Chapter 46
Summer's POV
The alarm went off at 6:00 AM, but I'd been awake since four-thirty, staring at my phone in the dark. No messages. No missed calls. Nothing from Kieran—not that I'd expected anything, not after the way he'd looked right through me in the hallway yesterday, his eyes flat and distant as if I were just another stranger passing by.
I dragged myself out of bed and down to the pool, hoping the water would quiet the noise in my head. Forty laps of freestyle, each stroke harder than the last, trying to exhaust myself into not thinking about the way Mr. Davis had screamed at him in front of everyone. The way Kieran's right hand had trembled when he'd tried to hold the basketball. The way he'd walked away from me afterward like I was the last person on earth he wanted to see.
I pulled myself out of the pool, breathing hard, muscles burning. My reflection stared back at me from the floor-to-ceiling mirrors—wet hair plastered to my head, chest heaving, eyes red-rimmed from chlorine or tears or both. I looked like a mess. I felt like a worse one.
This wasn't like before. This wasn't the comfortable routine of swimming to stay in shape, to look good in a cheerleading uniform, to maintain the image everyone expected of me. This was punishment. This was me trying to beat the helplessness out of my body, to do something, anything, that felt like taking control when everything else was spinning wildly out of my grasp.
I thought about Walden Pond. About cold water closing over my head, about Kieran's arms around me even as his own strength failed, about the way he'd kept saying my name over and over like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to consciousness. In my first life, I'd been so weak I couldn't even try to save myself. I'd just dragged him down with me.
And now? Now I was watching him drown again, in a different way, and I still couldn't do a goddamn thing to help.
I grabbed my towel and pressed it against my face, breathing hard. My hands were shaking. When had they started shaking?
---
My backup iPhone—the one I kept specifically for my old social circle—was vibrating like it was having a seizure when I got back to my room. Eight messages from Ava Davis, each one more aggressively cheerful than the last.
Summer! Evan's going to Martha's Vineyard for Thanksgiving!
His mom Diane is hosting a charity gala. She invited like half of Boston's old money families
Do you think you could get me an invitation? Please please please 🙏
Also, about that Newbury Street boutique bill from summer vacation... you said you'd settle it for me, right? ❤️
Come on, we're best friends!
I stared at the screen, feeling something cold and sharp twist in my chest. Best friends. Right. The kind of best friends who'd disappeared the second Hayes & Co. collapsed, who'd posted anonymous shit about me on The Whisper while pretending to my face that they still cared, who'd watched my mother get dragged away in handcuffs and hadn't sent so much as a text message asking if I was okay.
The kind of best friends who'd never once asked why I'd suddenly stopped eating lunch, why I'd started flinching when people raised their voices, why I'd worn long sleeves even in summer to hide the bruises I'd given myself digging my nails into my arms just to feel something other than numbness.
I typed back with fingers that felt too heavy, too clumsy.
Sorry Ava, I'm using Thanksgiving break to study for physics.
About the boutique bill—I remember you being the one who charged everything to your own card.
And I can't help with the Martha's Vineyard invitation. That's Whitmore family business, not mine.
Ava's response came back almost immediately.
Summer you've CHANGED 😢
We're best friends, how can you treat me this way?
I muted Ava's contact without responding and threw the phone across the room. It landed on my bed with a soft thump that felt nowhere near as satisfying as I'd wanted it to.
Changed. Yeah, I'd changed. I'd died and come back and watched the person I loved most in the world get publicly humiliated because of me, because I'd been too stupid and selfish and blind to see what was coming, and now he wouldn't even look at me.
So yeah, Ava. I'd fucking changed.
---
By 8:00 AM, I was sitting at my desk, laptop open to a tab titled "Greater Boston Physics Tutoring Programs," but I wasn't really reading it. I was just staring at the screen, watching the cursor blink, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do now.
Kieran was avoiding me. That much was clear. He wouldn't answer my texts—I'd sent three yesterday, each one more pathetic than the last, and he'd left them all on read. He wouldn't talk to me in the hallways. He'd even switched his usual route to the library, taking the long way around through the back stairwell just to avoid passing my locker.
And I got it. I did. After what happened in gym class, after the way everyone had stared and whispered and laughed, the last thing he probably wanted was to be seen with me. The girl whose ex-boyfriend's friends had orchestrated his public humiliation. The girl who'd tried to report it and only made things worse by drawing more attention to what had happened.
But I couldn't just... leave him alone. Not when I knew he was hurting. Not when I knew from my first life how this story ended if nobody intervened.
The problem was, I didn't know where to find him. Thanksgiving break started tomorrow, which meant no school for four days. The library would be closed. I'd helped him get that job specifically so he'd have a safer, quieter place to work, but now that advantage had turned into an obstacle—without the library open, I had no idea where he'd be.
I knew he lived in Southie. I knew his mom worked at The Happy Patty, that awful restaurant with the greasy owner who treated his employees like garbage. I knew Kieran probably had to pick up extra shifts during the break because his family needed the money, especially with Lily's medical expenses.
But I couldn't just show up at The Happy Patty. That would be insane. That would be crossing every boundary he'd tried to set, invading his space in the most intrusive way possible.
I needed a reason. A legitimate reason to be in his neighborhood, to run into him naturally, to create an opportunity for him to talk to me if he wanted to without forcing him into anything.
That's when I remembered what Mia had mentioned last week—a tutoring center near MIT called Quantum Tutoring. She'd been looking into it for herself, trying to boost her physics grade, and she'd said it was only one subway stop from Southie.
I pulled up their website. They were open during Thanksgiving week, offering intensive review sessions for students preparing for midterms. The sessions were expensive—$150 per hour—but that didn't matter. What mattered was that if Kieran was working somewhere in that area, if he was picking up shifts at another restaurant or doing some kind of delivery job, there was a chance I might see him.
It was a long shot. It was probably stupid. But it was the only idea I had.
I clicked on the registration form and started filling it out, my hands still trembling slightly.