“Cool,” I tell him, even though I’d rather gouge out my eyes than have anything BREAKOUT-related on my feeds. “And impressive. A few coats of fresh paint can truly cover up anything, huh?”

  A shadow passes over Malachi’s face, but it’s gone as soon as I register it. Maybe I imagined it—a trick of the LED lights. “It’s good to see you, Z,” he says. His tone is warm enough, but his dark eyes remain guarded. “I know it’s been a hard year.”

  “For both of us, I thought.” My gaze drifts to the merchandise kiosk. “Seems like your parents are doing fine, though.”

  “We’ve been lucky,” the Game Master says. “Got a deal on the lease in exchange for improvements to the property.”

  “Improvements?” I scoff, but there’s a lump forming in the middle of my throat. “I didn’t know Sevier County Plaza sponsored a negligent homicide discount.”

  Malachi doesn’t take the bait. “Well, it’s about time you showed. You cut it to the wire, actually—a few more minutes of waiting, and we’d have to start tonight’s game without you.”

  “You knew I was coming?” This time, my words are raspy. Wrong. Jesus, Steffi, get a grip. I’m glad my hands are in my pockets so Malachi can’t see them shake.

  He shrugs. “It’s tradition, isn’t it?” he asks, clearly relishing my disarmament. He picks up a nacho from the dregs of the checkered carton in front of him—mass-produced arcade food from next door, no doubt—and swirls it around in what’s left of the radioactive-orange cheese. “Y’all booked a room. Arsonist’s Revenge, 11:00 PM.”

  My stomach lurches. Blaring alarms. Sweat pooling at the base of my spine. Choked screams, acrid bile, and stinging eyes. I blink to clear the fragments of memory, unable to tell if they’re real or imagined, and refocus on Malachi. “Let me get this straight. Your family is in the middle of a high-profile lawsuit for a fire that started at one of their locations, and now BREAKOUT is offering an escape room named Arsonist’s Revenge?”

  Malachi’s smile widens. “What can I say? People are curious, and curiosity is good for business.” He crunches the nacho between his too-white teeth. “You of all people should understand that.”

  I want to ask so many follow-up questions. But even though Malachi is part of my former friend group, he’s not who I need to talk to tonight. “The others,” I say instead. “Are they here?”

  “Malachi. If she’s not coming, then let’s get this over with,” a scathing voice demands before the James-Mays’ only child can answer, and my throat tightens as the paneled door of the Briefing Room slides aside and Guinevere Mitchell-Moore stalks into view.

  She’s taller. Tanner. Her long half-up caramel-brown hair is adorned with tiny star-shaped claw clips, and she’s wearing a cream linen crop top, a Madagascan sunset moth forewing necklace, and the low-cut neutral-toned patchwork pants she thrifted with me at the Underground after we both bombed our APES exam sophomore year. Her storm-gray eyes cut to mine, and her full lips curl into a sneer. “Oh, good,” she says, the word slicing straight across my sternum. “You made it.”

  “Didn’t know the party started without me.” I give my invitation a little wave, and Guinevere rolls her eyes. In the glow of the lobby, with the colored lights glinting off her bare olive-skinned shoulders, she looks indestructible. Divine. But since the accident, she’s been through it, too: a slew of psychiatric evals, a top-rated equine therapy rehabilitation program all the way in Lenoir City, too many prescribed and then discarded mood stabilizers to count. I know, because I’ve devoted myself to it—to piecing together her postfire life, bit by incandescent bit, from her hotshot federal judge father’s Facebook photos and Cherokee Affinity Club Google Alerts and newspaper clippings from the Tennessee Star.

  Guinevere crosses her arms, her track-star muscles tensing, but the bottled rage swirling in her gaze isn’t my problem. She’s been pissed at everyone—and everything—since Matt died. As if dating him for four out of the nine months that he and his brother lived in Cedar Creek gives her the right to grieve more than the rest of us. As if she can blame me for the fact her boyfriend was my best friend. As if it’s my fault she kissed me after his funeral.

  “Before we get started, Z, I’ll need you to fill out the liability release form,” Malachi says, tapping the laminated QR code taped to the lobby counter, and I blink to clear the phantom taste of Guinevere’s warm lips from my mind. Back in professional Game Master mode, I see. “Bathrooms are down the hall. Everything else is already set up, so once you submit your waiver, we’ll be ready to—”

  “ZAMEKOVA?!” an incredulous voice bellows, and before I can blink, I’m being crushed in a bear hug clouded by sandalwood and aromatic aftershave. Guinevere’s hurricane glower dials up to Category 5, but it doesn’t matter.

  Because Santo Xavier Cesari, the person I came here to see, is suddenly beaming at me.

  “Hey,” I say, voice breathless, lungs recovering as I take a step back to soak in Matt’s brother. Unlike Malachi, Santo looks so different now compared to the last time I saw him—stringy bleach-fried curls flopping into his thick eyebrows, a smattering of new moles around his glittering eyes, a fresh piercing punctuating the edges of his healing purplish-orange skin—but he’s still my dead best friend’s identical twin, which means the only way to fend off the grief that rolls through me at the sight of his burn-scarred face is to bite down on my own tongue so hard that it almost bleeds. “You’re back in town.”

  “Hey yourself,” Santo says, casually adjusting the collar of his crewneck—tour merch from the Hu, his favorite band—like everything is fine. Like it couldn’t be better. The ghost of a smile tugs at his mouth, and my chest constricts with the familiarity of the gesture. Trying to get through this next hour might just kill me.

  After his brother’s funeral, Santo wiped his socials and vanished from Cedar Creek, opting instead to finish his senior-year GED requirements as an exchange student in Perugia, Italy. As a result, he mostly managed to escape the death threats, hallway rumors, and scathing op-eds that plagued the rest of us in the months after Matt’s death. But Santo didn’t just succeed at avoiding the local hate mail; over the course of the past year, my increasingly desperate attempts to reach him went unopened, unanswered, and unread. When I brought up the fact that he went no contact to Call-Me-Diana, my hypnotherapist, she said Santo likely needed space to process what happened to us. But I don’t understand how he felt okay with disappearing after everything we went through. And I definitely don’t understand how he can stomach being back in BREAKOUT so easily, standing here in the wash of the now-purple LEDs as if we’re not all stained with the exact same tragedy.

  “I like the hair,” I tell him, praying he doesn’t notice the tremor in my voice. “It’s…”

  Less like Matt’s, I almost say. But then I don’t.

  Santo grins. “Yeah. Different, right? Figured I needed to cover up these fucking burns somehow.” He flicks an untoned yellow-blond strand out of his face, revealing a single charm—a silver cross—dangling from his right earlobe. “I wanted it to be more platinum, though, so I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it now that I’m back in town. I’ve already gotten strange looks from basically a million baby boomers while pumping gas at Pal’s.” Behind the counter, our Game Master clears his throat. “And Mal thinks it’s weird,” Santo adds, rolling his eyes with equal parts exasperation and endearment, “but he’s wearing outdated Jordans, so his fashion opinion is henceforth null and void.”

  I blink to buy myself a few seconds to register everything Santo just told me. His voice, like his updated aesthetic, is more difficult to understand now that his larynx is lined with vocal scars. Then again, none of us escaped the fire unscathed: Tobias’s asthma—and, strangely enough, laundry list of allergies—worsened from the smoke inhalation. Guinevere developed COPD symptoms. Charity has keloid scarring straight across her upper chest. Malachi managed to avoid physical injury, but his online fanbase across his influencer accounts, @Mal.The.Reel.King, plummeted as a result of his affiliation with BREAKOUT’s scandal. And thanks to a charred beam that knocked me unconscious around the time the flames first erupted, I don’t remember anything from the night of the accident besides the kind-faced paramedic who held my hand in the flashing ambulance. How I managed to give eyewitness testimony to Sheriff Stallard for fifteen minutes without him realizing I had a severe head injury is beyond me, but that’s the kind of expertise I’ve come to expect from the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department.

  For the past year, though, I’ve had to live with the fact that not only do I not know how I managed to stumble out of the flames ravaging Cedar Creek’s BREAKOUT Wanderland escape room last May, but I can’t remember why my best friend—why Matteo Luca Cesari—didn’t.

  Malachi sighs, grounding me back in the BREAKOUT lobby of Friendship Springs. “I’m telling you, it’s not your look.”

  “When did you?” I ask Santo. “Get back, I mean.”

  He furrows his bleached brows. The left one has a shaved slit in it; the other sports a studded curved barbell. “A week ago? I flew in for graduation. Though I should say”—Santo slips a ring-adorned hand into his baggy pants and pulls out a rectangle of black-and-pink cardstock that’s identical to mine—“this is one hell of a welcome.”

  Guinevere snorts just as the door of the Briefing Room slides open to reveal a short, pale, skinny girl with her hair in two ash-blond Dutch braids. “You came!” Charity Noelle Adler squeals with a level of enthusiasm only a well-seasoned student body president can pull off. Her face is sharper than I remember. There’s something clutched in her skeletal hand—her own invitation, maybe?—but before I can get a good look, she’s squeezing my midriff and adding a note of nauseatingly sweet perfume to Santo’s lingering aftershave and our Game Master’s cologne.

  “It’s wonderful you’re here,” she sings as she pulls away. “We missed you!” In the glow of the lobby, it’s easy to notice the level of understated coordination between Charity’s Tennessee-River-pearl-studded earlobes, smart black slacks, and houndstooth-patterned blazer. She’s dressed like she’s about to take charge of a board meeting or artfully cuss out a PTA member instead of play an escape room, but there’s nothing subtle in the way her overplucked eyebrows lift in surprise when she notices what I’m wearing.

  “I’m not late, am I?” I ask, attempting to distract her by emulating her fake-ass sincerity. “I know the invitation said to arrive fifteen minutes early, but…”

  Her gaze lingers on my leather trench coat for a half-second too long before her attention darts to her watch. “No, you’re fine! You’re just the last to arrive, so Gee said you weren’t going to make it. But”—Charity’s doe-brown eyes flit back up to my face—“here you are!”

  “Here I am,” I repeat.

  She pouts sympathetically. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better,” I tell her. I’ve definitely looked it, if the LED-lined mirror behind Malachi is anything to go by. There are fragments of my junior-year self visible in the graduating senior who stares back—the split ends of my blunt curtain bangs as fire-engine red as the Swiss Army knife attached to my car keys, the barely visible U-shaped shackle of the shitty stick-and-poke padlock tattoo my friends helped ink below my collarbone at the start of last summer when the seven of us felt invincible, the pockmarks by my chapped lips where my old snakebites used to sit—but that’s all they are. Individual pieces. Not me.

  “Good,” Charity says distractedly, throwing a quick look over her shoulder at the hallway door. “I’m doing better, too.” She smiles, and I’m instantly reminded that after the accident, my childhood best friend didn’t see a trauma specialist or double up on melatonin gummies or resign from even one of her prelaw extracurriculars. Instead, she spent the summer after Matt’s death canvassing for proposed amendments to the Tennessee Fire Code, and her fall reaping the benefits of fundraising for the Cesaris’ legal funds through writing self-aggrandizing college essays.

  Now that she isn’t trying to suffocate me, I realize she isn’t clutching her own BREAKOUT invitation but a folded-up square of paper. Charity’s smile tightens. “My graduation speech,” she says by way of explanation, tucking the page into the front pocket of her blazer. “Don’t tell my mom, but it’s not finalized yet.”

  Huh. It’s funny: Even though Charity and I met in first grade during a heated game of four sqaure that culminated in us both being sent to the principal’s office—leading to my mom and Congresswoman Adler deciding that scheduled playdates may help their children resolve their creative differences, and the two of us subsequently spending a year beheading Barbies in the playroom of Charity’s pristine McMansion—I still can’t tell when she’s lying.

  “Where’s Tobias?” I ask her instead of probing further because there’s no point in attempting to get a high school politician to tell you the truth.

  Charity rolls her eyes. “Bathroom.”

  “Where else would he be?” Malachi adds, which makes Santo and Charity laugh. A smile tugs at the corners of my lips, but then Guinevere scoffs, and I immediately feel a twinge of guilt for wanting to join in on a joke at the expense of someone who isn’t here. It’s not Tobias’s fault that he has IBS and spends a lot of our group gatherings running from toilet to toilet. Then again, he showed up completely shit-faced to the last escape room we did, so it’s fifty-fifty on what’s actually holding him up tonight.

  “Just so you know, Mal,” Santo says as the hallway door behind Charity opens, “I’m not liable for drop-kicking you if you jump-scare us during our game.” He pauses. “Hold on. You’re not planning to do that, are you?”

  Malachi shrugs. “I like to be behind the security camera, not in front of it. But Game Masters never reveal their secrets.”

  “Not unless they’re legally required to.” From the hallway, Tobias Quinton Matthews pushes his tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his crooked nose until the lenses flash against the cold LED lights. The air thickens as he strides forward, wiping his freckled hands on his maroon CEDAR CREEK HIGH SCHOOL CHESS CLUB sweatshirt, but Malachi—to his credit—manages a smile. “Hi, Steffi,” Tobias adds. “We didn’t think you’d show.”

  Charity wrinkles her own nose. “You’re, like, one to talk, seeing as you’ve been in the bathroom for the past”—she checks her watch—“seventeen minutes?”

  “Keeping tabs on me, Adler?” There’s a calculating hardness behind Tobias’s hazel eyes as he stares at Charity, dropping his over-the-shoulder duffel bag to the epoxied floor, and danger prickles the back of my neck for the first time since I stepped into BREAKOUT. None of my friends have ever made me feel unsafe, but that was before the fire. Before the invitation showed up in my mailbox. Before I got this chance to recover my memories. Though if Call-Me-Diana knew I was attempting to restore my amnesia through immersing myself in the escape room franchise where I first got my TBI, I’m pretty sure she’d drop me as a client forever. Then again, she’s an unlicensed hypnotherapist, so who’s to say?

  Whatever off-putting vibe Tobias is curating, though, Charity must sense it, because her gaze falls. He nods, effectively ending the conversation, and pulls out his phone. Within a minute, he’s completely tuned out from the world. There. That’s the Tobias Matthews I remember, too.

  Without realizing it, I let out a soft sigh, which makes Tobias glance up at me. Seconds later, my own phone buzzes with a notification: Keep your eyes to yourself.

  I send a quick message back: cool thanks, i probably won’t. btw nice sweatshirt. ironic, huh?

  Tobias instantly scowls, and a little thrill goes through me. Two can play at this game.

  “Great!” Santo says, clapping his hands together. His fingernails are painted with cracking black nail polish. “Now we’ve gathered all six of us.”

  “Right,” Guinevere says. “So…”

  Santo blinks. “So what?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I pocket my phone and meet Santo’s gaze. “So,” I continue for her, trying to ignore the apprehension swirling in my stomach, “when are you going to cut the theatrics and reveal why you invited us here?”

  The accusation is a no-brainer; the cardstock is completely Santo’s style. One last spontaneous getting-the-gang-back-together hurrah for our broken friend group: part grad party, part Cesari twin birthday celebration, and one hundred percent opportunity.

  Santo laughs. “Hang on,” he says, his eyes dancing between us. “I’m confused. This isn’t, like, something y’all planned to surprise me?” His smile strains as he turns to Malachi. “I thought you sent the invites.”

  “No,” our Game Master says. There’s a glob of cheese dotting his embroidered company polo. Santo’s shoulders slump, but before I can dwell too much on the current state of his situationship, Guinevere’s accusatory glare cuts to me.

  “Malachi didn’t send the invitations; Stephanie did.”

  A strangled, surprised bark bursts from my lips. “Me? Are you serious?”

  I found my invitation in an unmarked envelope last Wednesday afternoon. No return address. And even though I almost let my social anxiety get the best of me, I drove to Friendship Springs tonight because I was hoping for some goddamn closure. Because I need to know what happened. Because I can’t remember the night of the accident, and no amount of bilateral tapping or nature hikes or literal hypnotherapy sessions can tell me what the people standing in the franchise that killed my best friend can.

  Because even if we haven’t truly spoken since the night that he asphyxiated a year ago, everyone currently inside BREAKOUT was there when Matt drew his final breath. Which means that playing tonight’s escape room is my last chance to learn the truth from the only people who know it.

  “Honestly,” I tell Guinevere, ignoring the dark voice in the back of my mind that whispers my post-accident memory isn’t quite what it used to be, “I wish I’d been smart enough to come up with something like this.” Pathetic. Monster. Fraud. “But I didn’t plan tonight.”