Nine: ReedI was going to kill Rose. No way could I have slept through being stepped on and Rowyn's groaning. Yet they just yammered away like I wasn't even there. They were dumb. Well, that might not have been entirely true. Rowyn was hungover, and Rosalyn was dumb like a fox. I had no idea why all of the sudden she felt the need to press the issue with Rowyn and me. I'd realized I needed to be close to Rowyn… closer than just her friend, when we were in the fifth grade. We only worked because I never stated it with anything heavier than a joke. It was just there, in the atmosphere, but never in our faces. I imagined that our precariously built tower would crumble in the presence of that conversation, and I wasn't ready to have it. If I just ignored it, maybe one day I'd wake up and not be
