1. You Remember the Beginning You remember the beginning
You remember your childhood as remarkably unremarkable. Though you lived in a big city, you were educated at home by your mother, so you’d grown up a bit sheltered and socially awkward.

Then, on the verge of adolescence, you remember the day a scandal drove you and your family from San Francisco up to rural Oregon and a town called Prosper. There, in the vastly different landscape of small-town public school, you did not fit in with your new classmates, possessing neither the right surname nor the code to unlocking the secrets of local etiquette—or so your peers were quick to inform you.

You remember how, for two long years, your only friendship came in the form of the countless fairy tales you devoured, all the while convincing yourself that you preferred the company of bound books to that of your schoolmates anyway. Thus, your life remained remarkably unremarkable…

Until several weeks into high school, when new girl Hannah Garber—older, bolder, unapologetic—blew into your life.

You remember that, despite the twelve months and grade level separating you two, your connection with Hannah was immediate and fierce, outsiders united. At long last, you had a true friend alongside whom to navigate all the beauty and cruelties of the world, a kindred soul so entwined with your own, it was as if you had both spent the whole of your lives searching for each other.

You remember strolling the high school courtyard arm in arm like royalty, ignoring the pitiful murmurs that had once dragged you down, all while vowing to each other—through bonds of breath and blood—that your friendship would last forever.

Forever, you whisper-promised. Forever.

And you remember that, for much of that first year in each other’s company, this was how it remained: twin souls cultivating a remarkably remarkable coexistence together, both of you unwavering in your certainty that nothing could tear you apart.

Until the day everything changed.