CHAPTER SIX | EMERALD HAYWOOD

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          "Are you sure Xavier is okay with not having you on a leash?"

          I don't want to tell Betty that's not really an okay question to be asking someone, especially a person you've only just met, but I'm too big of a coward to ever voice my opinion, so I don't.

          I shrug. "I think he's just happy to get me out of the house for once. Going out just to take Sidney for a walk doesn't quite suffice. My mom probably expects things to go back to normal just because this is a new place, no strings, no memories attached, but that's my whole life back there in Chicago, you know? I can't just pretend like that doesn't exist. I can't pretend nothing happened. Not like . . ."

          I leave the remainder of that sentence lingering in the air, suddenly aware I'm running my mouth to a stranger I met yesterday. I don't know the extent of her knowledge regarding Xavier or his move to Alaska, but she knows about me, possibly past The Incident, so there's a high chance she knows at least something. I don't want to pry and force that information out of her, but I'm not sure how I feel knowing someone in the world might know my own brother better than I do.

          Betty sighs, lacing her arm through mine, and my heartbeat instantly skyrockets, though I can't understand why. She's a lot shorter than I am, even while I'm wearing sneakers. "I understand. You had to leave everything behind to come here. It can't be easy to let go."

          I stiffly nod. Everything I've ever had to let go of was ripped right of my hands—Emma, Zach, Cecelia, my life—and this is the one decision I've made for myself. Though I didn't come up with it myself, I was still given a choice regarding what I wanted to do, and I chose to join Xavier in exile. It's not a great exile if we're together and part of me insists he'd much rather not have me here at all, but I can't be the only thing disturbing his peace.

          He has a surrogate annoying little sister that isn't me, after all, and I'm like an alien force threatening to destroy his new life.

          Betty is taking me for a walk around the block, the only thing I'm currently comfortable with. I tell her about my acceptance email and how I've already asked Chicago to email them my transcript before time flies by and I miss out on the new student experience for the second time in my life, and she's surprisingly understanding. After her comment from yesterday, the one that tipped me off about her knowing more about me than she probably should, I expected my bitter jealousy to overcome any other emotion I could feel around her, but she has proven me wrong.

          I don't dabble in the true crime craze. Cecelia liked it, but I was never into the videos and podcasts she spent so much time trying to convince me were good and interesting. I've never understood the point in exploiting the pain of the victims and their families—who are rarely ever contacted for episodes—for profit. I've been told this kind of entertainment sometimes even helps solve previously cold cases and brings awareness to things that were being swept under the rug, but I'm on the other side now.

          I've had something terrible happen to me. I've also done terrible things—ran away when I could have dragged someone to safety, smacked my old friend with a baseball bat just hard enough to leave him disoriented—but I don't want to be used as material for entertainment without my permission. The case is solved, but I don't want to see or hear anyone else sensationalize or blame my friends or praise Him for what He did. Unfortunately for those people, I read what they say online. Once it's out there, it's there forever.

Such a promising young man. He must have been tempted.

He was sooooo hot!

          "I know I've said this a lot, but I really want to apologize for what I said yesterday," she tells me, for the fifteenth time today. "What I almost said. Odie keeps telling me I need to quit true crime because it's harmful and my theories don't actually help anyone, but I've always wanted to believe I can help at least someone. I want to go into law school, use what I know and what I've learned to make a difference. You never know what you might figure out or who you might end up helping, right?"

          "I guess."

          "I know your case is shut tight and I don't want to, like, pry into your personal life, but I promise I'm not out there with crazy theories about what happened that night. When something like that happens . . . people want explanations. Sometimes they make up your own. What you said happened is more than good enough for me. Your pain brings me absolutely no joy."

          To my shock, I manage a chuckle. "Thanks."

          "I'm sorry about what happened that night. I'm glad you made it out alive, though." She playfully bumps her shoulder into mine. "It's nice to have a fresh face around here. Clara is usually the one who puts Xavier in his place, but maybe he'll learn to chill a bit with you in the house. He's always so uptight; I really don't know what goes on in that head of his."

          Fine. I'll bite.

          "Have you known Xavier for long?"

          "Ever since he moved. Most people in the neighborhood have lived here their whole lives and Juneau attracts a lot of tourists, not as many as people who come here to stay, so people talk." She dramatically rolls her eyes in the exact way Xavier did yesterday when he was trying to get her to leave the house. "They wanted to know who he was, what he was doing here, and then he bought the bar, like, two, three months after, so they knew he had money. Rich guy in Alaskan exile? Juicy." She sighs, kicking a pebble, and Sidney bolts past us to chase it. "So, yeah. Clara and I got curious, she needed a job, and they've been stuck in this will-they-won't-they situation ever since. She has a key, obviously, and sometimes I stop by whenever she's at work. It's just Clara and me in our house and she has the job at the bar and a few odd jobs here and there, so it gets lonely. Xavier isn't great company most of the time, but sometimes I like the peace and quiet."

          The lack of a mention of her parents doesn't go by not noticed, but I feel like it's too invasive of a question to ask her twenty-four hours after our first meeting, so I stuff my hands inside my pockets and enjoy the silent walk instead.

          It's not a long walk by any means, but I get the feeling that both of us slow down our paces just enough to give each other an excuse to ask the occasional small-talk question. I'm personally comfortable with silence and don't really feel the need to fill each quiet moment with an ice breaker, but she doesn't know that, and I don't know what she prefers. Hell, she may even think the same thing about me and both of us might be thinking we're making up for something.

          Then, she asks me if I want to meet Odie right away.

          It seems like my two options are 'now' and 'later', especially because she insists on reminding me it's not a negotiation, that she and Odette come in a package deal, so I have no choice. I don't want to isolate myself like Xavier, especially in this little neighborhood where apparently everyone knows each other, and I'd be sticking out like a sore thumb if I were to do it. It won't look that good whenever my parents check up on me and see how well—or not—I'm adapting to my new circumstances, but it still feels icky to use Betty as a means to a selfish end.

          I've never known how to be without Emma. Making new friends has never been easy for me, a second nature even, like it was for her, and our friends were ultimately hers first, being mine by association. I didn't mind it much, as I still had her and Zach at the end of the day; they were mine and I lost them. They were ripped away from me in the blink of an eye.

          Wendy, run. I can hold him back. I won't let him get you.

          And I left. I left him there to die, believing he'd come back to me, and he never did.

          "Wendy?"

          My head jerks up at the sound of my name being called. Betty is far ahead, crouching in front of Sidney, and, like in every other key moment of my life, I'm left behind. My heartbeat hammers in my ears, dread spreading across my chest when I consider the possibility of Sidney having gotten hurt or having eaten something poisonous, but then she turns her head to look at me, tongue hanging out of the right side of her mouth.

          She's fine. She's safe.

          It takes a longer while to believe I, too, am safe and okay, with my heart thudding violently against my chest, and I have to support myself on a fence to regain my lost balance. Nausea rises from my stomach, tied tightly around my throat, and the whole world spins around and around, threatening to knock me down if I move an inch.

          "Should I go get Xavier?" Betty asks, approaching me in careful steps. She keeps her hands spread open in front of her, like she's trying to calm down a feral animal, ready to pounce and attack as soon as it finds an opportunity, and I back away. If she thinks I'm dangerous, there's no telling what everyone else will think about me—if there's someone watching us, they might think I'm on the brink of hurting her.

          Do they know what I did with that baseball bat? Do they think I didn't do it in self-defense? Do they think I wanted to hurt Him?

          Maybe I did. Maybe I wanted Him to hurt as much as He had hurt me, as much as He had hurt everyone else. I wanted Him to suffer, I wanted Him to pay.

          "No," I mutter. "No, don't get Xavier involved. I'm okay." I take a deep breath, bending forward like all of this is just exhaustion, like I've just finished a particularly demanding run. Sidney gets to me first, stepping forward when I try to get away from her, and buries her face between my waist and the fabric of the inside of Zach's trucker jacket, which I've stupidly decided to wear today. "Don't go."

          "Okay. Okay. I'm here. Tell me what to do."

          I can't tell her what to do when I don't know what to do.

          When this happens, I'm usually by myself or with Sidney, the only living being I'm not embarrassed to be seen by whenever I lose control of myself, my thoughts, and my emotions, and it's not normal for me to be joined by another human being. Xavier coming home when he did that very first night in Alaska was a lucky occurrence and it took him nearly an hour to fully calm me down—and that's my brother. Betty is the girl next door, the girl across the street, and I was dying of jealousy over her just moments ago.

          I sit on the sidewalk, a vision reminiscent of Emma on her last birthday, but she was laughing at the time. We both were, as documented on my Instagram account, but the only humorous thing today is how ridiculous I look. My chest is aching and begging for proper breathing strategies, but I'm heaving like a seal on the pavement, arms pressed against my stomach so hard I feel about to throw up.

          She sits next to me, completely disregarding a comment she made earlier about her coat being designer, and pulls her knees close to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She doesn't try to get me to inhale and exhale, she doesn't try to tell me it's going to be okay; all I get from her is silent support, and I didn't know how badly I needed something like that up until now.

          The sun is warm today, kissing the inches of my uncovered skin, and it's the first time since I've gotten to Alaska that I'm not shivering. A breeze rolls around, almost like a hug in weather form, and I finally allow myself to relax my muscles one by one. Mom once gave me a list of positive, grounding affirmations her influencer friends compiled for her and I'm sure she thought they were helpful, but they just sound like a bunch of baloney to me. I need to feel physically secure, physically grounded in reality, and it's not a gaslit brain that will help me do that.

          "You know, this one time I laughed so hard that the rice I was eating came out of my nose," Betty says, after a while.

          I furrow my brows. "What?"

          "I know. It's probably the most embarrassing moment of my life."

          "Why are you telling me this?"

          She shrugs. "I don't know. It felt like a good way to distract you."

          Shockingly enough, I laugh, picturing the entire scene in my head—her sitting at a fancy table, hair pulled back, with rice shooting out of her nose like that one Madonna bra. "Were you wearing that coat when it happened?"

          "Would it help if I were?"

          "Yeah."

          "Then, yes, I was wearing this coat. If you look closely enough, you can still see the stains on my sleeve." She raises her arm for me to check for stains that aren't there, but we both pretend they are. I dramatically gasp. "See? Totally embarrassing. I wish you'd been there to witness it. Clara never lets me forget it happened."

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          Miss Odette Chen-Chatraine works at the public library during the summer, which partially explains why Betty spends so much of her time there. The next morning, Betty fills me in on the information I need to be on a need-to-know basis, everything I need to know in order not to make a fool out of myself in front of her the second I land eyes on her, and that involves me bringing Sidney along for the ride because she adores animals.

          "Dad's a cardiologist, Mom's a district attorney," she says, counting the details with her fingers. "If all goes well, she'll let me be an intern for her firm when I'm done with college. It'll look good for law school."

          "Who's the Chen and who's the Chatraine in the relationship?"

          "It's Doctor Chatraine and DA Chen. Don't get them mixed up. They hate it."

          I stop walking, pulling Sidney back by her leash. "Am I meeting them?"

          "Not yet, I don't think. It's just so you know."

          "Ah."

          I have literally no interest in medicine, and I don't think I'd be able to become an attorney, bringing myself to tears every time someone as much raises their voice at me, so I know I don't need to impress these two strangers in order to secure a professional feature. However, I don't want to sound completely uninterested in case their jobs and interests are ever brought up in conversation, and Odette is a fancy name, so I can only assume they won't take it lightly to receive what seems like a provocation coming from the newcomer.

          It's a moderate walk to the library from where Betty parked her car, but I take my time with it and decide to enjoy the view.

          The streets downtown are busy, mostly filled with tourists—I hear foreign languages and different accents here and there whenever we cross paths—but the local merchants somehow manage to keep up with the high demand for services. Most of the tourists gather in the piers, entering and exiting cruise ships, and I even hear the words 'kayaking' and 'whale watching' being ushered around me, both things I've never done in my life. They both spark a flash of interest in me, despite knowing I'll never go through with those whims—I'm too much of a coward to face rough water bodies in the cold—but I want to think of those ideas as proof of small progress.

          The lack of impossibly tall buildings is dizzying, as I'm used to craning my neck up to check where I am, but everything on these streets is reasonably sized. Some of the buildings are so brightly colored they hurt my eyes when both they and the sun look their way, vivid orange instead of gray or brick-colored walls, and the roads aren't nearly as busy as those I know. Betty even takes a photo of me standing next to the Downtown Clock, looming so much taller than me, and it almost feels normal.

          It's not. I'm not here on vacation and my life will never go back to normal, to how it used to be, with friends and a boyfriend, but I don't tell her that.

          She's so enthusiastic when she pulls out her phone, acting like a professional photographer with a terrible French accent when she asks me and Sidney to pose, and I don't want to be a Debbie Downer and ruin her mood. I'm not convinced by my smile in the photos, noticing it clearly doesn't reach my eyes, but she insists they're great. I find my cheeks growing hot with the compliment.

          "We can explore some other day, when the streets aren't as busy," Betty offers, stuffing her phone back inside her purse. "This might be a bit overwhelming for you, right? Juneau is nothing like Chicago."

          I nod. "It's different."

          Her lips curve into a small smile. "A good kind of different, I hope."

          It is. It really is.

          There's a faint, damp smell of rain hanging around, like the sky is about to collapse, and I regret not having brought an umbrella. Betty is prepared for the imminent downpour, even though the weather was perfectly sunny yesterday and a few moments ago, but heavy, gray clouds gather above our heads and we pick up our pace before we're soaked to the bone on our way to the library. We only stop for fish tacos and chips when my stomach growls so loudly she bursts into laughter, a meal that would have cost twice as much back home.

          "They only use fresh ingredients," Betty tells me, wiping the foam from the rim of her cup of beer. She had the nerve to show the waitress a fake ID, like she won't be recognized ("I thought everyone knew each other," I say, still dumbfounded. "In our neighborhood," she clarifies. "Don't underestimate how big Juneau is."). "It's why they're so good."

          "In Chicago, I'd probably be having something else."

          "Yes, yes, I know all about your street food. How many deep-dish pizzas can you eat? Odie can eat two small ones."

          When we leave, she asks the waitress to bag our leftovers—they're enough for an entire second meal—and explains it's Odette's lunch, since she's stuck in the library for the rest of the afternoon and often forgets to bring her own food. The distinctive smell of fried fish lingers in the air as we resume our walk, but my stomach is comfortably full now.

          Then, we stop right in front of two huge glass doors. The whole front of the building is mostly covered in windows, the tallest building I've seen in a while with its five floors, and I'm shaking with enthusiasm to finally get some knowledge etched into the walls of my brain. It's so cliché of me to be aching to check out their selection, but I don't care.

          I don't have enough time to think about it, though. Betty pushes the doors open with her hip and drags me behind her with her free hand, dangling the food bag in front of her.

          "Honey, I'm home!"