The Long Way out

PROLOGUE — Before We Left If you ask anyone in Briar Point what it’s like to grow up here, they’ll tell you it feels like living inside a snow globe. Quiet. Perfect. Untouched. And impossible to escape. I used to think that was a good thing. Our town sits on the Rhode Island coast—postcard pretty, with blue-gray cottages and a boardwalk that always smells like salt and fried dough. I’ve lived here my whole life. So have Jackson Blake, Cassandra Reyes, Isaac Porter, and Matty Collins. We were the five kids teachers paired together automatically, like we came as a set. The kind of friends who passed crayons under the table in kindergarten and never really stopped sharing pieces of ourselves after that. By seventeen, people called us “the inseparable five.” I don’t know if that was meant as a compliment or a warning. What I do know is this: The summer before senior year is supposed to feel endless. Soft. Safe. Ours wasn’t. It started on a night in early June, the kind where the humidity wraps around you like a warm blanket and the crickets don’t shut up for anything. We were all sitting on the roof of Jackson’s van behind the abandoned ice factory—the place we always called home base—watching the last sliver of sun disappear. Matty was beside me, his arm draped over my shoulders, tracing little circles on my skin like he had a thousand times before. I thought I knew everything about him. About all of them. We’d grown up together; we’d practically grown into each other. But that night, something in the air felt different. Electric. Unsettled. Jackson kept stealing glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking—the kind that hit you like a memory you aren’t ready to remember. Cassandra was snapping photos of us with her old film camera, pretending nothing ever scared her. Isaac was lying flat on his back, pointing out constellations with the half-whispered certainty of someone who needed the universe to make more sense than people did. And me? I was trying to freeze the moment in my mind, because I had this strange feeling—this tightness in my chest—that life as we knew it was about to split open. It happened when Matty said, “Let’s leave. All of us. Right after school ends. Road trip. Every landmark we can hit before August.” Everyone laughed at first. Then Isaac said, “Wait—you’re serious?” Matty grinned, wild and reckless in that way only he could be. “Dead serious. One last summer. One last adventure. We’ll never get this time again.” Jackson’s eyes flickered toward me, searching for something—permission, maybe. Or warning. If I’d known what that trip would actually become— the secrets, the danger, the heartbreak we couldn’t outrun— I would have said no. I should have said no. But instead I smiled, leaned into Matty’s shoulder, and said the two words that would change everything. “Let’s go.” And just like that, the snow globe cracked. Our perfect little world shattered. We just hadn’t realized yet that we wouldn't all make it home the same.