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she didn’t recognize. After that, she sensed a long blank page with unrecognizable flickers around the edges.
    No, she didn’t know her age.
    She didn’t know anything. Only confusion, pain, breathing through water.
    Swimmers, take your marks .
    And Annie raced away.
    Music. Soundgarden? “The Day I Tried to Live.” And then Aerosmith. “Dream On.” Why? Mom and Dad used to dance to the oldies when they played on the radio. At sugar parties during the tapping and boiling, they’d boogie down while the boom box shook in the sugarhouse. Gran would make fried doughboys sprinkled with maple crystals, and people would come from all over to sample the wares.
    During the sugar season, there were parties every weekend on Rush Mountain. It was a time of hopeful transition, a sign that winter was finally yielding to sunny spring. The frozen nights, followed by warming days, caused a thaw, triggering a rush of sap during the daylight hours. The shifting season also brought on a rush of music, food, laughter, as the family hosted gatherings around the big steamy evaporator in the sugarhouse.
    Dad used to put a tent board sign out by the road: Sugar Rush—Warmest Place on the Mountain.
    More music drifted through the air—the Police. Hunters & Collectors. The B-52’s. Song after song took Annie back to her childhood. “Love Shack” was the most popular dance tune of them all. Only a few people knew that the nickname for the Rush sugarhouse was “the Love Shack.” Even fewer knew the reason for that.
    In the winter of her senior year of high school, Annie had lost her virginity in the sugarhouse, surrounded by maple-scented steam as she sweetly yielded to the soft kisses of a boy she thought would be hers forever.
    She’d never understood why people said “lost” her virginity. Annie had not lost a thing that night. She had given herself away—virginity, heart, self, soul. To the town bad boy, Fletcher Wyndham. So no, she hadn’t lost anything. She’d gained . . . something new and unexpected and achingly beautiful. The world had changed color for her that night, like the crowns of the maples at the first touch of autumn frost.
    He’s bad for you . Mom had been adamant about that.
    As if Annie’s mother had become some kind of relationship expert after Dad left.
    The space behind Annie’s eyes hurt. She squeezed her eyelids together. Blinked. Big mistake. She felt a sharp flash of light, straight to the brain. Ouch.
    The flashing made her curious, so she blinked some more despite the pain. Tried to rub her eyes, but her hands wouldn’t work. Then something brushed her face. Cold drops touched her eyes. She held them shut until the cold was gone. Her hands wanted to work, but something kept holding them back. Tied. Her hands were tied. Not figuratively, but literally. Some kind of padding prevented her from making a fist.
    More blinking, more shards of light. Ouch . She managed to keep her eyes open at a squint for a moment or two. She could move her eyes but not her head. Unfamiliar room. Plain beige walls. A grid of metal rails on the ceiling. For the camera mounts, right? She remembered an argument about the expense of the camera rails. Many arguments. Painagain. Not behind her eyes. Somewhere else. Run . Run away from the pain.
    She had to pee again.
    More looking. Blurry light from the rectangular opening overhead, the one that brought her to life when the warm glow passed over her. A skylight?
    She missed the sky.
    Eyes slitting open again in a squint. Yes, there was a skylight. Shifting her gaze, she saw a row of windows, too. Light from outside, filtered by gauzy drapes, streamed across the floor. Heat from an old-fashioned steam radiator created invisible eddies, wafting upward. Then her eyelids fell down, and she couldn’t lift them.
    Footsteps. Someone came in. Did . . . something. Moved a pillow. Did something lower down and