“We’re flying over Georgia right now,” I hear Daisy say. “We shouldn’t be long.” Her voice shakes really badly. I don’t like that she’s talking to our parents first.

Ryke’s concerned gaze flits between Daisy and his cards. “Do you have a king?”

“Go Fish.”

“Lily’s taking a nap,” Daisy says.

Ryke picks up a card and then kicks my knee. “Your turn.” Right.

“Do you have a…” I stare at my cards. “An eight?” I look at the bathroom door, not hearing a peep from Lo. But he leaves the door cracked so we know he’s not doing something rash, like chugging alcohol or…worse. My chest hurts, like someone decided to stand on my diaphragm.

Ryke hands me his eight and grumbles under his breath about how this is the stupidest fucking game. But he’s partially concentrated on my sister in the corner.

“I can’t wake her up,” Daisy says, her voice growing more frantic and low. “Wait, please…I don’t want to…Mom.”

Ryke stands up before I can find the strength to put weight on my gelatin legs. He goes over to the four-chair alcove. He has to lean over a glowering Melissa to reach Daisy. “Give me the phone,” he whispers, but I can still hear his hostile voice.

“Mom,” Daisy says. “I have to go…But…I…Wait…I…”

Ryke grabs the phone from her before she has a breakdown. And at the same time, Rose is halfway across the plane aisle, her eyes dead-set on me with so much confidence and power that I immediately wish I was her. Strong and built like a fortress—able to withstand anything that’s thrown at me.

I meet her gaze, but I point to Ryke who now clutches my mother—or the phone that contains my mother. Rose understands. She grabs Daisy’s cell from him and immediately goes into crisis management mode.

“Mother, calm down. No,” she snaps. “No.” And that’s all I hear as she struts back to the cabin to talk in private. She said the one word that Daisy couldn’t.

I’m not sure I could either.

Daisy stares out the window. Ryke whispers something to her, and she just nods and gestures to me.

Ryke comes back to the floor, collecting his cards and fanning them in his hands. “It’s my turn, I think,” he says. “Do you have a ten?”

“Ryke?”

“Yeah?”

“Whatever happens, you’ll take care of him, right?”

He goes rigid. “I don’t know what that fucking means.”

“It means what it means,” I breathe. “He doesn’t have anyone besides you and me. I just need to know you’ll be there.”

“And so will you,” he snaps.

“Not if my parents force me into rehab or halfway across the country.” My mother will want to bury away this problem by transporting it to a different time zone.

“You’re almost twenty-one. You’re a fucking adult. Your parents can’t make you do shit, Lily.”

“I owe them—”

“For tarnishing the Fizzle name? For bringing you up with cash and luxury?” He keeps shaking his head. “You and Lo have it so warped. You think you’re indebted to your parents because they gave you everything you have. But they didn’t give you what fucking mattered. They owe you. They owe you for not asking why their daughter isn’t home. Why she looks distant and sad. Why she has barricaded herself in a fucking apartment with her boyfriend. They have failed you, and if they tell you to get on a fucking plane or go to rehab—where we all know you shouldn’t be—then you need to tell them to go to hell. And if you don’t, Lo and I will. I promise you that.”

The right words stay at the back of my throat—thanks, Ryke. It’s a hard phrase to produce, especially when he delivers his opinions with such fervor and force.

I land on something though.

“Go Fish.”

He lets out a short laugh as he reaches for the deck. “You’ll be fine, Calloway.”

At least one of us believes it.

I lean against the bathroom wall, staring at my pallid face and sunken eyes. I look like utter shit. I feel even worse. My left hand keeps shaking, and I have to clench my fingers into a fist just to make it stop. My father bitches me out on the other line for ignoring his previous calls.

“I’m in the goddamn air,” I remind him curtly, keeping my voice low so Ryke doesn’t hear. “Unless you’d like reception to magically be invented over the ocean.”

“Hey, I’m just as fucking livid as you are.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” I say, my voice slightly breaking. I don’t want to be talking to him while Lily looks one second from opening the hatch and jumping from the plane without a parachute. And every time I picture her crying like that—goddamn, I can’t start. I rub my eyes to push back the emotions. I want to kick the wall so fucking hard, and I swallow a scream that needs to escape.

“Whoever this motherfucker is,” my father says, “I will personally rip him a new asshole, Loren. You hear me? He’s not getting away with this shit.”

I have to ask. “Did you do it? Did you leak it?” One week after I told him, the news exploded across the globe. Is it really all a coincidence?

There’s a long pause. And then this: “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Did you not hear what I just said? I have busted my ass trying to find this fucker.” He growls a little. Yeah, it’s not him.

“Then who?” I ask. “Who would do this? What do they possibly have to gain?”

“Money,” my father says flatly. “We’re still working on some leads.”

I bring the phone away from mouth and struggle between not shouting and screaming my head off. No sound escapes, but I catch myself in the mirror, and I look like I’m fighting an invisible battle against a shadowed enemy. I look crazy and tortured.

“I have to go,” my father says quickly. “Greg is on the other line. I’ll talk to you soon. Keep your head up.” Words of encouragement from my father. Those don’t come often. So I take them.

We hang up at the same time. I lean over the sink and splash some water on my face. Trying to get my shit together.

I should call Brian, the therapist that Ryke and Lily believe I’m talking to about my deep inner thoughts. But I can’t discuss alcohol. Even the thought makes my stomach turn. Because Lily shouldn’t be worried if I’m going to relapse. The world is crashing down on her shoulders, and I don’t want to add to that weight.

I let out a long breath, bearing her pain that feels so much a part of me. We’ve become entangled, years and years of lies and childhood memories and stories all wrapped into one. I know her better than her sisters. I know her sometimes better than she does herself. I know just how much this is killing her inside.

And then one thought punctures me.

I’m here.

I could be at a bar. Passed out cold.

I could be in rehab. Away from her.

I have the chance to be by her side through all of this.

So go, you stupid bastard.

That’s what it takes. I’m out the door.

No one speaks in the car, from the tarmac to our house in Princeton, New Jersey. Melissa calls a taxi to bring her back to Penn, so at least we don’t have to deal with that.

Connor’s black limo gives us all plenty of room. Lily rests her head in my lap, trying to play cat’s cradle with my shoelace. She stopped crying sometime between our fifth game of Go Fish and when the plane landed.

I want her to call Allison, but she keeps saying she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. And I guess I have no right to force her to speak to her therapist when I’ve been avoiding mine. Regardless, I plan on calling Allison tonight whether Lily does or not. I have to ask about medication for Lil.