Beatrice.
The silver bracelet gleamed against the rusted iron of the fire escape like a drop of mercury on charcoal.
I stood frozen in my doorway, staring at it through the gap in the curtains. My hand pressed against my stomach—not because of the nausea that had been plaguing me for days, but because something about that bracelet made my entire body go cold.
I knew that bracelet.
Ten years ago, a boy with sandy brown hair and eyes that crinkled when he smiled had fastened it around my wrist. We'd been sitting by a lake at summer camp, fireflies dancing between us like fallen stars.
"So you'll always have a piece of me," Nathaniel had said, his voice soft with the kind of promise only eighteen-year-old boys make. "No matter where we go. No matter what happens."
I'd worn it for three
