ALESSIA
Jasper found me on the roof on the sixth night.
I had gone up because I couldn't sleep and the balcony felt too exposed and Logan's old room felt too small, and the roof of the building was accessible through a door at the end of the third-floor corridor that someone had left propped open with what appeared to be a guitar pick, which in retrospect I should have recognized as a sign.
The roof was flat and warm, the city spread below it in every direction — lights and movement and the particular alive-ness of Shadowcrest at night, which was different from New Orleans' nights in a way I couldn't fully articulate but felt clearly. Something more contained. More intentional. As if the city knew what it was and had decided to be precisely that.
I had been up there for twenty minutes,
