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the undershirts I stole from Micah. Then I curl in my bed and listen to the rain that is just beginning to fall and drift into sleep.
     
    I’m at Aunt Jane's home, a huge mausoleum of a thing. It's been a year, today, since they plucked me off the boat in the middle of the ocean, and it's the first time I've been out of that hellhole of an institute—Brecken Ridge is more aptly called Broken Rich by the patients, and I hate it. No one listens there. They medicate—they are damn good at that. But they don't listen, and in the fog of medicine, it's hard to tell what is real. If the Boy is real or just a product of my broken mind. I cling to what I know. The boat is real, my parents are dead. I am alone, all that Micah has.
    It feels wrong to miss the island. But I do. And I'm so tired of the pills and the pitying looks and Aunt Jane's sharp voice telling me everything I believe is a lie. I shudder. I don't believe her. I can't believe her.
    But it's been three months since I’ve seen him. Since they changed my medicine and the whole world became a fog. I can barely remember anything from those months, but I remember that he was not in them.
    Is being drugged out of your mind better than being insane? During times like this, I find myself wishing I had died too, on that godforsaken boat in the middle of nowhere.
    I eye the bottle of pills. Aunt Jane doesn't realize I haven't been taking them—I quit the morning I got here and realized she didn't check.
    "Pixie girl?"
    His voice is softly cautious. I twist to look. The Boy never changes—he is the eternal child, always the same. Always a smiling, mischievous presence in the back of my world.
    Except today, his face is creased with worry. It's an odd expression for him, something that registers dimly.
    "What are you doing, pixie girl?"
    I lean into him. He's warm against me, a stark contrast to the cool tiles I'm crouched on.
    "I missed you," I murmur.
    He sighs, a brush of the wind. The Boy, in my mind, will always be associated with the elements: his voice like the rains on the water, his sigh a gentle breeze threatening something heavier. His anger is like tidal waves and lightning and flash fires—destructive and mindless.
    But this, now, is the gentle warmth of spring, the fresh promise of a new world.
    "I always miss you, Gwendy. I'm sorry I've been away."
    "Is something wrong on the island?"
    He shakes his head. "No. And you needn't worry. I'm here now. And I'll always be here, when you really need me."
    "I needed you in Brecken Ridge."
    He nods. "I know."
    It's unspoken that he was there. Something in me—an instinct that I have ignored in the name of sanity—tells me that he was never far. That he will never be far, so long as I continue to want him.
    The Boy won't leave me. Not voluntarily. He wild only go if I order him away. And as bad for me as he is, I can't bring myself to do that.
     

Chapter 5
     
    After class on Wednesday, I linger in my seat as the classroom clears. A few of the guys I recognize from the club wait at the front of the lecture hall, but Peter dismisses them with a jerk of his head and they grudgingly disperse.
    And we're left alone, with only my too short breath and pounding heart as a soundtrack for this meeting.
    I am here to convince him to leave me alone. That I don't want him in my life.
    And he is here to convince me of the opposite. I can see it in the determined gleam of his eyes and the way he leans forward, over the desk. Into my space.
    I look at anything but him.
    “Come on,” Peter says abruptly, standing. His chair screeches as it scraps across the tile. I look at him blankly, and he nods. “Let’s go. I’m not having this conversation in a deserted lecture hall.”
    “This isn’t a chance to get me to go out with you, Peter,” I say, and he jerks a little. “It’s me trying to get you to leave me alone.”
    “And you can—in a coffee house or the juice bar. We’re not doing it here.”
    I swallow hard, but