He snorted. “Do you want a parade?”

His words landed as a heavier-than-expected blow, and I flinched. It wasn’t like him to be quite this sarcastic. And I was tryingto change, couldn’t he see that? I forced myself to keep going, not to snap at him. “My point,” I said, emphasizing that I had one, “is I don’t have the right to be ‘Ally’ any more than Erin has to be…”—I frowned—“well, whatever she’s calling herself.”

I imagined Mrs. Turner trying to adjust to another name for her daughter and felt a surprising pang. She’d made my life as Ally more of a pain than it had to be, but only because she actually cared. Now she’d have to deal with Erin’s version of Lily. And that wasn’t fair at all to her. It was weird. If Mrs. Turner had been like my mom—out of it and only concerned about herself—then my pretending to be Ally would have been easier, and I probably wouldn’t have cared half as much. But maybe some things are better when they’re more difficult, I don’t know.

“Even if we find Erin and get her out, I wasn’t…sent here to do anything. To be Ally.” It killed me to say that out loud. To admit that I didn’t know why I was back, that maybe there wasn’t even a reason. But I couldn’t let Will continue operating under that lie.

“The point is,” he said, mocking me, but with real anger threaded through his tone, “is that Erin doesn’t give a crap what people call her as long as she’s doing whatever it means to be alive. Her definition of it, anyway.”

I shuddered, imagining what that might be. It was like rental-car syndrome, only worse. That limo for prom? No one cared what happened on the inside, because it wasn’t like it was ourcar.

“So forget about the reason you were sent back, or all the reasons you weren’t—”

I flinched at the venom in that last word.

“—and just help me find Erin and Lily,” he said. “Then we’ll worry about what to do next, and who has the right to do what.”

And how to deal with you…He didn’t say it, but I could hear it nonetheless. Great. I’d be looking forward to that. Maybe I could disappear first.

“All right,” I said finally. I could help—or try, at least. If only to spare the Turners another call to the hospital…or jail.

He nodded curtly and put the car back in drive without another word.

Well, at least there wasn’t any more crying. Guess I’d fixed that.

She lied. She freaking liedabout the light. Did Alona have no limits? No moral boundaries? Jesus.

I focused on the road, all too aware of the silence between us. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I got the distinct sense that Alona was upset with me, which was rich. It was never her fault, always somebody else’s. In this case, maybe the light was to blame because she hadn’t received specific directions and had felt forced to make something up. Whatever.

I shook my head in disgust.

And yet, in spite of myself, I couldn’t help imagining what it must have been like for her to find herself back here that first morning, without any information, any guidance on why or what to do next.

Anyone would have been terrified, wondering if they’d done something wrong or if there’d been a mistake or if this was some kind of punishment from on high. After all, who gets sent back from the light ever, let alone after almost a month?

And Alona, always with control issues, would have been even worse. She’d spent most of her living years trying to contain everything, to keep her life—her mother’s condition and her father’s complete lack of willingness to get involved—from imploding. Variables that were beyond her ability to influence ate at her, worried her until she’d done everything she could to manage them and create contingency plans. I knew this girl, probably better than she knew herself.

Still, that didn’t make what she’d done right.

In fact, it made it sting more. She’d been lying to me, not just when she’d met up with me after graduation on her bench, but also when we were kissing outside the Gibley Mansion last month, and when she’d held my hand in the car yesterday. She’d been lying, if only by omission, that whole time. I didn’t know what to do with that. She couldn’t have found another time, an early point in our…whatever it was we had…to tell me the truth? Had she really not trusted me until today?

Don’t get me wrong: I knew, logically speaking, that she’d had plenty of reasons not to trust me, and that it was a significant change for her to tell me a truth she found personally humiliating, even now, when she knew I’d probably be angry.

But I guess I just thought we were well past that point. And it hurt and made me feel a little off balance to learn I was wrong.

I pulled into the parking lot of Krekel’s and found a space.

Alona cleared her throat. “So, what’s the plan?” She was trying to sound normal.

“We’ll take a look around, talk to some people.” I shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “See if they’ve seen her.” My fear was that even if Erin had actually come here, she was already long gone and no one would remember anything.

“I’ll handle the looking, you take the talking,” Alona said with a nod.

“You think?” I muttered. Given that no one else could hear her, it was the only option that made any kind of sense. And no, it wasn’t the most mature response ever. Sue me. I was still struggling with the bomb she’d just dropped on me.

She stiffened. “Hey, you know what? I said I’m sorry, and if that’s not good enough—”

“Actually, you didn’t,” I said, biting off the words.

She stopped, frowning, her head cocked to one side as if she were mentally replaying our earlier conversation. “No, I’m pretty sure I—”

I just looked at her.

“Oh.” She stared down at her hands for a long moment before glancing up at me. “Okay, well…I’m sorry,” she said defiantly, chin jutting out in challenge, daring me to…what, gloat? Like that was at all what I felt like doing in this situation.

“Fine, whatever. Let’s just do this.” I reached for the door handle.

“It’s not…I wouldn’t do the same thing now, okay?” she said quietly. “I just—”

“Didn’t trust me,” I said, my mouth tight.

“Didn’t know you,” she corrected. “And now I do.” She met my gaze without flinching.

The steadiness in her clear green eyes reassured me that she meant what she said, and some of the anger and uncertainty bubbling in my chest melted away. But not all of it. How was I supposed to know if we were really on the same page? That she wouldn’t, at some point, reveal some new level of duplicity? Maybe it was my turn not to trust.

I sighed and shoved open the door. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time for now.”

She nodded and followed me out, but not before I caught the flash of hurt in her expression. I supposed she probably wanted something more for one of her rare apologies, and maybe she had a point, but this was as much as I could manage at the moment.

“Be subtle,” I said as we started for the restaurant. “Remember, if you could see her, she can probably see you, and she’ll know what you’re after.”

Alona nodded, but I got the sense her mind wasn’t entirely focused on the task at hand.

“And if you start to feel…” I hesitated, not sure what to say.

“Less than myself?” she asked, her lips twisting into a wry smile.

“Don’t even talk to her, just come find me.”

She nodded again.

I felt my heart pounding harder than normal as we walked into Krekel’s, which was packed with the late lunch/early, early dinner crowd, and past a family that seemed to consist solely of screaming children and some people our age that I didn’t recognize. They were just out living their normal lives, blissfully unaware of everything happening beneath the surface.