I pushed open the hotel's grand doors, which creaked softly as I stepped inside, wearing the white dress Adrian Ludlow had picked out for me himself. The whole hall was decked out with red roses that blazed so brightly they made my eyes burn. Emblazoned across the massive LED screen were the words: Happy Engagement to Adrian & Vivian Hale. Three days prior, he'd zipped up this very dress for me, then wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. "Keep Saturday free. I've got a surprise for you." We'd been dating for six years, and both our families had long assumed the only thing left was for us to go and get our marriage license. Just then, Vivian walked straight toward me. Her dress was identical to mine. The only difference? Hers was bright, fiery red. Two of our childhood best friends spotted me in the crowd and called out, grinning and teasing, "Perfect timing! Vivian was just looking for a bridesmaid." Adrian sauntered over as if nothing were out of the ordinary and reached out to tuck my slipping dress strap back into place. "Why do you look so pale? Are you feeling sick?" I stared straight into his eyes. "Then what am I to you?" His gaze darted away for a split second. "You're part of the family, of course. You're family." At that moment, the whole ridiculous situation almost made me snort. What none of them knew was that I'd just passed the selection process for the nation's top-secret deep-earth exploration project. For the next ten years, I'd be stuck living and working deep in the heart of the Vast Wastes, at a drilling base nearly 12 miles underground.

At our graduation party, my boyfriend, Tate Blake, said the five of us had known each other for so many years that we had to give me a little "graduation keepsake" before we went our separate ways. The lights went out, and the big screen lit up with a title: Four Years of Cordelia Sutton: The Roast. Kyle Vaughn, one of my childhood friends, played a video of me forcing myself to finish a run despite having heatstroke during freshman fitness training. "She'll do anything to save face," he said with a laugh. James Hale put up a photo of me asleep in a hospital corridor after accompanying him to the emergency room in the middle of the night. "She loves playing the saint, too. All anyone has to do is call, and she comes running." Then my best friend, Madison Mercer, showed everyone a photo of me with my makeup streaked by tears after a breakup. "This one's a classic." The whole class roared with laughter. Then the final video began. It was from the night my grandmother had been critically ill the previous year. I had hidden in a hospital stairwell and broken down sobbing. Behind the camera, Tate soothed me in a low voice. "Go ahead and cry. I won't let anyone see." Now he had edited that footage into the grand finale and titled it Cordelia Sutton's Meltdown Highlights. My two childhood friends joined in the jeering. "We're graduating. Can't you take a joke?" Madison raised her glass to me. "Here's your last lesson. Learn to accept how other people see you." When Tate realized I wasn't laughing, he finally switched off the projector. "We were just having some fun. Don't make it some big moral issue." 'He's right. There's no need to argue about right and wrong anymore.' I took off my matching bracelet. 'Your time in my life is over, too.'