

"We went out once," Octavia said, following me from the restroom to the cafeteria. "That's not enough for him, trust me."

"It's not about trusting you," I told her over my shoulder. "I do. It's him I don't trust. And if this is something you need to do to placate him, then I'd tell whatever social worker is assigned to your case. He can't threaten you by-"

Octavia batted her hand, as if waving my suggestion away. "He's not threatening me. But . . ." her sudden hesitancy had me pausing outside of the cafeteria, snippets of conversation drifting back to us amidst the clang of trays against tabletops. "Clarke, I don't exactly have faith in the foster system. The Roffans' hands are tied." Her sky blue eyes suddenly blazed with defiance. "I won't have my dad complicating things, not when I can help settle it myself. Or at least make it better. But the more Bellamy refuses visiting hours . . ." she shook her head, long brows pulling together. She spoke the last words through her teeth. "Bellamy can't afford the fight to keep me, Clarke."

My chest ached. Again, the idea of talking to Jae flashed through my mind, but I knew that wouldn't be beneficial. I doubted it would even make me feel any better, with such a weighted plea on my conscience. Because staring into Octavia's face, I wanted nothing more than for her to be protected. To keep her away from everything that kept trying to take more from her.

When would it end?

But I'd also started to recognize something else, and what was how being wedged in the middle of her and Bellamy's wants had begun to cause harm of its own. This wasn't my place to occupy, and the only way to stop it from getting any worse was to step back and let them talk about it. Alone.

That didn't make it any easier, though.

"You need to talk to Bellamy," I told her, my voice gentle. "It's not about me being willing to help, Octavia. I would be there in a second. But he's the one we'd be keeping this from. He's the one who's not being let in on something really important that's going on with the person he loves the most in this world." I placed a hand on her shoulder, looking at her intently, hoping she saw my earnestness. Heard it in my words. "I'm on your side, and I will always support you. But keeping Bellamy in the dark as you make yourself vulnerable is not the way to solve this."

Octavia looked at me, her big, beautiful eyes sad again, too full of a grief I felt helpless to ease. She knew I was right, but it was a rarity nowadays when I knew I was right. And while the weight so evident on her shoulders made my heart twist, I was done going around Bellamy. They would talk it out and sort it over and then maybe, after, I could find a way to help.

But not now. And no longer like this.

After a moment, her gaze slipped quietly from mine. She nodded. "Okay." The two syllables broke into three.

"Octavia-"

But she was shaking her head again and already hurrying off. "It's fine. I understand. You're right." Choppy, clipped, broken-winged words. "I'll talk to him."

And before I had time to say anything else, Octavia had scampered off, backpack slapping against her shoulder. She disappeared out the door at the end of the hall.

Guilt stabbed its cold finger at me, accusatory, but I tried my best to dismiss it. Even when I knew I was right, it still somehow didn't make it feel that way. The bad guy at every turn.

Give it some time, I told myself. If it wasn't cleared up soon, I could talk to Octavia again, but I had to give her the chance to talk to him first.

And if that still didn't work . . .

Well, maybe I'd wind up throwing every rule out the window and talk to Jae after all.

**********

The sharp sound of metal on laminate startled me.

I looked over to find Bellamy taking a seat at the lunch table I occupied. It was strange, how surreal this would've felt just a few months ago, to be sitting at lunch with Bellamy Blake. Now it was becoming strangely comforting the few times we'd shared this hour, an aberration automatically normalized within the anomaly my life currently felt to be.

That is, when it didn't lead to reminders I was still struggling to process.

Fortunately today though, my mind was distracted enough elsewhere.

"Sorry," Bellamy muttered, when he saw me start. He picked up an apple he'd grabbed and bit into it and cast a cursory glance around the cafeteria. "Where's O?"

I sighed, swirling around my bottle of Pepsi. "Upset somewhere."

I saw his expression go from sullen to alarmed. "Relax," I said, before he could jump too far ahead. "She just . . . had a favor to ask, and wasn't too happy with my response."

"She asked you to help with Jae again, didn't she?" A blade was more blunted than the edge I caught in his voice.

I grimaced. "I didn't disguise that too well, did I?"

"Were you trying to?"

"Hey, I'm neutral ground, remember?" I said. I took a sip of my flattening soda and sighed. "I almost can't believe that she's only fourteen. Are you sure she's not secretly twenty-two?"

Bellamy scoffed. "I wish. Then Jae wouldn't even be an issue and people would have to stop throwing the word 'minor' around as if Octavia were some nonverbal infant."

I leaned back against my chair, eyes on the tabletop. How we both wished for a lot of things. I was starting to lose track of them all. "You'll sort it out." I injected as much confidence as I could into the words. I looked over at him.

His gaze went from studying his apple to studying my face and, despite how well I knew he tried to hide it, I could still catch the fear in his eyes. All the worries and what if's."You sure about that?" he asked, pitching his voice soft, like it was a question he didn't want to hear himself ask.

I knew better than to hesitate. "The world might be very unfair, but that doesn't mean we have to anticipate losing every time. Sometimes we win."

"And you think this will be one of those times?"

"Yeah, I do."

"What if I don't?"

I let myself scrutinize him as much as he was scrutinizing me, like he was trying to find some contradiction in my face. Some evidence of doubt lining my eyes.

If he found any, he didn't show it.

"Then I'll believe enough for the both of us," I said.

It was enough to coax the ghost of a smirk out of him. "I'll let-"

My phone vibrating in my pocket cut him off. I dug it out, checking the caller ID briefly before answering, inexplicably relieved at the name I found there. "Hey, Octavia-"

"D-dad, don't you think you're driving a little fast?"

It was the panic in her voice that made me go very still. She sounded far from her phone, as if holding it at a distance. "The speed limit on Rock is 40."

And just like that, her words pieced together for me a blurry image, and it was suddenly as if ice water ran through my veins.

"Doubting my driving skills?" Another voice chimed in, his words slightly slurred, swallowing the spaces. "I guess you were too young then to notice. Never too late to show my daughter a few tricks."

A strong hand appeared on my shoulder and Bellamy turned me to him. His face appeared right in front of me, eyes rounded. "What's wrong?"

Almost robotically, I murmured, "Jae." I had enough presence of mind to keep my voice low, so it didn't sound on the other line. I covered the bottom with my hand just to be sure. "Octavia's with him. They're on Rock Boulevard." The words came faster as the cold crept over my bones. "He-"

Bellamy plucked the device from my fingers and punched the speaker on with his thumb.

"Dad, I think you've had too much. Please pull ov-"

"I'm no lightweight, honey."

I was ice. But in that instant, Bellamy became wildfire.

He shoved my phone back at me. "Stay here!"

It wasn't a suggestion.

"Bellamy-"

Of all the times I had seen him upset, I'd never seen his onyx eyes the inferno they were now. His words were steel that left absolutely no room for argument. "Stay. Here."

He tore out of his seat and started to run, footsteps pounding down the hallway. The apple had fallen from his hand and lay on the ground.

Within moments, he was out the door and in the parking lot.

When I heard his tires squeal against the pavement, I was running, too.

Down the same hall. Out the same door. Into the same lot. I fumbled for my keys and practically threw myself inside my car. His warning might as well have been vapor to me, because there was nothing, nothing at all, that could keep me from putting my car into drive and following him onto the road.

I didn't know how fast he'd been going, but it wasn't hard to guess. How far ahead could he be? A minute? Two?

Wait.

A sudden realization had me pulling off to the shoulder of the road and slamming on my breaks. My body rocked into the wheel.

I rummaged for my phone I'd thrown onto the passenger seat, heart thundering in my chest, fear sparking lightning bolts in my twitching, shaking fingers.

I had no idea where Rock Boulevard was.

Stupid, stupid, I chided.

Time seemed to slow as I pulled up Maps and typed it in. As soon as it appeared on my screen, I peeled back onto the road, speeding up. It wasn't far. Minutes. Jae must have picked Octavia up from school during lunch.

After she'd spoken to me.

The idea made my heart climb into my throat.

No.

I tried to stave off the battle of images attempting to force their way to the forefront of my mind, working instead to focus on the road. It curled around once before straightening into a longer stretch. A tree line stretched to my right while the left began to curve down a small incline, the land pocketed with smaller plants and shrubs.

No sign of Bellamy.

C'mon, I thought. Maybe I spoke it out loud. My fingers were as white over the steering wheel as they had been when I'd driven through the rain. C'mon, c'mon . . .

At the chime of my phone, I took a sharp turn on Mountainview. It would carry for three miles. One more right on Edgecrest, until a left that would bring me to Rock.

The distance was agonizing.

And the images would not stop.

With gritted teeth, I locked arms with those thoughts, trying to keep them away, and threw all my attention onto the road ahead. My foot pressed down the accelerator. 75 . . . 80 . . . 85. If a cop happened to see me, at least I'd be coming with backup.

Six minutes after leaving the school parking lot, my wheels skidded onto Rock.

It was a narrow, vacant road. Farther ahead the side rail disappeared as the lane began its curve around a hill.

I rolled down my window, as if that would help me see-

My feet found the breaks before the rest of me could even think to.

Once more I collided with the steering wheel. The impact bruised my forearms and shoved me hard enough to nearly set off the horn. But I barely registered any of that; my attention was fixed solely on the thick tendrils of smoke, curling up like fingers from the side of the road.