Chapter 26

I stand in the mirror and run a comb through my hair, brushing through it before bed. My mind cannot stop wandering to earlier when James and I kissed on his bed, and the thought makes me giddy. My cheeks have been stained red, and my lip quivers as his lips haunt mine. I feel like a young girl, the one I never was. The girl that kissed a boy in the trees then ran off to tell her friends about it, only I have no friends here. There's James, then Gail and Theresa, Theodore, Will, Claire, my mother, Noah... Is it sad that I can list all of the people I've interacted with through these past few months?

I need to find a friend, and not the kind of friends the girls at my pack used to have—always talking about each other—but a real friend. Obviously, Claire won't work, and Theodore probably finds me annoying. Gail and Theresa are lovely, but I need someone my age. Preferably a gir