What We Saw at Night

At Ghost Lake, a cordon of Iron Harbor cops blocked the road so that no one could intrude on what was a private family ceremony, with only a few close friends included. Reporters were still on the prowl. Citizens of the town placed cards and wreaths for the Siroccos in their mailbox, as they’d done at Nicola’s grave.

No one’s funeral is ever held at ten o’clock at night, so this was my first. It was Rob’s first, too. The Siroccos insisted on including us. Juliet wasn’t even going to be buried at Torch Mountain Cemetery. Her ashes were going to be scattered over the water at one of the places she loved the most, by those she loved the most.

Only as I took a step out on the old pier did the reality of the past two days sink in. It had been a flurry of anger and disbelief and sleeplessness. But there was no argument to be made anymore.

DNA tests had proved that the body found in the river was Juliet’s. And Dr. Stephen’s report was supported by the FBI medical examiner. Even a Tabor couldn’t have bribed the federal government. The report pointed out the coldness of the water as a factor in how well-preserved the body still was, and the loss of teeth possibly accidental, as a result of gum damage due to rapid weight loss. She had died by accident shortly after cutting her hair in a punk crop and dyeing it. No one could explain any of the physical anomalies, other than to suggest that starving herself for a week was a reliable way to dramatically change her appearance quickly, as part of some kind of plan to escape.

The FBI physician was also a criminalogist. She suggested that undetected neurological damage might have prompted Juliet’s abrupt mood swings. The blaze that had consumed Juliet’s belongings could have been phony, a deliberate diorama meant to suggest that someone was shedding her past. But if true, then why up on the back side of Torch Mountain, among old mine shafts that pitted the slopes? The likelihood of that doused fire being lost forever was far greater than the slim chance someone would stumble upon it.…

I tried to shut off the squirming thoughts as I awaited my turn to speak. The uncles went first. Then her grandma, Rosa. Then the cousins. Then Rob.…

I tried to remember Juliet, to conjure her up. Instead, my normal brain went on strike. It was Occupy Allie Kim for my normal brain. (Was there ever even a normal brain?) I thought of my outfit: a brand new short black dress Gina had bought for me as a gift and as condolence, as she knew I couldn’t go shopping. (Juliet would have dug its style.) I thought of how the whole thing seemed like a long prank, and that Juliet herself would leap out at any moment and yell, “Psych!”

I blinked at Rob. I hadn’t even heard what he’d said. He held and released a fistful of the stony mix, like ash and shell. He turned to me, tears staining his cheeks.

This was no prank, no hoax.

Without thinking, I wet a finger and poked the gray matter, then dotted my tongue. Like the night sky above us. I hadn’t planned it, but Rob did the same. As long as we lived, Juliet would be part of us.

It was my turn. I cleared my throat. I tried to remember what I’d prepared.

“Juliet … there’s nothing to say except that I loved her. Part of what I loved most is that I never knew everything about her. People like us want a little privacy. A little mystery. It’s all we have. But I know this much. Juliet wanted everyone she loved to soar and be daring. So I’ll sleep well tomorrow … seriously. I will, knowing she is out there taking flight. Forever.”

I blinked again. I found myself staring at the shadows of people who were here for my best friend. I thought about the kids who’d glimpsed us in the playground, years ago, who had no mechanism to deal with what we were.

“I wanted to read a poem.” My throat caught. “These lines were written four hundred years ago, about a skylark:

“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert—

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

Rob took my arm. We turned and walked away then, from Ghost Lake, where we had laughed and fished and skinny-dipped and drank wine, where, I think, Juliet had spent some of the happiest nights of her life. We left her there.

Neither Rob nor I ever went back.

AROUND MIDNIGHT, AFTER Juliet’s funeral, I went home to cold-pack my head like a fresh fish. Rob had gone home. My mother had gone to the Sirocco house to be with the family. My sister had gone home with Gina. Maybe they all knew that I had to be alone. All I wanted was to hide from the grief and the hot, close pounding of the pain.

Bonnie had graciously left me with a packet of a few knockout pills, not enough to put me in any danger.

I took all five. They might as well have been M&M’s.

When I finally slept, it was only for a few hours. I kept dreaming of her, asleep with her open palms next to her head. Hail to thee, blithe spirit.…

It was silent when I awoke.

I glanced at the phone at my bedside table. I had three new messages.

My mouth was pasted thick with the debris of dreams, already fading. There are biological reasons that you have a sensation of spinning in the extremes of anxiety. You over-breathe or breathe too shallowly; your heart rate builds and your glands release the hormone flood that will let you run and scream or stand and fight. If you do neither, you can black out. I’m guessing I did. I’ve never fainted again and I’d never fainted before.

But the last thing I recall was pressing the button to listen to the message, and then staring up at the blank ceiling Juliet and I had filled with hopes and dreams over a lifetime of lying next to each other.

“ALLIE,” MY MOTHER was saying. “Alexis. Are you hurt? Don’t move, sweetie. Everything feels okay pulse-wise. Did you fall?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Don’t speak,” she said. “It’s just too much of too much. You’re sweating and it must be seventy in here.”

My mother didn’t think it was so very strange. I hadn’t been eating or sleeping much; the pills might have made me groggy. I was not bruised, just sort of slumped in a gangly but not untidy heap near my bed.

“Mom, I need some time alone,” I told her.

“Alexis, you need a hot meal. That’s not a request. It’s almost four.”

“Four in the morning?”

She sighed. “Of course in the morning.”

My heart began to thump, remembering I’d heard Juliet’s voice.

First: “Allie. Call now. Hurry.”

Then, weepy: “Bear! Call me. Call back right now!”

Finally: “Allie-Bear. Don’t call. Don’t call until I tell you. Wait.”

I began to blink rapidly. Juliet. Juliet.… Maybe she’d called long before she’d died, and her phone had been damaged so the calls hadn’t been received until now. The first call was time-stamped during her funeral. I’d called for her and she’d called back. But that was insane. It was sickening. I knew her phone hadn’t been found. But did that mean …?

Madness, I know, is anesthetic: Garrett Tabor could have gotten the phone and forced her to prerecord a series of messages, just to torment me. First, she cries out, stubbornly, releasing a wail of pain only at the last blunt moment. Then she’s like a child, crying hard—not for me, for anyone. Then she’s collected. How could that be faked? It was her. It was Juliet. It was part of a plan, not coincidence. But a plan for what?

My mother shook me. “Allie! Look at me!”

“Just give me two seconds, Mom,” I said.

She stood and marched to the door. “I want you downstairs, dressed, and at the kitchen table by 4:15 at the latest.”

Hustling, I backed up my phone on my computer. I got dressed: sensible jeans, sensible sweatshirt. I didn’t want to freak out my mom any more than she already was. For the first time since Juliet had disappeared, I felt in the moment, invigorated, focused. I had to act now. If I had no proof that she was alive, at least I had proof that she had been alive long after even the autopsy suggested she was. These recordings and Garrett Tabor were connected in some way. She’d foiled his plan for her. It wasn’t evidence, but it was suspicious enough to mount an investigation. It could be put together in a chain that would be enough to indict him for something.

I quickly tidied up in the mirror over my bureau.

But then another thought occurred to me. If she was dead, then Garrett Tabor was pulling the strings. He’d somehow orchestrated this. He wanted to scare me so badly that I’d know: if I said a word, it would be the word that would pull the trigger on something even worse than the worst possible thing. That something-even-worse would really happen then—an apocalypse, and it would be my fault. Juliet would never be redeemed, and my own life would be nothing but ash. Still, if there was an off chance, literally a ghost of a chance.…

I clung to this knowledge like an overfilled glass of water. It could tip and spill. I could tip it by telling Rob or my mother or Tommy. I could run to them now and say, take this glass from me. But they wouldn’t be able to take it. If I did not lose my mind then, I never would.

I CAME DOWNSTAIRS to find my mom arguing with Deputy Sherriff Sonny Larsen.

“No,” Mom was saying. “You can’t come in until I make sure that Alexis is properly dressed and has eaten.”

“You’ll need to keep the door open then. This is a serious charge.”

Thank you, universe! I thought, bounding down the stairs. Thank you, thank you! I hadn’t had to say a thing. He’d been caught and charged! Here were the Marines! The balance had been restored. The glass would not spill. They’d got him. Somehow, they’d put the pieces together themselves.

“Allie,” my mother said, stepping aside. “Deputy Chief Larsen.…”

“Miss Kim,” said Officer Larsen. Her sour smile almost looked like a sticker, pasted on her blocky face. “I have here a complaint against you for assault and battery.”

I blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”

“You and your mother need to come with me now.”

“Is this a joke?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribcage. I felt guilty, even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong. “What’s happening?”

“Yes, please tell me what the hell is going on,” Mom demanded.

“Garrett Tabor filed a complaint this morning after he was treated for serious burns to his neck at Divine Savior Hospital emergency room. He is still in the hospital, under care.”

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked, even though I felt a flood of relief. Somebody had gotten to him.

“We need you to come down to the station,” Officer Larsen said.

“I’ll drive my daughter,” Mom said.

“She’ll need to come in the squad car,” Officer Larsen said.

“The hell with that!” Mom barked. “Call Tommy Sirocco!”

“He’s been notified,” Officer Larsen said.

I clung to my mom’s arm, feeling as if I were trapped in some waking nightmare. Would I wake up?

“She’s not under arrest,” Jackie protested, pulling me close. “You arrest her, or I will drive my daughter. Now, I am going to call my friend Gina Ricci to take my daughter Angela to her house. Allie, sit down, and—”

“I’ll let you make your arrangements,” Officer Larsen interrupted. “But I’ll follow you all the way. Running lights.”





The ski mask.

Even when Sonny Larsen placed it on the interrogation table in front of my mother and me, I wanted not to believe it.

Panic turned to horror. It came to me in a flash, in my mind’s eye, like the police reports I’d studied for John Jay. The facts were cold and sequential. Juliet had tossed her brand new ski mask to me at Watching Rock, insisting that she wear mine instead. I’d given the ski mask back to her in the hospital room. And she’d never worn it.

“Recognize this?” Officer Larsen asked.

I shook my head, almost hyperventilating. “Yeah, but—”

“Alexis, what’s going on?” my mother murmured.

I couldn’t speak. Officer Larsen flipped open a laptop and pressed the pause button. I found myself in the very surreal position of watching Garrett Tabor, his face and neck blotchy with burns and blisters, accuse me of attacking him.

His story was as follows:

I’d broken into his penthouse. I’d been scoping for months; he had video to prove it. He also knew I babysat for a family there, though he’d prefer to leave them out of it, so he wasn’t mentioning their name. Upon breaking in the balcony, I’d lit the burner on the stove and doused him in his bed with scalding water. He’d managed to rip off my ski mask during the attack, but it was definitely me. He’d caught a glimpse of my face.

I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks, from my chest, pooling at my feet. Garrett Tabor was beyond mad. He’d disfigured himself to frame me? He’d ingratiated himself with Sonny Larsen, which would only discredit Tommy Sirocco, his victim’s father? There truly was nothing he couldn’t do. And his claim would be impossible to refute.

My mind whirled down a series of dead ends. Garrett Tabor had no doubt caught the three of us on surveillance cameras when we’d traced at Tabor Oaks. Plus, his tissue would be all over the outside of that ski mask; mine alone would be all over the inside. A DNA test would prove that beyond any shred of a doubt. He knew it, didn’t he? He knew that even if I protested, I’d be proved a liar.

I hated myself, but my only thought was: Juliet, you didn’t set me up … did you?

No. Of course she didn’t. But if she wasn’t dead now, she would be soon.

“I know that Alexis’s grief is overpowering,” he continued on the tape, his eyes brimming with tears. “Mine is, too. I’ve spent my whole life working with kids. The problem is that this troubled girl doesn’t understand my relationship to Juliet. I loved her like a daughter. Juliet Sirocco endured physical and emotional pain most of us can’t even conceive of. I spent hours of my life trying to talk her out of committing suicide, trying to get her to go on. I also know that Alexis Kim thought I hadn’t done enough.…”

I only caught snippets of the rest. Garrett Tabor said he had gone straight to the ER, where his friend, Dr. Lauren Wilenbrand, had treated him. She’d convinced him to make a formal complaint. It was she who’d pointed out that indeed, he’d been hurt, badly hurt. And if I could do so much damage to someone who was a relative stranger, what else could I do?

Would he press charges? Would he try to intervene if the county pressed charges?

He had no interest in punishing me. He just wanted to get back to Bolivia, back to the important work his family was doing. If I would agree to mandatory psychiatric treatment … perhaps he could see his way out of this. He knew that I was undone by grief. I had lost a great deal.

I gaped at Officer Larsen, unbelieving.

Garrett finished: “This town, Iron Harbor, where my family has devoted itself to helping others for four generations, has been through hell. It’s time for that hell to end.”

WHEN I FINALLY was able to collect myself, I asked to take a lie-detector test. My mother had to pay for it, because I wasn’t formally charged with anything. The results showed that I was being truthful when I said that I believed that Garrett Tabor was responsible for Juliet Lee Sirocco’s death. When the operator submitted his report, however, he added that I was being truthful when I said that I was responsible for Juliet Lee Sirocco’s death. I was being truthful when I said I had nothing to do with Garrett Tabor’s injuries.

A few days later, I received a letter from Iron County Social Services.

If I would agree to twenty hours of community service, to be served over the winter holidays, there would be no formal charges. And an added bonus? The Cryer family would not be notified, either.

LYING IN ROB’S arms that night, I cried and talked and cried. And he listened, until I talked myself into the understanding that to fight back, I would risk a felony blot on my record as an adult. Goodbye, career as an investigator. That would be the equivalent of handing Garrett Tabor my sword.

But Rob insisted that he believed my version of events. Of course he did. No way would I have snuck out of my house to break into Tabor’s penthouse. My mother believed me, too. Angie believed me. They knew I’d been at home that night, even though they hadn’t seen me there. That was all that mattered. Now their eyes, too, were on Garrett Tabor.

But I was not finished. I made arrangements for a confidential conference call with Barry Yashida, my advisor. He was a former FBI agent. I told him everything. My acceptance into John Jay still stood; I was not a convicted criminal. If he doubted me, he never let on. He told me that he admired my forthrightness. I made a recording of the phone messages for Dr. Yashida, and set up a phone conference. Then, with Rob and my mother present, he listened as I laid out my version of the events of the past six months.

The process took three hours.

Although my mother gasped and recoiled when I explained about the girl in the empty apartment and gave Juliet’s account of her relationship with Garrett Tabor, she did not speak of it or ask about it—then or later. Finally, I forwarded the videos we’d made of the Dark Stars, as they provided a sample of Juliet’s voice.

Dr. Yashida called me back within the hour. The voice analyst could not be more than 75% sure that the voice on the phone messages matched the voice on the video. But 75% was hardly insignificant. Percentages far less had stood up in court. The only problem was determining the time of origin … and given the DNA results, the case appeared closed. I understood. I thanked him for his time.

“I’m proud of you, Allie,” Mom kept telling me throughout the whole awful ordeal.

I only hoped she meant it. This wasn’t over.

A FEW NIGHTS later, I went to Tessa’s at Tabor Oaks for the last time, just to say goodbye. They were moving to a little lake town in Wisconsin; her mother, too, to a town where Tessa’s sister lived.

NO PART OF their decisions linked to anything that had befallen me, but I rejoiced. Tessa made forlorn noises about my coming along, as a summer nanny. I was tempted. Tavish was adorable, and Tessa’s belly was enormous. She would pop at any moment. The idea of running away and caring for two innocent children … for a fleeting instant, I almost felt like Juliet. Break free. Soar. Live once.

But no. I would never leave Rob, or my mother, or Angie. Not until I’d proven what had really happened. I couldn’t go away to college. I would go to John Jay, but online and by Skype, even if I got the chance to leave.

“Allie, I hate to do this to you, but would you mind hanging out for a half hour while I just run to the store and grab some ice cream?” Tessa asked. Her tired eyes twinkled as she massaged her swollen tummy. “I’ll pay you double.”

“Please. It’s on the house. Just save some ice cream for me.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Tessa breathed—and then was gone.

Tavish, who had been running around all day like the toddler madman he was, was already conked out. I had the place to myself. A lifesaver. I walked to the window. If only that were true.… The early winter wind in the treetops was a doleful sigh, the waves stroked the shore: Now? Now?

That’s when I spotted it.

A dim light: bouncing, low to the ground, bobbing along the bluff. Every few moments, the light descended, disappeared and then reappeared, wobbling, side to side, closer, and then closer.

Why had I thought he would stop? Logic? People like Garrett Tabor didn’t stop. They never stopped, until they were caught or eliminated everyone who stood in their way. They did not stop until they were forced. He had watched my shadow, alone in the apartment with Tavish. He had waited patiently, knowing that I would take his bait and step outside onto the balcony.

His silhouette stood in stark relief against the seam between the sky and dark water. Three floors and a hundred yards separated us, and still, when he waved the flashlight across the balcony, I had to stifle a shriek. Far off, miles down the road, a rumble and whine suggested Rob’s Jeep. But the sound of possible salvation died away. I held my breath.

Then he aimed the big light directly at my face.

I winced. Naturally: a lifetime of recoiling from the light.

I could call the police. But what would that do? In the eyes of the authorities, I was the attacker, the culprit. I could only thank my lucky stars Tessa and her family didn’t know. But then, he’d probably orchestrated that, too. From the corners of my vision, I tried to scope the lights throughout the building. It was late. Only nightlights, and few. I was all by myself and he knew it.

Maybe you can’t stop them until after they do what they do.…

Perhaps as reparation, Juliet had offered her own life. But what could I offer Juliet, my best friend, my heart, in return for that? Could I avenge her? Even if I had wanted to hide and pretend, it was too late for me to die without really having lived.

The light swept playfully, an arc.

If Tabor wanted war, fine.

Kicking off my shoes, I stepped on the first rung of the metal railing. Finding my balance, I stood on the second and threw both my arms up in a raised V.

“I am Allie Kim!” I shouted, louder than I realized I could.

The light beam froze on my face.

“I am Allie Kim!” I repeated. “The Great and Terrible. And I will end you!”

His light went out.





Turn the page for a preview of the forthcoming





WHAT WE LOST





IN THE DARK





1

ALL THE

LOST PIECES





Picture yourself in a helicopter, looping slowly down from heaven.

First, it looks like a child’s map of what Earth offers: green and blue and beige. The green resolves into broad hills, thick with trees: a green beard chopped off by the craggy throats of glacial bluffs, dropping away to sparkly beaches. Even from this great height, the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, and the bottom could be hundreds of feet from the surface. You think it’s a sea. But no; it’s a lake, massive and majestic. The greatest of all lakes, it’s called Superior.

Now you descend.

You can tell the red pines from black spruce at this height. You begin to hear the restless fingers of the wind among all those branches. Closer, you spot the little town. It’s named after a harbor as narrow as a creek but as deep as a river. No one pays attention to the small freighters that load and unload there. Everyone sees the big, winged yachts with their showy masts, polished deck rails, and ironic names. Nick’s Waterloo. Enter the Titan.

Touch down gently. Your rotors spin slower and then fall silent. The helicopter disappears.

There’s a town square, just a little too old and well-used to have been tacked on for tourists, although tourists flock to Iron Harbor for reasons I’ve never been quite able to fathom. At the center stands a monument to Amos Hayden of the Union’s First Minnesota infantry regiment. The town’s Civil War hero, he was a miner’s son. At Gettysburg, when nothing except a doomed charge with fixed bayonets could hold back the Rebels, the general turned to the First Minnesota, the soldiers who were closest to him. Two hundred and sixty-two men charged, and two hundred and fifteen died. Not a single man deserted. It was over in fifteen minutes. They gave their lives for an idea that not all of them probably even understood.

Amos Hayden was only seventeen. His statue is here, but he still sleeps far away in the ground.

Was he brave or only young?

Did he have a moment to think of his mother? Or the lakeshore where he skipped stones, or the summer stars so close you felt you could reach up and play with them like beads? Did a girl love him and wait for him? Did he know that he might never again open the door on an icy wind that slapped him until he glowed?

Tonight, nobody is thinking of Amos Hayden dying young and alone. It’s late fall, and people visiting this town are taking advantage of the warmth of an extended autumn. They stroll past the Flying Fish restaurant and Borealis Books, with its neat, scalloped wooden fringes—each painted to resemble a famous volume of prose. Even the tall, pale girl with the uncombed auburn hair, who stops in front of the statue and stares … the tall, pale girl who is me … even she isn’t really thinking of Amos Hayden, although I remember looking up into his chiseled young face, which would always be young.

Only later, when I passed by the scene of the only true breakdown I would ever have in my life, would I really stop to consider Amos Hayden and wonder how the most innocent of heroes and the pond scum of sinners could rise from this one small place.

That Sunday night was only a few weeks after my best friend’s body was found. It was the night that I walked into one of Iron Harbor’s two clothing stores and stole a poncho.

I had never stolen so much as a pack of gum.

If all the boutiques in Beverly Hills had opened for my own personal plunder, and I could run through them and keep whatever I wanted until my arms and shopping carts were filled, I would have chosen a rhinestone cat collar sooner than a poncho. And I don’t even have a cat.

The poncho I pulled down was woven in shades of green, from mint to forest—thick and subtly striped with the kind of oily, expensive feeling that seems to scoff at all weather. Ladies from Chicago bought these to wear on their sailboats. The store was the typical wannabe Native American thread-and-head shop required on the map of every tourist town.

I slipped the thing on.

Then, I walked out the door.

The owner, an old, bearded hippie guy everybody called Corona, watched me curiously. He didn’t say a word.

Corona’s store was one of the few places that Juliet and Rob and I had never been able to break into. (We’d tried, but Corona is in the gifted program for theft prevention.) Yes, I call it “breaking in,” but we never broke a thing. We were way too good for that. We left things just as they were, or a little tidier. Juliet could be light-fingered when it came to expensive wine and trinkets, but Rob and I kept her in check. She was the first one to get a set of lock picks (which you can buy online), and we quickly followed her lead. The tres compadres, we roamed the night, from fancy faux-Swiss ski chalets in the hills where we sipped champagne in the owners’ hot tubs, to the music store where we pounded our palms on drums or ran our fingers over the electric guitar strings in an unmelodious twang.

We owned Iron Harbor, Minnesota.

It was ours, all twenty blocks.

Really, though, Iron Harbor, and our place in it, in its night landscape, was mostly Juliet’s. Juliet was always at the wheel, no matter who was really driving. Rob and I rode shotgun to her one desire—the desire to be free. Not free of us, her closest friends on earth, but of this place and her life in it.

Now she was free, of the former and the latter.

Wearing the poncho like a shroud, I reached the end of the street. Then I stopped and burst into tears. It was a warm night, sixty-eight degrees at nine o’clock. It’s never this warm this late in the year, so far north … I was practically in Canada, minus the checkpoint.

Corona joined me at the corner. He was a tall, old guy, thin to the point of gauntness, with a face I now noticed was lined not with the wrinkles of care, but with decades of quiet amusement. His eyes brimmed with a surpassing kindness. Why had we ever even tried to break into his little store? As we gazed at each other, I saw that he knew that we had tried, and it was already forgiven.

“It’s okay, little dude,” he said.

Corona took the phone out of my hand and scrolled through my favorites list until he found Mom.

She was there within five minutes, jumping out of the minivan, leaving the driver’s side door hanging open. I might as well have been a toddler for the way my mother held up my arms and slipped the poncho over my head. Then, she stroked my hair. “Oh, Allie … oh, Allie.”

“I stole this from him,” I confessed. My teeth started to chatter.

Corona just shrugged. “It’s okay. I don’t care if she keeps it, even.”

Everyone knew about Juliet. Everyone knew I was crazy.

“I stole this!” I repeated, raising my voice.

Corona gave my mother a level look.

Mom sighed. “Allie,” she said. “Honey. Time to go home.”

“Why don’t you call the cops?” I glared at her, and then at Corona. “Call Tommy. Call Mr. Sirocco.” I bit my lip. “No, don’t call him. But call someone.” Even I knew that was too over the top. Tommy Sirocco, in addition the chief of the Iron County Sheriff’s Department, was Juliet’s father. “Doesn’t anybody around here ever do anything? Doesn’t anyone care when someone does something wrong?”

“You aren’t a bad person. You didn’t do anything wrong, tonight or ever. You couldn’t have helped her, Allie,” Mom said, pulling me close. I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut and struggling against my mother, literally kicking at her shins with the toes of my ballet flats, now really acting like a toddler. That’s a lie, I thought. I knew, I knew, I knew.

“Allie, no,” Jackie said, pulling me closer. Both of us were sweating. “It’s not your fault.”

I might as well have spoken aloud. I never had to speak for Jackie Kim to know exactly what I was thinking. Maybe it was because I was chronically ill, with something that would probably kill me sooner rather than later, so she’s never paid anything but ultra-close attention. Maybe it was just Jackie’s ultra-vigilant nature, because despite a basic optimism, Jackie is so overprotective of her family that she makes the Secret Service look like a bunch of stoners. My mind seemed to provide my mother with near-constant printouts of my every emotion.

She handed Corona the poncho.

I let her guide me to the front seat, pulling the safety belt across me. She turned the AC on to arctic blast. I glanced in the rearview mirror. My nine-year-old sister, Angela, was curled in the backseat, bony arms wrapped around her knees, a fringe of thick black hair hiding her face, trying hard not to look at me.

I opened my mouth wide and screamed as loudly as I could.

Angela flinched. “Allie?” she croaked. “Are you … sick?”

“You loved her, too,” I said, breathless, my throat an open wound. Angela would know that I meant Juliet, the friend who had treated her like a little sister and a little princess. I glanced back at Angie. I was tormenting her. She swallowed, rubbing her eyes.

My mother concentrated, backing the car out into Harbor Street.

“Allie, we all loved her,” she said.

“But nobody knows the truth! Nobody who’s alive, anyway. I should do community service. Not for what that freak said I did. For being a goddamn fool.”

“Don’t talk about it like that. It’s just a job,” said my mother. “Think of it as an opportunity. You would have wanted a job like this anyhow.”

I glanced at Angie from the edge of my eye.

Angie’s Asian features glowed pale, stretched tight. This was not the capable, strong Allie she knew. She expected grief but she didn’t expect this moaning, fragile thing her big sister had become. I hadn’t expected it either.

We left poor Corona standing there on the corner, holding his green poncho. He offered a halfhearted wave.

“Remember, Allie, when we talked about this?” my mother said. “It will be intercession at school, starting next week. The mini semester. Like winter break, as far as the world is concerned. I explained to Angie how this would help you at college.”

I had just started college online at John Jay, the first school in the world to grant a major in criminal justice. John Jay had never before offered an online degree. I was part of the first class.

“The experience will be invaluable. It’s a good résumé item.” With one hand still on my arm, my mother piloted the car into around the corner onto our street. “The days will go past so quickly. This time will always be a terrible memory. But it’s over now. Allie? Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe you, Jack-Jack,” I said, using the name I used to tease her. At least one of us should relax. I didn’t believe her, at all.

“I believe you,” Angie said. I had to smile.

“No one will punish you anymore. It’s over,” my mother added.

On both counts, she was wrong.

A week later, when I showed up for my community service, the first person I saw was Garrett Tabor, the man who murdered Juliet and who knows how many other girls. The man who would have also murdered me.