Chapter 3

Jennifer waits in the shadows, looking cold despite the black tights and the ragged skirt and the long-sleeved shirt predicting the death of the establishment, and she falls into step with him without a greeting.

“Bournemouth or Penzance?” he asks, and she scoffs.

“Bournemouth,” her voice is a raspy drawl, from screaming to her music and screaming at her teachers and screaming at her parents. Jennifer rebels; against what, Ryan doesn’t know. “To enjoy ourselves. My cousins are coming too. God.”

Ryan hums in false sympathy. He rarely sees his cousins; the last time was Emily’s wedding, where she had grown up before him, and she looked very much as he imagined his mother to have been, once.

“Four weeks with him,” she adds sourly.

‘Him’ could be her father, or her brothers—any one of them—or her uncle, or even the aforementioned cousins. Ryan has no idea, and it is too hot to endure Jennifer’s rants, too hot to even try to comprehend her.