“If we work backward from the night before Valentine’s, when the crash happened,” Sawyer says, “where would that put you—first of the year, maybe?”

“Christmas,” I say, thinking hard. “In fact, it was Christmas Day. We went to a movie—Trey, Rowan, and me. That first vision was in the theater.”

“You’re sure?” Ben asks.

I think harder. “Yes.”

“So if it follows a pattern,” he continues, “you would have been saved from some tragedy a day or two before, right?”

“I guess,” I say. “But like I said, I wasn’t—”

“Well, maybe somebody just did such a great job of saving you that you didn’t even know you were saved,” Bridget says.

Trey sits up. He starts to speak, and then he stops, hand poised in the air as if he was about to make a point. And then he looks at me. “Wait,” he says softly, closing his eyes, his face concentrating. “Wait a second.” His eyes pop open. “When did you get mugged?”

Sawyer sits up in concern. “You got mugged?”

But I can’t answer Sawyer because I’m thinking hard. “Christmas Eve, wasn’t it, Trey? Or the night before that? But it was no big deal. Nothing really happened. The guy ran off when another guy came out of nowhere to help me.” I look around the sea of faces, all wearing the same look. “Oh,” I say.

I sit up as the details of that night flood my brain. The rush of footsteps in the dark. The guy shoving my pizza delivery bag at my face and grabbing me from behind, then pushing my face into a snowy bush. “He had a knife,” I say. A shiver runs up my spine as I remember the click in my ear.

Everybody’s silent for a second. And then Bridget says, “So there you go. You didn’t start it. Next question?”

“So the guy . . .” I say, passing my hand over my eyes, trying to concentrate. It’s like I can’t quite put all the details together.

“The guy who saved you had a vision. He was waiting for you,” Rowan says.

“Right,” Trey says. “He saved you, and passed on the vision to you.”

“And you passed it to me, and that guy probably got it from someone else, too,” Sawyer says. “The point is, you didn’t start it. You,” he says, touching my shoulder, “are not responsible for this.”

It’s like somebody pulled a hundred-pound weight off my back. “I didn’t start it,” I whisper.

Rowan smiles. “You didn’t start it.”

“And,” Trey says, “neither did Dad. You aren’t hereditarily insane. Yet, anyway.”

It’s almost too much for me to take in.

I look at Bridget. “What the hell, Bridge,” I say.

She shrugs, looking smug. “Logic,” she says.

I think of all the risks we took. The crash. The school shooting. Nearly drowning. The graduation stampede. We all could have died so many times. And it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my responsibility. I can hardly comprehend it. All I know is that I feel true relief for the first time in over six months.

• • •

Later, when Trey and Ben take a walk in the school playground in the moonlight and Rowan goes inside to chat with Charlie, Sawyer and I drive Bridget Brinkerhoff back to her hotel. She’s done getting treatments in Chicago for a while, and will travel back home to Michigan with her parents tomorrow—via land, of course. Maybe we’ll see her again. Maybe we won’t. That’s how we leave it.

But when Sawyer and I drive back without her, it feels like a really long chapter of my life is over. There’s just one thing missing. One thing I have to do before I can really close the door on this.

“Can we stop at that complex across from the Traverse Apartments for a minute?” I ask.

Sawyer glances sidelong at me. “You wanna have sexy time there?”

I laugh. “No.” A wave of nerves washes over me. “I just want to go back to the scene of the crime. The incident.”

“Where you got mugged?”

“Yeah.”

He turns off to head in that direction, and soon he’s pulling into the parking lot.

“There,” I say, pointing to a parking spot.

He parks and we get out of the car. I walk to the sidewalk where I was standing when I heard the rush of footsteps. Walk up to the bush that had been full of snow. It’s beautiful and green now, with a few extra-long spears sticking out of it.

“Where did the rescue guy come from?” Sawyer asks.

I tug on one of the spears. “I don’t know. My face was full of snow. I didn’t see. Somewhere over there.” I look up and point. “I was so scared.”

Sawyer pulls me close in a side hug and holds me.

“Do you want to knock on doors?” he asks, only partly teasing.

“Thinking about it,” I say. “But what are the chances he actually lives here? The vision god isn’t that thoughtful to make these tragedies convenient, you know?”

We stand for a few more minutes, Sawyer letting me take my time to process. And now I can’t believe I never put the two incidents together. Like Bridget says, it’s logic. I shake my head, deep in thought.

A door to one of the buildings opens.

Four twentysomething guys come out, talking a little too loudly for the time of night it is. Sawyer’s grip on my shoulder grows noticeably tighter as the group heads toward us, but they are talking about going on a beer run and not paying attention to us.