A/N: Hi all, I'm so excited to start the next gender-bend voyage with you all! This one has been on my heart and mind for a while. I just wanted to say that it's going to be a bit dark in parts, with warnings for war-related violence, suicide, PTSD, and emotional abuse. So please be careful if those are triggers for you.

Also I decided not to genderswap Sir Walter and Mrs. Clay. For reasons.

Thanks for supporting my work!

Prologue

"Bloom had vanished early."

2008

The rail of the bridge was nearly broken in three places. The boards buckled and splintered from the displacement of the stones in the foundation—the very reason it had been closed at all. But an early August hurricane had done the most damage: a tree had fallen clear across it, and though the tree had been hauled away, the yawning gap remained.

The boy knew all this. He had chosen mid-day because at night, teenagers (too separate from the current moment to even feel like his own age) came and partied here. If he looked down, if he looked hard, he could almost make out the amber shards of beer bottles in the swirling waters below.

He wondered if that would make it hurt more.

His palms were sweaty. He had thought about this, and the woods were silent to his left, the road empty to his right. There wasn't anyone to see.

Did no note make it more or less selfish? He ran his tongue over his teeth. Considering who would read the note, it was better not to leave one.

He felt tired, and like the sun was giving him a headache.

An inch forward. He'd have to dive, to make certain—

"Goddamn it."

The boy spun so quickly he had to rock back on his heels to keep himself from falling. It was the first survival instinct he'd had all day; maybe some things never went away.

The girl had barked her knee against the edge of the road-closed sign, trying to inch her way around it. She looked up and saw him.

He saw a cloud of sandy hair and freckles, and he fell in love like he was allowed to.

The girl stared at him, her scraped knee forgotten. He opened his mouth to explain, and shut it again, because she either recognized what she saw or she didn't.

The girl continued staring, dug in her pocket, and said, "Want some?"

She was holding out a joint.

He'd never smoked—anything, actually. There were a lot of things he'd never done, but a moment ago had been too late to think about that. He stepped away from the edge of the bridge.

The girl rolled her lighter nimbly, with the tight little bundle between her teeth.

Waiting for her, he didn't know what to do with his hands or his feet or his body. Wasn't that the whole problem?

She took a good long drag, huffed the smoke out through her nose. Her nose was a little tilted at the end. Elfin. Except for the scraped knee and the acne on her chin, he might not have thought she was human, or anywhere near his age.

"Oh, thanks," he said, inanely, and took the joint. It made him cough. He didn't know what else he was supposed to say about it.

"Cool bridge."

He thought of the broken glass amid the broken rocks below. "It is. Or it was. They need to repair it."

She lifted her eyebrows. They were pointed, and a few shades darker than her cloud of hair. "Noticed that, yeah."

He figured that another hit would be too much, though for what, he wasn't sure. He handed it back to her and thanked her again, which was dumb. She was staring at him again. It wasn't a goggle-eyed kid's stare. She had light brown eyes, like a tabby cat's, and they were boring into him.

"I'm Adam," he said, before the silence went on too long. "I go to school here." It was easier to say, somehow, than I live here.

Live.

"On the bridge?" she asked, lifting just one of her eyebrows.

For some reason, that made him laugh. And when he looked at her again—Adam always looked down when he laughed—she was laughing too.

She held out her hand. "I'm Regina. I go by Ree."

They shook. She sat down, and patted the boards beside her. He sat down. He was wearing jeans. His oldest pair, actually; it had seemed the polite thing to wear when you were going to—

Anyway.

"So, Adam," Ree said. "What the hell are you doing?"