From my bedroom window, across the distance between our houses, I could see Joey's bedroom light on.

Ella had gone there after dropping me off at my house. I wondered what she was telling him. I wondered if he would lie to her, or if he would tell her the same things I tried to tell her at the café. I wondered if she would believe him, because he didn't have a history of mental illness like I did.

My parents thought I was doing homework. Downstairs, Mom and Dad played a raucous game of Apples to Oranges with Cam and Dom. They were happy without the shadow of my problems looming over them. If I walked into the mist and the other me never came back, would they even miss me? Or would they be relieved?

I had suggested to Ella that Joey and I could just go into the mist and put things back the way they were. But if this was the world I originally came from, I didn't know if I should leave. This was where I should be, right? And would it be fair to the other version of me, my doppelganger, to leave her with the mess I'd made of my friendships?

Except everything felt strange. I had spent so many years trying to feel normal only to have it all reversed again. And I kept thinking about Ceci. Whatever happened to her had happened here, and I didn't know what my other self had done. Maybe leaving wouldn't fix anything.

"Aubrey? Are you okay?" Dad leaned in my doorway like one of those TV dads. "Do you want to come downstairs and play a game with us?"

Cam and Dom's screeching floated up the stairwell. "Sounds like someone's getting murdered down there."

Dad smiled and came into my room, sat on my bed. "It's ice cream time. You could come have ice cream with us."

He was trying so hard to include me. It made me wonder if the other me had hidden away in her room a lot more than I did. Or maybe sitting in my room staring out the window wasn't normal for the other me, and Dad could tell that I was a changeling.

"I'm not really hungry," I said. It was true, but it felt like an excuse.

"How was therapy?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Not terrible. I don't know that it helped."

"It takes time."

"Yeah."

"You know, this is all temporary," Dad said. I looked up at him, confused. "High school drama. All that. It'll pass. You're going to go to college and things are going to be totally different."

"Yeah, because no one will know I'm crazy."

Dad leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You are not crazy," he said. "Something traumatic happened to you, and that isn't your fault. Got it?"

The prick of tears in my eyes surprised me. Finally, someone willing to say that I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't imagining things. And that someone being Dad... I remembered how Dad had been so impatient with me the other night, when Betsy had run off. All the times Dad had told me to calm down, or to take my meds, all the other times I'd heard him talking to Mom in low tones about how is this helping her or why can't that doctor figure out what's wrong with her. It meant more to me that I ever could have thought.

Then he ruined it by saying, "I think you should start taking your medication again."

I sucked in a breath through a throat suddenly tight. "What?"

"Dr. Warren talked to you about that today, didn't she?"

She had, all those hours ago. She had talked about something I could take when I felt the old anxiety coming on. "Yeah, but not like a daily medication. Just for emergencies, like my nightmare pills."

Dad's head tilted a little. "No, your mother said it was for anxiety, and you could take it every day."

"Dr. Warren said I could take it when I felt anxious." Panic started to climb up my throat. She had said that, right? Suddenly I couldn't remember her exact words.

"From what we can see, you've been feeling anxious every day," Dad said gently, which felt worse than if he'd yelled at me, because it made me feel like I was the one who was wrong. I was always the one who was wrong.

I couldn't say anything. I wanted to cry, but I didn't want him to see me cry. That would only prove how anxious I was.

Across the way, Joey's bedroom light shone through the mist.

#

The next morning, I watched out the front window until I saw Joey come out of his house, and then I threw my backpack on and hurried over.

My feet crunched over the gravel, and he looked up at the sound. "Hey, Bree. Uh, what's up?" He put his phone away.

I had something else I wanted to say, but that stopped me dead. "Hey." I wanted to ask him what Ella had told him, except then he would know that I'd been watching out my window and seen that she'd gone over there after dropping me off.

He gave me a tight, expectant smile that slowly began to fade as I continued to say nothing.

"She told you she thought I was crazy, didn't she," I blurted out. Before he could respond, I sighed in disgust. "Of course she did. I don't know why I thought I could trust her, after everything."

"Whoa, whoa." Joey put up his hands. "Ella never did anything to you."

I sighed again, this time in defeat. "Fine."

"Hey." He stepped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. "She doesn't think you're crazy."

"Everyone thinks I'm crazy," I said, shrugging him off. "Ella, my friends... my parents. Why would you be any different?"

Joey watched me, his arms dangling at his sides. "If you're crazy, then I'm crazy."

"We have no proof, Joe! How can we ever prove this?" I blinked hard and rubbed at my eyes. Luckily I hadn't even bothered to put on mascara. "Unless we can go back." Now I looked at him, to gauge his reaction.

"How do we do that?" he asked. There was an odd note in his voice.

"The mist! That's where it happened. Eight years ago I crossed over." I had told him this theory right? Or maybe I'd assumed Ella had told him. "Didn't Ella... tell you everything I said?"

Joey blushed a little. "Um, mostly we were making out."

I turned away and glared into the mist-veiled trees. "It's almost like you want to be stuck here forever."

"Not forever," he said after a pause. "But I'm wondering why you want to leave. If this was the world you came from."

His words echoed my own thoughts last night. Why did I want to leave so badly? To run from my problems, which I created? I felt the weight of staying heavy on my shoulders, until Joey touched my elbow.

"Give me until after this weekend," he said softly.

"What's happening this weekend?" All I could think about was the horse show.

He looked at me like I should know. "My dad's coming home?"

"Oh."

It made sense, then, why he wouldn't want to leave this place. He had a girlfriend, and a father. This place was like a dream come true for him.

"Fine." I hitched my bag up on my shoulder. "After this weekend. Monday. We'll skip school."

"How about I call you on Sunday night and we can talk about it?" he suggested as the bus rumbled down the road toward us. I nodded.

At school, I headed to my locker without trying to find Ceci or Angelika or Maddy. I had to accept that I was friendless. Only it wasn't so easy.

"Oh look, she's too good to talk to us now," Ceci said from behind me.

I whirled around.

They were walking by as a unit. An impenetrable threesome. Perfect hair, perfect clothes. I didn't know how they could say I was too good when I hadn't straightened my hair that morning and I was wearing the same pair of jeans I'd been wearing all weekend. When the only makeup I'd put on was mascara and lip gloss.

They stopped at Angelika's locker, two down from mine. "I never said that," I told them.

"No, you just started hanging out with other people," Ceci said. "After ditching me at the party."

When Ceci's voice hitched at the end of that statement, Maddy shouldered in front of her, as if she could bodily protect Ceci from anything I might say.

I knew I should just get my books and go. It would be easier that way. But Ceci made it sound like I had left her on purpose. "I didn't ditch you," I said. "I thought you wanted to be alone with him—"

"You knew she didn't want to be alone with him," Maddy snapped, getting in my face. "We all talked about it. Multiple times. Everyone knows what Jesse is like. You knew, and you left her."

"I didn't!" I cried. "I don't remember things the same way you guys do. I don't remember having that conversation!"

"How long are you going to use whatever happened to you as an excuse for everything?" Angelika said, her voice even and logical. "PTSD doesn't cause amnesia, and it doesn't make you leave your friends. That's all you, Aubrey. You did that."

Maddy nodded. "And now you're apparently hanging out with Ella Peabody instead of even trying to apologize. Instead of coming to riding lessons with us, your real friends."

"What I want to know, Aubrey Warner," Ceci said, her eyes shining, "is what the hell we ever did to you."

___

Things are just getting worse with Aubrey's friends... but what will happen if she leaves?