1

6:47 a.m.

There was the pain, first and last, that booming drumbeat of agony in her head—the kind of pain that made her want to curl up and die. It was woefully familiar. She recognized that pounding, that rhythm: her heartbeat, as slow and regular as a muffled bass drum from the worst band in the world, playing their worst song over and over. Vodka-based pain, she’d once called it—a dismal, throbbing ache.

She tried to squint her eyes tighter against the glare—the white glare, like a dentist’s lamp—and that made the pain worse. She was curled up in fetal position, coated in slime that she recognized as her own sweat, overheated beneath some kind of impossibly smooth fabric like the metallic surface of an oven mitt, her hair tangled hopelessly around her face, her ears and head ringing with that endless drumbeat.

Hangover, she thought hopelessly. I’ve got a hangover—a really bad one. It’s my birthday and I’ve got the worst hangover in the world.

Mary fixated on those two facts, holding on to them like floating planks after a shipwreck in a heavy storm, for the simple reason that, beyond those rudimentary ideas, she was stumped. Her name was Mary and she was seventeen—just seventeen, today—and her head was suffering the kind of rhythmic, merciless killing blows ordinarily reserved for tennis balls or nailheads. But that was it. Whatever was supposed to be occurring to her, it just wasn’t coming.

Happy birthday, she told herself weakly.

Squinting made her head hurt more, but opening her eyes fully was out of the question—it was as bright as the surface of the sun out there. She twisted ar...