Heartshire High

By Charlotte Leonetti
Copyright © 2017 Charlotte Leonetti

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. All pictures are held by commercial license and may not be duplicated by anyone without express permission.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1: After Bunni

Chapter 2: Tears

Chapter 3: Racing

Chapter 4: Send Billy

Chapter 5: Pilar's Advice

Chapter 6: Pigsty

Chapter 7: A Mad Party

Chapter 8: Red's

Chapter 9. Mocked

Chapter 10: The Quadrilles

Another Chapter: The Party

Chapter 11: Stolen

Chapter 12: Evidence
All in the golden afternoon

Impatiently I sit;

For all my work, with little skill,

I long today to quit.

While little thoughts will pester me

Until I will submit.

Ah, cruel tome! In such an hour,

Beneath such dreamy weather,

To beg a tale moved to today

From where it once was tethered.

Yet what can one poor girl avail

Against your words together?

Then one idea flashes forth

Its edict "to begin it" –

In gentler tones another hopes

I'll keep the nonsense in it! –

And yet another knocks me down

Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,

In fancy we pursue

The now-girl moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

In daily chat with friend or beast –

And most of it is true.

And ever, as the story drained

The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary girl

To put the project by,

"The rest next time—" "It is next time!"

The story-dwellers cry.

Thus grew the tale of Heartshire High:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out –

And now the tale is done,

And here I sit, with pen in hand,

And watch the setting sun.

Celia! Take this mystery

And carefully provide it

To all of those who loved the tale

From which we have derived it

So they may pluck each clue as fast

And we can e'er supply it.
Chapter 1: After Bunni

It wasn't really a journal. I tried keeping a journal, but it would always be one long entry filling the first seven pages, and then just nothing. Too hard. Before we packed up to move, I had a whole shelf of journals. One from first grade, with a puppy on the cover, where I'd just drawn the same pictures of animals over and over, in crazy colors. I'd even colored the puppy purple with a permanent marker I took from my mom. One from my ninth birthday, where I'd written about how I was going to be a ballerina. One my mom had given me the summer after eighth grade, that was all about some fight with some girl that I couldn't even remember. I'd thrown them out before we left. Now I just kept a notebook, a red one from the drugstore we had stopped at on the car ride here. Each page had the same four lines at the top, then just pictures.

After school, I filled it out.

Weather: sticky

Song: Blue

Mood: lost

Overheard: "No one die this time." - Kid with the red hat

I couldn't stop thinking about what that kid in the red hat had said in homeroom that morning; "There's a rave next month -- we should go again. And like, no one die this time." Where do I live now that still has raves? Isn't that from like 20 years ago? I didn't know if he was serious or not, but considering the silence that followed, I was leaning towards 'yes'. This place was definitely different. Since I'd gotten home from school, the only thing I'd wanted to do was forget the whole day, clear my mind and paint. Usually I would have painted the ocean or mountains, but since we left California to come to this nothing town in the middle of more nothingness, those images just made me lonely. So, I put on my oversized blue jacket and decided to go for a drive in search of some inspiration.

"Bye dad," I said to the back of my dad's head as I walked by.

"Mmhmm," he mumbled. This was life with Dad now. Dad-without-mom, Dad whose last parenting moment, as far as I remembered, was in that snapshot of me when I was in first grade, when he was showing me some puppies in the pet store. It was a cute picture; I had pigtails. We didn't buy a puppy. Thanks, Dad.

"Do you want to know where I'm going or anything?" I asked from the hallway. "In case I like fall down a hole and die?"

"Have a good time." The news was talking about wildfires or something else uninteresting, but he didn't look away.

Mom wouldn't have let me leave the house like this. Or she would have, if she'd been having one of her days, I guess. But when she was being Mom, when she was paying attention, she would have fussed at my messy blond ponytail and offered for the hundredth time to take me shopping for jeans that "fit", which I guess meant they'd be tighter than these. But Mom wasn't too short, and she didn't have a freakishly long neck that made her look like a bird, and her hair didn't go all fluffy if it was left down, like poodle ears. In other words, she wasn't me.

This new town was too small; I felt like every street led me back to the same place. There were some fancy houses on the outside of town, but the part where we lived, next to the school, was dingy and wholly uninteresting. Forget cliffs overlooking the ocean; I couldn't even get out of sight of the Wal-Mart. So I drove around for an hour, down this street or the next, taking little turns here and there, when I came across a large abandoned lot in between two brick buildings. I pulled into the lot and stepped out of the car. Broken glass and cigarette butts spotted the cracked cement, but as I walked further back, they gave way to a field where the high grass hid huge daisies and bright red poppies.

I wondered why I hadn't noticed it this morning since it was on my drive to school, but I guessed I had been too nervous. I took out my phone and starting taking photos of things I might want to paint: the sun coming through the white daisies, a green caterpillar chewing on a poppy petal. All the pictures came out too bright, like faded postcards, losing the magic they had in the afternoon sun after being captured. The hot day made me feel very sleepy and stupid, so I just wandered around, kicking a glass bottle and listening to it rattle on the pavement and trying to get a photo where the light was right. I picked up a bottle cap that had been flattened by a car into a little metal sun and put it in my pocket next to a plastic barrette I'd found and forgotten.

As I made my way around to the back of the brick building at the corner of the lot, I noticed that it had been tagged with spraypaint in a few places. There were a few curly arrows pointing toward the back corner, so I walked along, following them. When I came to the side that was only a few feet from a long, chain-link fence, I saw that someone had painted the most fantastical mural along the wall. There were all these imaginary animals, in pastel hues and bright, wild tones, tumbling along the bricks in a party. Turtles with wings and long, lavender panthers and tall neon birds with clothes and claws and capes. I took picture after picture, fascinated. I followed the wall along, even though the walking space between it and the fence got narrower and narrower. There was a deep purple dog painted there, with a quiet face, just looking out from the wall. At first he looked fuzzy, but when I looked closer, I realized that his outline was made of tiny, carefully printed words. As I read them, over and over, I recognized them as the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's "Blue".

"Blue". The song I'd been listening to on repeat in the car all week. The song I'd written in my notebook, which had replaced that journal with the deep purple dog. I had to know who painted this. I had to find her. We were going to be best friends. Someone else who liked art and old music and, I don't know, spending time alone in fields, which I guess was something I liked now. This awful little town, with its potholed streets and off-brand snacks in the dimly lit gas station, was going to have a silver lining. There was at least one person here who would get me, and we were going to be friends. But how would I ever find her? In the corner it was tagged with a name that looked like "Time".

I was finally calm. Or maybe numb. The first day of senior year was supposed to be easy, not a time to start all over again. I walked back along the wall to where the fence started and sat down and focused on the flowers, picking some of the little ones to make a daisy chain. I took a few more pictures as the field started to glow from the setting sun, even the broken glass that speckled the pavement twinkling brightly, and then got back in the car. "Blue" was still playing on loop through the speakers.

I just let it keep playing on repeat until I pulled into the driveway. "Nobody die this time," the kid in homeroom had said. Easier said than done, I felt, looking at the little house. I didn't want to go inside and dignify it with my presence. I wished I could just keep driving until I got home. But I was home now? To my real home. To mom. Or to some imaginary home where my mom was the good way all the time, and my dad just never existed, and my friends couldn't be friends anymore without me, and my pictures came out the way I wanted.

I eased the door and snuck through the house like a spy, avoiding the kitchen where I could hear my father on the phone, laughing. Almost giggling. Flirting, like he was trying to be a guy instead of a dad. Barf. As I went up the stairs, the floor creaked under my feet, and I froze, but he didn't even pause in his conversation. When I made it to the fresh canvas in the corner of my room, I plugged in my earphones, turned my music up, and started painting in the makeshift studio I'd set up.

As I painted, I thought back on the day and how much I hated being in this new place. Now that I thought it out, I determined that yes, the summer before senior year might actually be the absolute worst time to move to a tiny, crappy town where everyone had had the same best friends since they were five. Being the new kid all day was so awkward and pathetic. I guessed I would still be the "new kid" at graduation. I'd started the day in English, hoping to just drift through unnoticed. Why do teachers think the 'new kid' would want to stand in front of everyone and introduce herself? Who would ever want to do that? When did the class ever look at that person and go, "Oh really? You're from another state? Let's be best friends. Because we're seven years old"? Never. But they all still do it. It's somehow in the teacher handbook as one of the few things they all agree is a great idea, along with putting one smart kid in each group so that they can do the whole group project while getting made fun of by the people they're helping, or putting the desks in a circle whenever the day is going to be awful.

But I did it anyway and stood there, trying to look normal, trying to act like it wasn't humiliating to have everyone stand there and watch me, scrutinizing. When you start at a new school, they should give you a week to just watch from behind the glass, so you know that no one else wears the sneakers that everyone wore at your old school, or that only the stoners have backpacks. Like one of those mirrors in court shows, where no one knows you're watching. They should give you a week before they put you on display - it would only be fair.

But I got up and gave the little speech for them anyway. "Hi, I'm Celia. (True.) I moved from LA a few days ago because of my dad's job. (False. My dad got a new job because he was leaving my mom and I had to go with him because my mom 'can't do it on her own,' otherwise known as 'mentally unfit' if you ask the court, otherwise known as 'whacko'. But still a way better parent than my dad, even if sometimes she cries in her bed or doesn't come home at night. She still cared who my friends were. She still knew what classes I was taking. She knew how to make a meal that wasn't cereal. Otherwise known as 'a person who wasn't perfect.' Otherwise known as 'a person.' Otherwise known as 'I miss her a lot.') I enjoy anything art-related and I used to love watching the sunset. (Back when I had friends, and lived in a place where sunsets weren't obscured by billboards for all-you-can-eat cornbread and lawyers helping you sue if you got in a car accident.) And even though I used to go to the ocean everyday, I have yet to stand up on a surfboard. (True. But apparently, judging by their faces, not funny or interesting at all.) I have an older sister named Ruby who goes to Stanford. (A few impressed nods for this one. Thanks, Ruby. You finally have something to offer. You left, everything fell apart, and now I've lost my mom, my friends, my house... my life. But at least you get to pursue your 'true self'. That's what's always been most important, after all: you.)" I rambled on, trying to sound interesting, but everyone was just silent when I finished. They weren't mean; a few of them smiled at me. But that was it.

By last period, the introduction speech in math was down to, "My name is Celia (True.), I moved here from California (True.)." No one was mean, but no one smiled. It's like I was actually invisible, if invisible people could somehow be judged by everyone around them. A year isn't that long, I thought. I could be invisible for a year.

I tried to forget all of it while I painted. I finished the vibrant green grass and had begun to paint the daisies when my phone rang. Ruby. I stared at it for five rings before I picked it up.

"Celia! I miss you so much! How was your first day of school?" I outlined a daisy petal and wondered if I should be honest.

"Okay, I guess, considering." I paused. "Actually, it was awful. I didn't really get to know anyone and since I'm new no one really asked. And whenever I did try to talk to someone, it was super awkward. This town sucks. The school sucks. There's a framed quote hanging in the front entryway that says 'Believe if your dreams.' It says 'if', Ruby. Not 'in.' They framed it and hung it there long enough for it to get dusty, and no one's noticed that it freaking says 'believe if your dreams.'"

"I'm sorry you're having a rough time, but I'm sure it will get better. I'm guessing you're painting right now, and I hate to tell you this but you should really be working." Typical Ruby.

"Oh please. I know it's shocking, but not everyone wants to be you." While I was on the phone, I took the metal bottle cap and plastic barrette from my jacket pocket and glued them onto a sculpture I'd started at home, a big flat circle that I called "Found on the Ground." It was, not surprisingly, just things I found on the ground. I loved it.

Ruby laughed, but she knew I meant it in a mean way. It never had made sense to her that I wasn't a 'school kid' - that once I understood the material, I didn't care what the grade was or what the teacher thought. It wasn't that school was hard for me, I just never really cared very much about it. Textbooks were boring; life was exciting. Or at least it used to be, when we were back home, with mom. Why read about something, when you can go to a museum or talk to someone interesting or get out in the real world and see it for yourself? It was Ruby who needed the pat on the head, who cherished every gold star that came her way.

"Okay fine, but you still need to graduate. It's time to start being a little more serious about school, okay?" I didn't answer. "Is the house at least good? How's your room?"

"It's small. It feels like you walk into a room and it gets smaller around you. I gotta go, Dad's calling." He, of course, wasn't.

"I know it's hard, Celia..."

"You really don't. You aren't here. I gotta go."

I hung up. She didn't know. She didn't know that mom had stood in the driveway, watching the car leave. She didn't know that mom had made me these cookies to eat in the car, where the M&Ms made the shape of a heart on each cookie. I thought about mom, manic in the middle of the night, sorting the M&Ms into colors so they'd look just right. She didn't know that mom had gotten so drunk the day of the court decision that I'd found her in the bathroom, so white she was almost blue, and carried her to bed. That she'd grabbed my face and looked into my eyes, terrified. "They said I'm bad for you," she said. "I never wanted to be anything but good. That's why I made you." She'd thrown up in her bed, and I'd washed the blankets, and then washed them again when they still smelled sour. Ruby didn't know any of that. She'd never cared if the blankets were sour or the hearts on the cookies were perfect. I bet she wouldn't even have noticed if she'd been there.

I went back to painting, losing myself in the details until it was 12am and I couldn't put off my homework any more. Ruby was right - I did have to graduate. Two-hundred-thirty-seven days from now. I pulled a page from my red notebook and tacked it to the wall. It was supposed to motivate me, but it just made my room feel more like a prison.

***

The next morning, I grabbed a piece of toast to take with me in the car. No butter, I discovered too late. We did have a big jar of orange marmalade with a ruffly fabric top, a souvenir from Florida that dad's girlfriend Lorina had handed me with an overly sweet smile when she and my dad came back. "Girlfriend?" He called her his "friend". Which was somehow grosser. Even though it was clearly an afterthought from the airport. Even though who the hell wants marmalade. I put it on my toast - it was bitter and sweet and sticky. If Lorina's perfume were a food, it would be this. Lorina, with her fake auburn hair and her hair dye stains on her ears. Lorina, who'd started leaving her toothbrush on the sink. The bristles were all splayed. Just get a new toothbrush, Lorina. They're like a dollar.

I dumped the toast in the trash and threw the marmalade jar on top of it. I felt a little bad for Lorina, who'd see it there, at the bottom of the black bag, when she'd make dad a Hot Pocket after work. Like that was cooking. My mom would have made something good out of the marmalade - glazed pork with wild rice, Chinese stir fry. The kitchen would have been a disaster, but it would have smelled like heaven. Now we had a clean kitchen and a plastic spoon holder on the counter that said "Everything's bigger in Texas". I hated it.

Hungry, I got in the car. The only good thing about Ruby leaving, about Dad feeling guilty, about his new job that paid more: my car. I would still trade it to have everything back the way it was, but if things had to be like this, at least I had a car. Driving to school, I straightened my black headband for the hundredth time, put the curl of hair that always got in my eyes back behind my ear, and made it my sole goal of the day to try and socialize with every person I could, even if it was weird. I couldn't be myself and also pretend to be like everyone here. It would be too exhausting to be two people at once; I hardly had enough mental energy left to make one respectable person. Plus I was too hungry to put on a fake personality all day. So I decided I'd just be myself and get them to like me, somehow. I would have to go up to people and just make them talk to me. I drove past the lot I had discovered the other day. Maybe I'd find out who painted the mural and be friends with her. I gave myself the little pep talk that you always give yourself before things don't go at all like you tell yourself they will. I took a deep breath as I drove up the entrance to Heartshire High. If those flowers could grow in that abandoned lot, I could survive at this school.

Before getting out of the car, I pulled out the red notebook.

Weather: hot

Song: Hearts and Bones

Mood: motivated

Overheard: "Why can't any cool people ever transfer here?" - some girl

I braced myself, left the car, and in I went. Immediately after opening the door, I was hit by a wall of sound. People talking everywhere, laughing, pushing each other, slamming lockers. Even the mousey kids who stood shyly by their lockers seemed to have other mousey kids to talk to. I looked again at the framed plaque on the wall, trying to look like someone that anyone could come up to talk to, and then realizing I had no idea what that looked like, and then fake laughing at the plaque hoping someone would catch my eye so that I could start a conversation about how it said "if" instead of "in" and that was so stupid, and then realizing no one would want to talk about that, and then just walking along the wall down a hallway that went straight on like a tunnel for what seemed like forever. Pathetic. It turns out I didn't know how to make friends as a 17-year-old. I hadn't made any friends since I was 9. Maybe I should choose someone who has the same color hair as me and run up to them and see if they want to play princesses?

The hall had rows of lockers, with maps painted above them along the wall in what looked like it had been a class project, since the maps were all just a little off. If only there'd been a rule book you could follow for making friends. I was good at being friends, but just, could there be some rules for the starting part? We taught everyone how to draw a map of the Louisiana Purchase, apparently - wasn't making friends a little more important? Couldn't we get, like, a packet or something? I read the numbers down the row until I got to my own locker and was happy to see that I'd left some candy in there yesterday, which I finished off. I saw in my locker mirror that the stupid curl had gotten loose again. Sigh.

I walked into history, my first class, and took an empty seat in the middle of the room. But before I could speak to anyone, the bell rang. I turned to the girl next me and smiled, she smiled back, but then she turned around to talk to someone else. I tried to take notes but the teacher's quiet droning was impossible to follow. He kept underlining the same arrow on the board, which was supposed to mean something to us about how one thing connected to another, but I'd missed the beginning so it was nothing but an arrow to me. He kept saying "and so it follows that..." and waiting for someone to fill in the blank with what he clearly thought was an obvious answer. You could actually hear the clock ticking. I opened up the notebook and wrote:

Remember when mom took all my toys

And gave them all away?

To kids who "really needed them"

To have a way to play?

And then I cried and wept because

I'd lost my favorite doll.

And mom said I was selfish

'Cause I didn't need them all?

So while my mom was missing

For a couple days or three

I took all of her jewelry

And dumped it in the sea.

I planned to tell her, when she cried,

She was the selfish one

And simply didn't need them all,

When other folks had none.

I knew she would be sorry, once

She felt the way I did;

But instead she didn't notice

Or if she did, she never said.

I doodled arrows up and down my notebook and tried to figure out a new plan. As class was dismissed, I noticed a short girl wearing a Jefferson Airplane tee shirt, and I remembered she was in my next class. That was one of my favorite bands from the 60s. Sure, I was more into the 70s and early 80s lately, but I still knew both sides of Surrealistic Pillow like the back of my hand. For the first time in days, I felt cool, ready to impress this girl by talking about 60s rock and finding out what her favorite Doors song was and whether she was a Stones or Beatles girl and how much she had loved Pet Sounds and how we couldn't believe that all these other kids hadn't even listened to Pet Sounds, or even heard of it, and then we'd be friends. I caught up to her.

"Cool shirt," I said. "Feed your head."

"Huh?" she said with a friendly smile.

"Jefferson Airplane, you know. White Rabbit."

"Oh," she smiled, "I don't know. I just thought it was a cool shirt." And then she saw what must have been one of her friends and sped off after her, leaving me alone in the hallway. Sigh. I just wasn't made for these times, I thought, laughing at my own joke that no one would appreciate. Because it's a song from Pet Sounds, and it's also true.

And that's how it went, all day. Each break dragged on, and every single class seemed to be endless poker game of trying to read people's emotions or catch their eyes so I could at least have someone to smile at. Or just talk to someone. Everyone just seemed kind of mildly annoyed by whatever I had to say. Like when a teacher sees you before school and tells you your jacket is "sharp," and someone overhears it, but you still have to smile so you don't seem rude. Sigh.

At lunch, I bought a plastic-wrapped sandwich and went from table to table, but everyone seemed to be saving seats for their imaginary friends. By the tenth table, I was so tired of being awkwardly all alone in a sea of people that I walked to the parking lot and ate alone in my car, listening to Paul Simon's Hearts and Bones album. I used to memorize all the information about an album when I was a kid. My mom would put on an album and lie in her bed, and tell me to lie down and "listen, listen, listen." So I'd read all the lyrics, and all the album info, and close my eyes and try to recite it. Because if I knew it, maybe I'd know her. Hearts and Bones. Artist? Paul Simon. Year? 1983. Studio? Warner Brothers. I could list all the songs. I could say all the lyrics. It was so comforting; predictable.

I thought about my mom, who was probably eating lunch alone somewhere too just now, if she was eating at all. Maybe she was doing the mom classic, wine and Swedish fish in bed. Or microwave popcorn with Hershey's kisses. Definitely nothing with vegetables. I wondered whether hearing from me without seeing me would make her day better or worse, but I decided to text her mostly out of my own loneliness.

Celia: Hi mom, I miss you.

I watched the screen as I ate my sandwich, but there was no reply. Sitting there, I decided that since I only had three more classes, and one of them was gym, I was just going to leave. I drove to the daisy lot, pulled in behind one of the buildings, and started walking around. A little further back behind one of the buildings was a thick forest, which I wanted to explore, but unfortunately I'm absolutely amazing at getting lost, so I was afraid.

I sat down in a patch of grass at the edge of the forest, took off my shoes, stretched my legs out in front of me like a little kid, and finished off my sandwich. I sat there doing nothing, just picking petals off the daisies and being glad I wasn't in school anymore. I was watching my phone to see if my mom would reply when a girl about my age with short, platinum blond hair and white jeans ran out of the forest and across the field towards the road.

She looked completely frazzled and fumbled a few times as her heels sunk into the grass. She kept checking her phone and then running faster and faster, as if she was being chased. I jumped up and ran a few steps after her, shouting, "Hey! Are you okay?!" Shocked at the sound of my voice, she spun her head toward me, nodded with a rushed smile and a wave, and continued to race along. I stayed standing, not sure what to do, and watched her jump into a pink bug that had been parked in the street and drive away. I stood there dazed for a moment, until I checked my phone and realized it was three o'clock and I could finally go home, so I made my way back to the car, stopping at the mural along the way to look at it one more time. Who are you? I started humming that opening line from The Who's classic song over and over again. Who? Who? Who was that girl who'd come running out of the forest, and why? Who was the girl who'd painted that mural? Who was I, even, anymore. Like The Who, I really wanted to know.

As I pulled into my driveway, I was struck by the realization that it didn't matter when I came home. If I came home at noon, no one would be here. No mom to freak out that I wasn't at school. No neighbors who'd tell mom about my car if she was in bed, knocked out by whatever meds she was trying this month. And if I didn't get home at three, who would know? Dad? He'd probably be grateful to have the house to himself, to pour Lorina a glass of wine on the back porch and lie in a deck chair with his shirt unbuttoned, laughing at her stupid jokes. Gross.

So I became determined to do everything right. To be home on time, every time. To leave a note when I left the house. To live like I still had a mom. So that he wouldn't have any excuses - it wasn't going to be my fault that he was a terrible dad. I would keep track of everything I did right and everything he did wrong. I would be perfect. I didn't have any friends anyway, so I really wasn't giving anything up. And when the 237 days were up, I'd present my evidence to whoever needed it. I'd go home, real home, and take care of Mom. Exhibit A: I am home on time, even though no one is here. I went into the kitchen and looked for a snack. Exhibit B: no food. I snapped a picture with my phone of the cold, sticky shelves, which would have been empty if not for some mustard, a couple soy sauce packets, and an old box of baking soda. It almost made me wish I'd kept the marmalade. Exhibit C: I drove to the store and bought this bag of groceries. Snapped another picture, in the checkout lane. Exhibit D: I put everything away and put the change back on the counter. Snap! Snap! Now at least I have something to do all day; now I have a purpose. When my dad sees all the pictures, a year of his mistakes, a year of my successes, he won't be able to keep me here.

Evidence collected, I went upstairs to paint. And as I painted I couldn't stop wondering what was up with that girl running from the woods. Did she go to Heartshire High too? Why was she in the woods? Could she and I maybe have something to talk about now? Would someone that pretty even, like, let me talk to them? But we had something in common now, no matter how small: the lot. Maybe she was the one who painted the mural. I just knew I had to track her down. I texted some friends from home about how senior year was going, but talking to them only made me lonelier. Every second felt like forever. There's no worse feeling than wanting to go home and realizing you're already there.

***

My alarm blasted Straight to Hell, which felt accurate. Straight to Hell. Artist? The Clash. Album? Combat Rock. 1982. CBS Records. I opened my eyes slowly, hoping I would wake up in my old room. When that didn't happen, I pulled the sheets up over my head until I absolutely, absolutely couldn't stay in bed anymore or I would so be late. Same headband and jacket, same jeans, same toast (though when I went to get the butter, which I'd remembered at the store, I noticed the marmalade was back in the fridge. From the trash. Lorina), same hair in my eyes, same stupid town, same drive to school. But just as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw the blond girl again. I quickly parked and scrambled after her, trying to catch up while still looking like I was there by coincidence. Once again, she was hurrying, as if she were late for something.

I sped past her and then tried to look as if I'd just noticed her there. "Hey, were you okay yesterday?" I asked.

It took her face just a moment to register who I was. "Yeah! Sorry I was in such a rush! I just didn't want to be late to my meeting, don't worry! I'm the head of the dance team, so it doesn't look good if I'm late. Anyways, I'm Bunni. You must be Celia, the new girl." She answered back in the nicest tone I had heard since arriving there. And she knew my name, which made me feel weird but mostly a little bit happy. So I wasn't invisible, for better or worse. As we walked into the school, Bunni and I kept talking. This time the loud hallway didn't bother me, and I forgot about the inspirational typo and the wonky maps. I was a little intimidated by how pretty she was (perfect hair, bright green eyes, supermodel figure; nothing like short me, with my dull, blond puffy hair and a body my mom had once, in one of her moods, described as 'nothing special'), but she was also super nice and seemed to be friends with everyone we passed. We walked to her group of friends and she introduced me to them. Since they weren't in any of my classes, they hadn't received my 'introduction speech', so I got a fresh start. And for eight minutes, I felt like I could actually survive this year. They asked about California and about which teachers I had. They warned me not to eat the toffee bars in the cafeteria. Some guy named Maurice was in the middle of explaining an inside joke that, admittedly, didn't seem at all funny when the first bell rang and people started to take off. As Bunni walked away, I called out to her to ask her the question that had been bugging me since yesterday,

"So, what were you doing in the forest?"

Bunni turned to me discreetly, "We can't talk about it around teachers. But meet me at my car at lunch and I'll show you." Finally, something interesting was happening. Maybe.

Weather: hot again

Song: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Mood: friendly?

Overheard: "She's friends with Bunni" - Maurice, about me!!!

I didn't even care how boring my first few classes were, and I didn't bother trying to make friends. At lunch, I met Bunni at her little pink car and we drove back to the field. When we parked, I couldn't help but feeling a bit weird. What was going on here that she couldn't talk about at school? Was it really a good idea for me to be doing this, heading off with some random person, before I even had any friends? You take what you can get, I thought. Hesitant, I followed my new friend to the opening of a little trail at the edge of the woods, and along a gloomy forest passage, ducking under branches and stepping over stumps and following what I could tell was a trail only because we were following it. She had definitely done this before.

"So, uh, where are we going?" I asked as I began to see snack wrappers and beer cans littering the ground. Someone had spray painted "EAT ME" in bright orange on the side of a big rock. There were toilet paper streamers, limp and damp, hanging from one of the trees.

"Nothing, just a place. It's where we all hang out. Well, especially if you want drugs." She must have seen I wasn't exactly at home with the idea, because she smiled and shook her head. "Oh, nothing bad ever happens, usually, don't worry. Just don't take anything from anybody except Pilar or Maddox, otherwise you don't know what kind of crap you're going to get." I didn't have any idea who Pilar or Maddox were, and I didn't plan on "taking anything" from anyone, but I smiled back anyway. The forest was surprisingly quiet and eerie but wasn't as dark as I had imagined. That's when Bunni and I entered into a sort of open ring of trees in the forest.

Throughout the circle were tree stumps being used as seats and also a clear area in the center where there were ashes from a fire. It was pretty nice, cool and green except for the bits of trash everywhere, which made me a bit sad but didn't seem to bother any of the kids sitting around chatting or looking at their phones who didn't notice us at all. Nothing special. One girl smiled up at Bunni from her stump as we walked by. She was wearing a big, black sweater over black leggings, and with her red lipstick and wild, messy bun, she looked that kind of effortlessly cool that I didn't know people could pull off in real life. She was picking at a take-out burrito and kind of staring off into space.

"Hey Dutch," Bunni said. "This is Celia." The girl nodded at me, and I nodded back. I was going to say something, but she went back to picking peppers out of her burrito as if I'd never been there.

"Her name's Dutch?" I whispered to Bunni once we'd walked away. Bunni laughed.

"That's what everyone calls her. She's always got the best weed, since like seventh grade when no one had seen the stuff yet. She has a cousin or something who gets it." I tried not to look shocked. In seventh grade, my biggest vice had been gel pens. In seventh grade, and now, I thought. But I lived here now, where people ate burritos that probably had no organic ingredients and came in a plastic bag. Where I, apparently, hung out in the woods. I tried to think of what my face normally looked like, so that I could make it look like that. So no one would know that I'd never seen a beer can before outside of a recycling bin. So that no one would realize that I didn't belong. I pretty quickly realized that the absolute fastest and most certain way to make sure you look completely uncomfortable is to try to look comfortable, but that just made it worse. But Bunni was still smiling.

"People usually come here after school, but you can come whenever. Obviously, like you can see, lots of us eat lunch here. The cafeteria's kind of awful. I usually come here, if I don't have a dance committee meeting. People just, like, leave you alone here, you know? I mean, if you want them to." We sat down on a log and Bunni ate a granola bar from her bag, while I just sort of stared at the ground and tried not to look out of place, putting my hands in my lap and then next to me and then back in my lap and basically just wishing I was dead and hoping my face wasn't too sweaty and red. She told me all about her upcoming dance team show and how they were having to scramble to change everything because this one girl had dropped out. I was kind of half listening, but once she stopped talking I realized I had to say something.

"So, what kind of music do you like?" I asked, hopeful.

"Oh I love all music!" Bunni said. "Taylor Swift, Rihanna... everything." I gave a weak smile but moaned internally.

Then, Bunni checked her phone and completely freaked out. "Shit! We're late!" She jumped up and frantically began gathering her things. No one seemed to notice her panic, and they just waved goodbye to her and went back to whatever they were doing. I grabbed my bag and chased after her, but coordination and I aren't exactly friends and Bunni was definitely not a stranger to running this path. I could see her ahead, but I wasn't keeping pace with her. I tripped on a hole in the path and fell straight down, landing on my face in the dirt. I jumped to my feet. I looked around and to my relief no one had seen me trip. To my opposite-of-relief, no one had seen me because we were out of sight of everyone in the clearing, but Bunni ahead of me was nowhere to be seen; she hadn't stopped to wait for me, and all I could hope was that in her hurrying she hadn't noticed my fall.

I was brushing the dirt and twigs off my clothes when I realized that I'd really messed up my ankle – it was swelling and I couldn't stand on it very well. I checked the time on my thankfully unharmed phone: 1:35pm. I knew I had to go back to school because they would begin to suspect my absence two days in a row. However, even if I ran, I still would be late to my next class. And since I had come with Bunni, who was obviously gone, I didn't have a ride either; I was going to have to walk back. So, it made sense not to rush and I sat down and just stayed there little while longer watching my ankle swell and tearing up a little at the pain, and also at the fact that I was left here, alone, apparently forgotten in an instant. Nothing special, I thought again. I undid my shoe to make space for my quickly-expanding purple ankle and let the black strap drag on the ground.

Sitting there, in the dirt, I noticed a little sparkle in the grass. Probably a foil wrapper or something. I reached down next to the hole in the path and grabbed it. I brushed the dirt off of the object only to discover it was a necklace chain with a small diamond and key on it. The dainty necklace was really pretty and the key would be a great addition to Found on the Ground, and since no one was around, I put it in my jacket pocket. I limped back through the field, determined to make it back to school before my next class started and glad for the first time to see the entrance of Heartshire High. My ankle was almost too big for my shoe now, and it kept getting bigger and bigger, with no signs of stopping. I stopped at my locker to get my books, and found a note from Bunni, which made me feel a little better. "Celia, Sorry! I'm so stupid sometimes - I just forgot to wait for you. On Friday, we'll party! Love, Bunni."

I smiled. I have a friend. I didn't know what was on Friday, but I was so happy to have something, anything to do. I hobbled to class, feeling like everything was going to be fine after all. It didn't last - when I opened the door to my French class, everyone stared at me. I looked down and noticed that my shirt was covered in dirt from the fall, and I had big muddy stains on both my knees. I tightened my blue jacket around me and stuffed my dirty hand into my pocket, where the necklace was cold to the touch, and wobbled to my seat. Just go on til you come to the end, I thought. Then stop.
Chapter 2: Tears

I didn't have my red notebook, so I just wrote in my French notebook. I told myself I'd copy it over when I got home. I knew I wouldn't.

Weather: windy

Song: Rooms on Fire

Mood: muddy

Overheard: "If I didn't sell it to her, she'd just get it somewhere else." - Dutch

That was the song that came to my head now, "Rooms on Fire". The old Stevie Nicks record that my mom had sometimes played when she would hang out in the living room, open all the windows, and try to, she always said, "let in the spring". Album? The Other Side of the Mirror. 1989. Modern Records.

My mom used to hug me and dance around when she sang along with it. There sure was something around me now, mom, that everyone noticed when I came into a room. But "magic" wasn't it. I wondered if anyone in here even knew who Stevie Nicks was. Or Joni Mitchell. Annie Lennox. If they'd recognize Carole King from anything other than Gilmore Girls. Two girls were wearing matching tee shirts from a Katy Perry concert. I just wanted to go home.

Sitting in the corner, I held my jacket around me tightly to hide as much of the dirt as I could and tried to daydream myself out of my French classroom. I thought about how much I wanted to go back to the forest with Bunni. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd had a normal conversation with someone and felt like I belonged somewhere. Okay, so I didn't really feel like I belonged there, and Bunni and I didn't really have anything in common, but she was nice to me, and she invited me somewhere, and that was enough. But of course I'd had to completely embarrass myself in front of my French class, so my chances at fitting in with anyone here any time soon were probably pretty close to zero. I tried not to look around too much and draw any more attention. There wasn't anything I could do but wait until it was time to get out of there and then try to find a way to clean myself up and forget this ever happened.

I doodled in my notebook, thinking of my old school and how different French class would be there. How the work would be harder, but everyone would be friendly, and Celine would be complaining about how Sam was always hitting on her, and that had seemed like a problem. I wrote, absentmindedly,

'Why can't the little quarterback

Improve his pick-up lines

Instead of telling everyone

They're sexy or they're fine?

Can he just get to know me first?

No, that's not how it works.

Cause this is the real world, my girl,

And boys are always jerks.

I was smiling at my little poem, and how Celine would love it, when I startled like a cat interrupted from a nap. "Celia, staring at the clock will not make the time go by faster," said the teacher's annoyed voice from right next to my ear. A few kids snickered. I turned red.

I mumbled an apology and returned to my bubble. Now people were staring at me even more. How do teachers always know the exact, perfect way to make things worse? I wished I could disappear altogether, like a candle flame, and just be... whatever a flame of a candle was after it had been blown out. Gone.

My embarrassment didn't stop me from staring at the clock again though. Time was going unbearably slow. I swear it was almost moving backwards. Le temps est un assassin, I thought. I was so bored - this was the same stuff I'd learned in French class three years ago. I tried to kill time by reading student project posters on the wall about things like bright gardens and cool fountains, but reading poorly written French descriptions of les belles fleurs is exactly as interesting as it sounds. I began doodling, resting my head on the desk.

"Excuse me Celia!"

My head jolted up. I could feel drool on my chin.

"You're new here so I have tried to cut you some slack. I know it's hard to re-adjust but it has only been a week and you have already skipped class, showed up late and now you are not paying attention and falling asleep. I am not forcing you to be here. The door is right there if you want to leave."

I turned bright red. Of course I wanted to leave. Everyone wants to leave, I thought. Of course you're forcing me to be here. You think this is, like, everyone's idea of a great time? And what's even stranger is that I'm better at French than you are, but I have to sit here listening to you try to sound like you're the expert. But of course, I'm talking nonsense. Please, tell me again how your broken French, which isn't even right on the board, by the way, is going to help me in life? That's what I thought of saying, dreamed of saying, but of course it's not what I said. I just sat, in anger and shame, staring at her while she smirked like she'd won.

She pointed to the door. Terrified, I shook my head.

"Okay so since you want to stay, pay attention." The teacher walked back to the front of the class and began speaking in French again, with mistakes peppered throughout, which no one else seemed to notice.

I was definitely paying attention now, because everyone was staring at me. A few students snickered and other people whispering.

It felt like the walls were closing in on me and I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. I began playing with my headband, tying and untying it to try to calm myself, but it wasn't working. Sometimes when I felt like this, I wondered if other people felt this way too, or if something was wrong with me. Maybe something was broken in my brain, like it was for my mom. Maybe I wasn't supposed to notice or care at all. Maybe other people just went through their days, oblivious to the glances and snickers of others, to the teacher's mistakes, to the sheer crushing boredom and loneliness of it all. How could you know? It felt like the walls of the room were closing in. I could feel everyone looking at me, even when they weren't. I got hotter and sweatier, and the idea of staying in that tiny desk seemed impossible. I needed to get out of there. I felt like if I didn't leave the room right that minute, it might shrink around me and I'd never be able to get out. In a panic, I raised my hand.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" I nearly yelled.

Giving up on me, my teacher nodded and sighed angrily as I limped out of the room as quickly as I could. As the door closed behind me, I heard someone make a comment, and everyone laughed. Flushed, I paced through the halls taking deep breaths and attempted to hold the tears that had been creeping up on me since I'd fallen in the woods. But I couldn't stop them. Tears streaming down my face, I went straight to the bathroom and sobbed until I had no more tears to cry. I knew it wasn't helping, but it went on all the same, tears after tears.

I stared at the wall of the stall and read the poem someone had scrawled there:

Caty said to a guy

That she met

On the

sly,

"I just

told my mom

and dad

all about

you.—Oh,

they so want to

meet you; they'd

I'm sure like

to treat you to

dinner, if

you're free

with nothing

to do."

So he said,

"It's a pity,

tonight

I am

busy, and

also

tomorrow

and next

weekend

too.

But I

am free

right now

when your

mom's

out

of

town..."

And

Caty

just

smiled,

and

showed

him what

to

Do."'

I contemplated leaving early again and going home. But, if I skipped any more classes, the school would definitely call my dad. So, when about ten minutes had gone by and I thought I couldn't be away from class any longer, I made myself go back. I could feel everyone's eyes on me as I walked back to my desk. I wanted to disappear, to close in on myself, to shut up like a telescope getting smaller and smaller into myself until I was completely unnoticeable.

Then, it happened. I swear everything went into slow motion.

"Okay everyone, please get in groups of two so you can complete this worksheet together." Who's going to want to be in a group with a dirty, limping weirdo who's obviously been crying in the hallways? Hadn't teachers ever been students? Didn't they know the punishment, the agony, of 'finding a partner'? Find a partner, they'd say, like it was easy. Like the whole impossible quest of your stupid life wasn't find a partner.

Throughout the room, people called to and reached for their friends. Planning to work alone because of my friend-repellent personality, I just stayed in the corner and started the assignment alone.

"Hey, do you have a partner?" someone said in my direction.

Looking up I saw a brunette girl around my height standing over my desk. No Taylor Swift shirt - a good sign; perfect French manicure - a bad sign. I looked around to make sure she wasn't asking someone else. When I saw she was talking to me I answered as sarcastically as possible,

"Oh, yeah I do. I'm working with literally all the friends I have right now," I said, pointing to the empty chair besides me.

Grinning, she sat next to me.

"You know, you're kind of funny," she said. I couldn't keep myself from smiling. Maybe I would survive Heartshire High French after all.

She looked over my shoulder at my drawings in my notebook. "Cool," she said, which I'm sad to admit was the highlight of my day. We started working on the assignment, but it was easy, so we talked about last weekend's party, the last party of the summer. I told her I'd still been moving in then, so I hadn't been there. I left out the part where of course no one had invited me, because who would have?

"I wouldn't know anyone anyway," I said, "and people are always in couples at those things and then I'm just the loser standing alone. Did you go with somebody?"

"No, he's gone," she answered quietly.

She seemed devastated that her boyfriend had been away the weekend of the party and I didn't really understand why it was a big deal. But it seemed to really upset her, so I tried to commiserate.

"Leaving you alone at a big party like that? I bet you could have killed him," I joked.

She looked up from her paper in shock. Then she burst into tears.

"Oh my gosh, what's wrong?" I whispered.

"He's gone!" she shrieked as she stood up crying and ran out of the room. That's when I remembered that weird comment from the first day – someone had died. Apparently this girl's boyfriend. Horrified, I looked around the room wondering what to do. Everyone was staring at me as if I'd punched this girl in the face. One of the Taylor Swift girls made a disgusted sigh in my direction and went running after the brown-haired girl. The bell rang, and people around me were turning in their papers and heading off to tell whoever they saw next what a stupid, mean thing the new girl had done. "What an idiot," I could almost hear them saying. "What a bitch." "Who does she think she is?" It was a fair question because at this point even I wasn't sure.
Chapter 3: Racing

Well, if you have to go to any class after making some girl cry over her dead boyfriend, gym is probably the best one. Even if you're completely awful at it, like I am. But at least there was a chance I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, so I wouldn't be able to ruin my own life any more than I already had.

I walked through the crowds of people, staring at my feet to avoid any more attention being drawn to me. As I walked into the changing room, three girls noticed me and stopped talking to one another. One of them kept staring at me. I knew I should just ignore it, but I couldn't take it anymore.

"Wow, news travels really fast here doesn't it," I said to them. The girl who had been staring at me turned bright red, while the other two just looked at each other in shock. They didn't say anything, so I started to feel even more embarrassed just standing there. But I figured they already thought I was a freak anyway, so I had nothing to lose by asking for their help.

"Okay," I said, "so listen, I just moved here. Celia. 'The New Girl.' And I've got to be honest, I'm having a super hard time. Every time I try to talk to someone, they just smile and walk away or totally ignore me, or worse, I completely offend them! But I'm new here - how do they expect me to know everyone's secrets? And, okay, I realize that walking up to you guys while you're changing, which I now see is pretty awkward, is probably not the best way to prove to you that I'm just a normal personal and not some kind of freak. I get that. But I already fell in a hole today, as I'm sure you can see, and then I made someone cry even though she was super-nice to me. So. I mean, I don't know you at all but you guys seem normal, so could you just, like, talk to me? Could you not stare at me like I landed here from another planet? Could you just pretend we already know each other and talk about whatever you were going to talk about and let me stand in your circle with you, instead of hovering outside it like a weirdo? I mean, after you're dressed, obviously." I felt the tears coming, so I tried to make a sarcastic face like it was a joke instead of the truly desperate plea of a lonely girl.

The shortest girl of the three nodded and answered shyly, "Sure." I let out a huge sigh, and changed into my gym clothes, a pair of blue running shorts and a faded tee shirt I'd taken from my mom that had U2's Boy album cover on it.

"Nice shirt," the shortest girl said, and I could have hugged her. I walked with them from the changing rooms to the gym. Once again, I was met with strange looks and whispers, so I looked at my shoes and waited for the coach to finish his speech about how important this class was. I love running in circles; truly, it absolutely does not get boring after the third lap at all. I think probably when I get out into that "real world" you guys are always going on about and start looking for a job, my ability to quietly run in circles while hoping my face isn't turning too red will really be what wows people. It should open a lot of doors. When he was done, I followed my new friends, or whatever you would call them, out to the track, and we started jogging. No one was talking, which started to make me feel like I was very slowly drowning, although in a strange way I didn't really mind. At least if they were quiet they weren't laughing at me.

"Sorry, I didn't ask for your names before."

"Oh yeah!" said the skinny blond girl who seemed to be, if any of them were, the head of the group, "I'm Laurie. This is Jay," she said, pointing to the short, quiet girl who had liked my shirt, "and that's Didi". Didi waved.

Jay finally made eye contact, as if the introduction had given her permission to talk to me again. "What do you want to know about Heartshire?"

I looked at her wondering where the hell I should start; I mean honestly I felt like I needed a flowchart to explain how to navigate this place, or some kind of pamphlet to at least tell me who I shouldn't make jokes to because it might be worse than running them over with my car. But there's no way she could explain everything to me, so I decided to start with what seemed to be the biggest problem.

"So, what's up with... the kid who died?"

The three girls looked at each other, obviously deciding how much they should tell me.

Laurie spoke first. "Here's the deal. The girl, the one you made cry? Her name's Pilar and she used to date Tim. He went to school here too. He was the nicest guy and just this great artist. Everyone loved him. They were friends for like ever, and then they started dating freshman year. And they were like really dating, you know? Like, a couple?"

"They were literally high school sweethearts, like they did everything together," Didi spoke up. "They both had little sisters, so they would babysit for them together and take them everywhere. It was like they were the mom and dad to this big family. Everyone thought they were going to be prom king and queen and then get married and be together forever, the whole shebang. I mean, before the incident."

No one spoke for a minute, and we just kept going around the track, making circles.

"Well," Laurie said, "so they were like this couple that everyone knew, it seemed like everything was perfect. And then we came to school one Monday last year and found out he had died. Apparently he overdosed at this rave, which was so crazy because no one would have thought Tim would even be at a rave, but like, that was it."

Didi grabbed my arm. "The freakiest thing was that Pilar didn't know yet, because it happened so late on Saturday and she'd been away with her gymnastics team all weekend. When she found out, she freaked out and started screaming. She couldn't breathe. She was crying and kept yelling that someone had killed Tim."

"Yeah," Jay said quietly. "Freaked. Out."

"And then," said Didi, "she started screaming to anyone who was around her, telling them there was no way Tim would go to a rave. I heard she said he'd been texting her about being in the forest that night. But like, why would he be in a forest? Anyways, she totally couldn't believe that he'd done that. She basically lost her mind. It was so sad."

"So sad," Jay said. "No one could believe Tim would leave her like that. We all felt so bad for her. But he overdosed, you know. It happens. It's not always the person you'd think it would be."

I was flooded with an inexplicable feeling, which was relief and happiness and sadness and guilt all at the same time. I was so happy to have people to talk to, and it seemed quite natural to be talking with them as if I'd known them all my life. But I felt like an awful person for feeling relieved, or even happy, that I was connecting with them over someone who died. And I felt so bad for what I'd said to Pilar. For a tiny, quiet moment, I wondered who I was becoming. Hanging out in the forest with people who were obviously involved in some bad stuff. Trying to be friends with a girl whose boyfriend had died of a drug overdose. Being invited to a party by someone who was clearly way more grown up than I was. And now, listening to these girls gossip about Pilar and feeling good to be part of it. I knew I shouldn't feel good at all, but I did. I felt like I was on the inside, and even if it was the inside of something bad, it felt good to be there.

Didi stopped talking and looked around to make sure no one was nearby. We began walking the track in silence, slightly out of breath. I knew I had to apologize to Pilar.

Laurie sighed and continued the story, "So after like a month, Pilar still couldn't believe what happened. She was still telling everyone that someone had killed Tim. Like, telling everyone, all the time. You'd be talking to her about a math problem and out of nowhere she'd be like, 'Someone murdered him, I know it!' And you'd just be like, 'Okay, Pilar, I'm sure they did.' Because what else could you say?"

"Yeah," said Didi, "I mean what are we going to tell her? She actually convinced some of Tim's friends that they had to try to help her figure out what happened. One of them went and talked to Pilar's dad, and it turns out Pilar had been so nuts about it that she'd sent her dad to the police station and he managed to read the police report, and he told this kid everything that was in the police report. There wasn't anything weird. Tim had been at the rave, and he'd taken all these crazy drugs, and that was it. Those were the facts. He'd done a ton of drugs and it was right there in the report. Everyone said it. So then they had to tell Pilar that really, it was Tim's fault."

"Crazy drugs," Jay said quietly. "Whoa."

"People didn't really know what to say to Pilar after that," Didi said. "And her parents sent her a special school for the rest of the school year and put her in therapy during the summer. I mean they said it was a 'school', but it wasn't a school that's anywhere around here. Everyone says it was just like a therapy you can go to instead of school. Like where they send you if you're crazy. But since it's senior year, everyone thought it would be good for her to come and graduate from Heartshire High."

"Yeah", said Laurie, "But when she came back, something was off about her. The thing with Pilar is, her dad is like this super powerful businessperson who runs that big pharmaceutical company in the city? And her mom works for him, doing some kind of marketing, and makes a ton of money. They are both super serious. If they want something done, it gets done. So it's, like, always been stressful for Pilar, you know? Like she had to be perfect at gymnastics, perfect at dance, have perfect grades, be friends with the right people... everything. But Pilar always smiled and just was fine with it, and she was always nice to everyone. You met her, right? Super nice. So even though her parents were super intense, she still had this really nice life, and she and Tim were so in love and had all these plans for their life, and then Tim died and her parents shipped her away, and now she's back, and kind of..."

"She's a ticking time bomb," I interrupted. "I had no idea."

Sometime during this discussion, we'd started running again without me even realizing it. So we ran in silence, as there really wasn't much you could say. I couldn't help but replay the moment from French class over and over in my head. How could I have been so mean? I felt like such a bitch.

"You know," Laurie said, "you didn't know. No one's going to think you're a bitch. It's just... we all kind of try to protect Pilar. We don't know what else to do."

Looking away, I nodded, but I still felt awful.

"This school is so different from my old school. I mean back in California people were so welcoming and nice. And here, I feel rejected by every single person that I talk to and when I finally get along with someone, I always say the wrong things."

No one said anything, but Jay nodded.

"I really didn't want to move here. My dad took a new job, so I moved here with him - I didn't have a choice. They said it would be nice but to be honest, this place is so much worse than where we lived before. When we lived in California, I could see the ocean from our house and we could go to the beach and there were these little cafes on the water where you could get a great coffee. And all these great restaurants. So then we came here, and now it's just like run-down houses and this shitty little town with nothing to do and nowhere that you'd even want to go if you had anyone to go with..."

I sighed and looked at them for sympathy, but their eyes didn't have any. They had opposite-of-sympathy. Lots of it.

"Wow, okay. We're so sorry we didn't realize our town was so awful," said Laurie.

"I didn't mean it that way, come on. I just, I mean, I figured you guys probably can't wait to get out of here either, right? Don't be so easily offended!" I tried to smile it off, jokingly.

It didn't work. They ignored me now and kept running, speeding up a bit so that they ran further and further from me until I was alone again. Why did I say that? Why always the wrong thing? How can I have done that? Why couldn't I just keep my mouth shut? I kept jogging, repeating one word in my head with each step. Shut. Up. Shut. Up. Shut. UP. It was like I was broken since I arrived here. Had I turned into a different person somehow? Was it me? I felt like I was the same person I was before, but this place was making me different. But if I wasn't the same person, the next question of course was, who in the world was I now?

I jogged slow laps, keeping my head down, until it was time to go change. I saw the three girls changing, and gave them an apologetic smile. They pretended I wasn't there.

I changed back out of my gym clothes, alone again, and put my earphones in. Jim Morrison was onto something. People really are strange. But I was starting to sense a theme here - I was the strange one.

Weather: kind of nice actually

Song: You're Lost Little Girl

Mood: giving up

Overheard: "It's not always the person you'd think it would be." - Jay
Chapter 4: Send Billy

The end of the day couldn't come soon enough, and I was so relieved to get to my car, I almost cried. I was sitting there staring out the windshield and wondering how the day had gotten away from me so wildly, so the knock on my window made me jump. But it was just Bunni.

"Celia! Could you drive me somewhere? Dutch borrowed my car, and I have to meet up with Billy," Bunni asked as I rolled down my window.

I nodded happily, and she got in, spilling her backpack all over the seat and floor and laughing while she cleaned it up.

"So, who's Billy?" I asked as I started driving.

"Oh my god sorry! That made no sense. He's just my boyfriend. Okay so just drive up here, I'll tell you where to go. Anyways, I, uh, I sort of need to talk to you."

She had her eyes locked on the road, and after the day I'd had, I was worried. Maybe she wouldn't want to be friends anymore with the girl everyone hated? And really, who could blame her. I pulled into another parking space at the end of the lot and stopped the car.

"Go for it," I said, facing her.

"Okay, you can't tell anyone this, but, you remember my friend Dutch? From the woods?" I nodded. "Well, I was wondering if you knew a place, out of town, you know, somewhere no one would know about? Like maybe where you used to live?" Bunni looked in her backpack and shuffled things around nervously. "Where she could, like, go? To fix, you know, a problem. Like the real kind of problem. And since you're new, I was thinking maybe you had connections? Or maybe you know about somewhere we wouldn't know about. I don't know." She looked at me hesitantly.

"What kind of problem?"

Bunni looked back down into her bag, rummaging. She whispered, "She's pregnant."

"Oh wow. Uh, I'm really sorry, but I don't think I know anyone who can help with that?"

Bunni's face went from desperate to regretful. "Oh, that's okay. It's just last year there was this new girl called MaryAnn, she only stayed for like a few months but she had a bunch of connections, so I just thought you might know someone from wherever you're from or whatever..."

I don't know why I did what I did next. Maybe it was because she looked so sad and lost. Maybe it was because I so desperately wanted her to be my friend that I would have done anything to keep her talking to me and liking me. Maybe it was because I'm an idiot. But before she could say anything else, I interrupted her.

"I can't guarantee anything, but I can ask around. I might know somebody. So you can tell Dutch I'm trying if you want, but this stays between the three of us." What was I doing? I was only going to let her down.

"Oh my god, thank you, that's awesome. She'll be so happy. If you can find someone who can help, honestly, she'll be so happy."

I smiled, completely unsure of how I could pull off possibly helping her. I'd never known anyone who helped someone who was pregnant. I'd never known anyone who was pregnant! But as we drove along, Bunni giving me directions to Billy's house, I cycled in my mind through people I knew from my old school, from anywhere, that might have the connections to tell me what to do. We pulled up to Billy's house, and I dropped Bunni off and headed home, still thinking. I didn't want people to think that I was the one who had gotten knocked up, so I didn't really want to call anyone from my old school. Plus they'd all wonder what had happened to my life and what kind of people I was around now. They'd think I'd turned into a totally different person, if they thought of me at all. I thought back to their texts when I first left, about how much they'd miss me, about how I had to come back for graduation weekend. Those had all stopped.

And did I even know anyone who lived anywhere near here? Then I remembered this weird kid from camp, who definitely might have some connections. Pat. When I'd posted online that I was moving here, he'd messaged to tell me he only lived an hour away. He was one of those kids who always knew someone who knew someone, plus he was rich. Or at least he seemed rich. And I was pretty sure he'd had a crush on me, so he might help me.

I pulled over and checked my phone to see if I still had his number, which thankfully I did, so I texted him.

Celia: Hey! Finally moved in! Was wondering if I could stop by and say hi... need help with something.

After I sent it, I immediately wished I could take back how stupid it sounded, but I saw right away that he was typing back.

Pat: Awesome! Yeah of course come by.

I felt like he'd be able to help me, but now that the offer was on the table, I really didn't want to go to his house. He was just a little too intense. But if he could help me help Dutch, then I'd have real friends. It seemed worth it.

Celia: Cool, can you give me bus directions? I'm not supposed to drive that far :(

He explained how to get there and told me he'd pick me up at the bus stop, so I left my car at home and caught the bus. Exhibit E: responsible daughter leaves car at home and takes the bus instead of driving on the big, bad highways. On the way there, I watched as the houses got bigger, the lawns got greener, and all the glittering broken glass disappeared and was replaced with perfectly manicured sidewalks. The bus stop where I got out was basically nicer than my house. When I got off the bus, still wearing my dirty, ripped clothes from that morning, Pat was waiting for me on the hood of what was probably his dad's BMW, trying to look cool.

"Oh hey, Celia. What's up?" He said it so fake-casual that I almost laughed. Like he was surprised to find me there or something.

"Hi Pat," I said. "So, are we riding on the hood of the car, or can we get inside?"

He seemed embarrassed and kind of annoyed by my joke, but he smiled anyway.

"Yeah, let's go," he said, getting in the driver's seat and opening my door for me. "It's cool that you live here now."

"I guess," I said. "But I don't live here. Do you know Heartshire High at all?"

Pat laughed. "Not really. It's kind of slummy though, right? Why would you move there?"

"Uh, because my dad needed a job? So he came here. So I came with him."

The rest of the ride was pretty quiet, with him pointing out some landmarks and asking me questions about my new school, none of which I could answer, until we pulled into the driveway of his huge house. Once he got out, he started talking endlessly, about the house, and his dad, and a million other things I didn't care about at all. I followed him inside and he showed me around a little, offered me a soda, and put on a movie in what he called the "movie room". I was extra aware of my dirty clothes now that I was in the kind of house that had a movie room, but I tried to be relaxed and just laugh at his lame jokes.

"So," Pat said. "You said you needed help with something?"

"Yeah, sort of. I mean I have this friend. She's... pregnant. And I know you have all these connections, so I thought maybe you'd know someone who could help her, you know, get out of it."

"A friend?" he asked sarcastically, raising his eyebrows and smiling.

"Yes, dumbass. I've only been here a week, you really think I got pregnant that fast? It's a friend."

"Okay, okay, sorry. My computer is in my room. Let's go upstairs and I'll see what I can do," he replied as he began walking up the stairs. I didn't really love the idea of hanging out in his room, but I wanted his help, so I followed him.

"So," I asked as we walked up the stairs. "Where are your parents?"

"At work," he said. "They're basically never here."

When we got to his room, he closed the door behind me and sat down on his bed.

"You can sit down if you want." I shook my head.

"No thanks," I said, kind of pacing around. He grinned.

"Okay, so there are different options for your 'friend'", he said, making air quotes with his fingers. I scowled at him and he stopped. "Right, sorry. It all depends on what she wants to do." He opened his laptop and started clicking around. "I can make you a list of people that she can call, who can help her and definitely won't tell her parents. Come over and help," he said, patting the bed next to him.

I sat at the foot of the bed, as far from him as I could without seeming rude. He was explaining his friends to me and how they had parents, or doctors, or an aunt or uncle who could help her, and every time he wanted to show me something on the screen he moved an inch closer. I tried to ignore it. He was a weirdo, but he was helping me, and I was here for Dutch. Or Bunni. Just to make a friend. Anyone would be fine.

"Do you want me to email you this list? Or is printing it out okay?"

"That's okay, you can do whatever you want," I smiled.

"You know, it's really nice of you to do this for your friend," Pat said, looking at me.

"I guess. I'm just trying to help. So, um, thanks a lot."

"Well, once the problem is fixed, you should come over and we can just hang out." He turned to face me, put his hand on my thigh, and leaned in with his eyes closed as if he were going to kiss me.

I jolted and stood up, almost knocking him over.

"I have to go," I said, realizing as I said it that the only way to leave was for him to give me a ride back to the bus station.

"Whoa, calm down. I'm sorry," he said.

I started walking quickly down the hall, then down the stairs, and heard him behind me.

"I said I was sorry. Please don't leave. I want to find someone to help your friend. Really. I'm sorry if I made it weird."

At this point I'd reached the front door, and he'd caught up to me. He grabbed my arm gently. "I'm just trying to do you a favor," he said. "Friends do favors for each other." He smiled, and it creeped me out. I didn't want to stay, but I didn't want to get in the car with him either.

"Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom," I said, and I ducked into the bathroom off the front hallway and locked the door.

Celia: At some guy's house and he's creepy.

Bunni: OMG are you okay?

Celia: I don't know. Can you come get me?

Bunni: Can I bring Billy? I'm at his house.

Celia: PLEASE bring Billy. Can you come now?

Bunni: Yes OMW

I sent her the address and walked out of the bathroom to find Pat waiting on the other side of the door.

"I think I'm going to stay down here," I told him.

"Celia, we're not done yet. Just come back upstairs already. Don't be a baby." He sounded annoyed but not scary, just like a whiny kid.

"That's okay. I'm going to stay down here."

"Okay, god. No need to overreact. I'm going to finish your list, because I'm a nice guy like that and I still want to help you. And when I'm done, I'll drive you back to the bus."

He went back upstairs and I sat on the couch, looking at my phone. Then I had this idea that since Pat was the kind of kid who knew everything, he might know about Tim. After about a half hour, I realized I was probably over-reacting. Yes, he tried to kiss me, but so what? I could have just been nice and said no. He was just trying to help me. And I did come over to his house, so maybe I was leading him on a little. He wasn't a bad guy. Plus, if he knew anything about what happened to Tim, I wanted to know. So I went back upstairs.

"Hey," I said to him from the doorway to his room. He looked up from his computer, smiling. "I actually have a question. Did you know a guy named Tim? He went to Heartshire before I got there, but I guess he died?"

Pat looked like he had seen a ghost. "Yeah," he said.

"Really? How did you hear about it?"

"I knew Tim. I also know there wasn't a rave that night," he whispered.

"Wait, what?" I walked into his room and sat down.

"If there's a rave, I know about it. I sell some good stuff. People want me there. There was nothing around here on the night Tim died. No party, no anything. Not for at least a hundred miles around. We have a rave around here once a year as, like, a joke? They're more like a costume party than anything."

"So what happened to him then?" I asked.

"Don't know. Maybe he just messed with the wrong people." Pat glanced up. "Listen, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable before, but I like you. And I'm glad you're here." He got up and started walking toward me. "I know you're shy. But it's okay. I'm a nice guy."

He put his arm around my shoulder, but I moved away.

"Yes, you're a nice person. Thanks for your help. Really. But I'm just, not interested."

"Listen," he said. "You can tell me the truth. If it's you that's pregnant, you can tell me. It's okay. I won't think any less of you."

"Dude, seriously. It's not me."

"It's okay. It doesn't make me think any less of you."

"Uh, why would it?"

"I mean, no, no it wouldn't, I just... you know, it means you're cool. And I think we could have a lot of fun." I went to walk away when I realized that he'd backed me against the wall and his arms were on both sides of me.

The doorbell rang, which seemed to really surprise him, and I ducked away and headed toward the stairs. He got in front of me, and ran down the stairs to open the door, with me just a few steps behind him. He opened the door, looked over at me, and then looked back to the door.

"Hi Billy," Pat said.

"Where's Celia?" the huge guy in the doorway, who I guessed was Billy, said, pushing past him. I could see Bunni waiting in the car outside. Despite the fact that Billy was a stranger to me, but I'd never been more glad to see anyone in my life.

"I'm here. I'm fine. Let's go." As I walked toward the front door, Pat grabbed my hip, turning me toward him. Before he could say anything, Billy punched him in the face and held him against the wall while I ran outside.

When Billy followed me out, I saw Pat's face in the doorway.

"Great to see you again, Celia," he said. "I'm so glad we have some friends in common - I'm sure I'll see you around."

I got in Billy's car, and we drove away. Once we were on the highway, I felt like I could breathe again.

"Thanks, guys," I said quietly.

"Of course!" Bunni said, putting her arm around me. "Are you okay? That guy had a really sketchy vibe. What happened?"

"Nothing, really. He just... I just wanted to get out of there."

"Of course, good idea," said Bunni. "And the best part is, there's the best cupcake store right near here. It's like super fancy and they have the best frosting in the world! So we have to stop while we're here. Right, Billy?" she smiled.

"Anything you want," he smiled. "Also, hi, I'm Billy," he said to me.

"Hi," I smiled back. "Thanks. How do you know Pat?"

"I don't, really. We have a couple mutual friends from football, I guess. He seems like scumbag."

"Yeah."

We pulled into the parking lot of a cupcake shop, which was pink and red and glittery with hearts and roses everywhere. Bunni pulled me inside and looked in the display case. They were huge and brightly colored and covered in piles of soft frosting, basically calling out for us to eat them. "Oh, red velvet! Those are SO good here, that's what we have to get. We'll take three please," she giggled, and we sat down in the little gold chairs around a three-legged glass table, Billy looking huge and out of place in his tight black tee shirt. Then I remembered my own dirty, ripped clothes and realized that while Bunni fit right in, I definitely looked like I'd dropped in from another world. But it hardly mattered, because the frosting was so good and I was away from Pat and I'd very soon finished off the cake.

"So," Bunni said, "I haven't been able to find anyone to help Dutch, so if you have any ideas..."

"Uh," I said looking at Billy, "I thought..."

"Oh yeah, it's still a secret. I just don't have secrets from Billy. Everyone knows that." Billy smiled with pink frosting all over his teeth.

"I mean, Pat will probably still send me his connections, even though I left that way. That way he can tell everyone I owe him a favor..."

"Wait, is that why you were at that creep's house?" Bunni looked horrified.

"Well, yeah. I mean I figured it was worth a try for your friend..." I trailed off when Bunni hugged me.

"I can't believe you did that! And he knew someone who might actually be able to help? That is so amazing." Bunni's phone buzzed, and she looked at it, then at me, then back at the phone.

"What?" I asked.

"You know Dori, that asshole girl who hangs out with Maddox and Mark all the time?"

I shook my head. "I literally don't know who any of those people are."

"Maddox is the one I told you it was okay to buy, you know, stuff from? He gets good stuff. And Pilar, from her mom, but that's more for prescription stuff. Anyway that girl Dori, she's like always with him and Matt? After school they're usually just like lying around on those benches outside the gym?"

I shook my head.

"Okay well, don't freak out."

"Bunni, in the history of the universe, the words 'don't freak out' have never caused someone not to freak out."

"Okay well she just texted me this." Bunni held up her screen for me to see.

Dori: Looks like your new friend is making other "friends" real fast :P

Under it was a picture of me, which I realized was actually a video. I clicked, and there I was, sitting on the edge of Pat's bed, answering his question about the list.

"That's okay, you can do whatever you want," I was saying in the video. Smiling. On his bed.

Weather: Who cares?

Song: Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors

Mood: awful

Overheard: "Don't freak out." - Bunni
Chapter 5: Pilar's Advice

The next few weeks at school were a nightmare. Bunni had tried to get me to go to that party, but I'd bailed - I couldn't face it. My Friday nights were spent drawing, sleeping, downloading new albums, downloading old albums, and, to be honest, crying. Exhibit F: Me vacuuming the rug on Friday night. Exhibit G: Doing homework on Saturday morning. My phone was building a collection of photos that probably could become the world's saddest gallery exhibit one day: the life of the world's most boring girl.

It developed into a sort of routine. Get home from the day, make it to my room, leave the lights off, lie down, and turn on something perfect for crying. Pink Floyd or Janis Ian or Janis Joplin or Bread. I'd text my mom and hope she would answer. Maybe some lyrics from "Wish you were here."

Artist? Pink Floyd. Album? Wish you were here. 1975. Harvest Records. Mom would know all that. If anyone knew what it was like to lie under the covers in the dark, in the afternoon, regretting so hard that it almost made your teeth hurt, it was my mother. But she never answered.

Pat had sent that video to Dori, and Dori had sent it to, well, everyone. Guys gave me knowing looks. Girls snickered at me. There was always someone talking behind my back. Bunni tried explaining what had happened, but no one listened. There was the video, and now I was the slut of the school and I hadn't even done anything. And worst of all, actually, Pat never sent the list, so it had all been for nothing.

I saw Bunni once in awhile, but not outside of school. I smiled at Billy in the hall sometimes, and he smiled back, but only when no one was looking. I made it through my classes, just enough that no one would call my dad. Heartshire was easy - I would have been getting straight As, if not for the fact that I sometimes skipped a class here and there and just waited it out somewhere else. The bathroom, my car... anywhere that wasn't full of boys with leering eyes asking if they could do anything they wanted. Any place that didn't have a random person pretending to be nice for a few minutes, and then asking if I'd be up for insert-gross-sexual-thing-I'd-never-heard-of-here and laughing. I kept falling for it, the first week. Now I'd given up.

I did sometimes leave the house, but just to walk around the neighborhood with my earphones in. Mostly when dad and Lorina were home and the idea of them was worse than the idea of being outside. There was a striped cat who lived in front of the little store at the corner, so I'd walk there and buy some candy and eat it on the steps and pet her. She seemed lonely. She'd follow me around the parking lot while I checked for things to add to Found on the Ground. There was always something - a screw or an earring or a key. It became part of my routine that filled the afternoons, before eating a peanut butter sandwich, making a pathetic stab at my homework (sometimes), and then listening to more music and painting. I took a particularly pathetic joy in photographing the peanut butter sandwich each day, just to show how my dad was failing me. Exhibits H through Q: 1 peanut butter sandwich, no plate. Dinner a la dad. Maybe I'd get scurvy and die, and my mom could make that judge look at all the photos, and that judge would have to lie in bed at night and think, "Who's really the unfit parent after all? What do I know?" And she'd be riddled with guilt and she could lie in bed crying like a loser instead of me. It would almost be worth it.

I'd finished my daisy painting, and started painting flowers on my walls, huge and colorful, so that they went all the way to the ceiling. I mostly only cared about water droplets now - how to paint the water droplets on the stems so that they reflected the other huge flowers, like mirrors. If I just thought about that, just doodled it in school and spent my time in my room, then I could survive. Two hundred fifteen more days, I counted. For 215 days, a person could probably survive with water droplets as their only friends. At least I hoped so.

My one source of happiness, other than the cat at the corner store, was sending postcards to my mother. I thought maybe her phone was shut off and that's why she wouldn't answer my texts. It would be just like mom to forget to pay the bill. But there were no bills for receiving mail, were there? I would search them out in stores, ones she'd like or one's she'd find hideous. Sometimes I'd design them myself. I'd write to her things I'd noticed that would cheer her up, or song lyrics, or little anecdotes. I'd tell her that I missed her but I was doing great. That I'd be home soon. I got only one postcard back, and it came to the wrong address - the lady next door had to bring it over and give it to me.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little girl.

Do you know that you're the world?

Around my heart you soar and fly,

Like a dinosaur unicorn in a magic, flying pirate ship that also has butterfly wings.

Love,

Mom."

It was so perfectly my mom, and when it came I excitedly cleared a space on the wall to start posting all her cards. But then after a few days, and a few more, the empty space was too sad. I took the card down kept it in my red notebook instead.

Weather: getting colder

Song: WTH

Mood: lonely

Overheard: "Slut." - Everyone

One Friday afternoon, I was sketching water droplets in my notebook in detention, which I got for sketching water droplets in my notebook in French class, when my phone buzzed.

Bunni: Can you meet in the woods?

It came out of nowhere, but I wasn't going to turn it down. I knew I probably should - I hadn't heard from Bunni in like two weeks. Where had she been when things were tough? Was she just messaging me now because everyone else was busy? Whatever, in was in. I would take what I could get.

Celia: Sure, on my way.

I asked to be excused to the bathroom, and left. When I got to the parking lot near the clearing, there were no other cars. I followed the trail that Bunni had showed me when we'd been here the first time, having to take some guesses along the way when the path didn't show quite clearly through the drying leaves, watching my step, and soon enough I made it to the ring of trees. I didn't see Bunni, or anyone else.

"Bunni?" I yelled out as I paced around two tree trunks. No answer. "Bunni?" I said a little louder, wondering where she could be. I checked my phone again, but still nothing. I was getting ready to call her when I saw a cloud of smoke from behind a large rock. I walked towards it, expecting to find Bunni waving a cigarette between two glitter fingernails. When I came around the corner, my heart dropped. It was Pilar, who I hadn't talked to since she'd run from French class, crying. We ignored each other, in an elaborate and exhausting dance, each day. She was sitting on the top of a rock cross-legged, wearing a giant brown sweater that made her whole shape sort of disappear, quietly smoking a joint and taking not the smallest notice of me or anything else.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. I was just... looking for someone. Sorry." I turned around to walk back to the clearing to wait for Bunni.

"Where are you going?" Pilar called to me. "You're here, you may as well sit down."

I sat down, not sure what to say. "Listen, I'm so sorry, I didn't know..."

"Nevermind, it doesn't matter. What's your deal, anyway?"

I sighed. "I really don't know."

She looked at me, her hair brushed out of her face for once, and I realized how beautiful she was. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"I don't know, I mean, everything just sucks. You know?"

"I don't," said Pilar.

"I mean, everything's so weird here, you know? Like people just talk, and they talk about you, and they don't know the truth at all and they don't care. Don't you think that's strange?"

"Not really," said Pilar. She took another drag and looked off into the woods. "People don't care about the truth. They care about what's interesting. So you're kind of a slut? That's interesting. So that's what they care about."

"I'm not, though," I said.

"It doesn't really matter," said Pilar. "People think I'm nuts. I'm not. Just let them think it. It makes people know you. It makes them nice to you."

"Everyone thinking I'm a slut does NOT make people nice to me!"

"Maybe not the kind of nice you want. But you should take what you can get. If you can get people to be nice to you at all, you shouldn't worry about why."

"Well, I don't like it. Anyway, see you later." I got up to leave.

"Come back!" Pilar called after me. "I've got something important to say!"

I turned back, curious.

"You need to relax."

"Seriously?"

"No." This was the most annoying conversation I'd ever had, and she seemed to just be messing with me for her own amusement. I was about to leave, when she continued, "You think it's this place? Or do you think it's you?"

"I think it's this place. But I can't really know, because I'm stuck here. Which I hate." I sat back down and Pilar laid back on the rock and started singing, as if I weren't there.

'When you're old, my darling,' the old man said

'And your hair is so white that it's blue;

I think I'll still love you, put no one above you --

Do you also feel that way too?'

'In my youth,' she said softly, 'I thought I would love

Forever without any change;

But now that I've seen how the years go by

I think that idea is quite strange.'

'Instead,' she said, "I don't think that our love

Can live on forever that way.

I'll love you much more than I e'er did before

Or my love for you will float away.'

'If it does, there'll be nothing, just memories of love

Which are basically what love is.

So I guess that I'll love you, in spite of myself,

Even if I'm just trying to forget.'

And the old man looked sad, and he looked at his wife,

And said 'Why would you try to forget?'

And she said, 'Sometimes love takes too much of yourself,

Though I haven't found that limit yet.'

There was a silence for some minutes. I sat in the quiet forest, smelling smoke and just looking at the sky. I didn't know much about Pilar, but I'd heard her mom was a pharmaceutical rep and so she had access to lots of weird pills, so I wondered if she might be able to get something that would help Dutch.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" I asked. As soon as I said it, I remembered it was a secret.

"I can't stop you, I guess," she said with a little smile.

"Um, I was wondering if you could help me. Do you have any pills for, you know, pregnancy? Like to stop it?"

Pilar glared at me. "That's all? I thought you were going to ask something interesting." She opened her black backpack and started digging around, shaking pill bottles and holding little plastic bags of colored pills up to the sunlight to read them. "I've got all kinds of stuff in here. These? These will make you skinny in a week. These, on the other hand," she said, holding up another container, "make you feel real good, but you'll eat so much you'll blow right up. Uppers, downers, whatever your deal is. Here they are," she said, pulling out a baggie of small white pills.

"Will you sell me a couple?" I asked.

"I'm not sure they'll work. They aren't really for that, exactly. But it's a side effect, so it's worth a try. I think these are the ones - they look like it anyway. Hopefully they shrink you right back down and take care of everything." She threw me the bag.

"Oh no, not me, they're not..."

"Whatever."

"Okay, but they aren't," I said, putting the bag in my pocket. "How do you take them? Like, one a day, or...?"

"No idea. I took them from my mom's office. Usually it's like two a day. I mean I definitely wouldn't take them all at once."

"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked.

"Eh, you get used to it in time." She zipped up her bag and jumped down from the rock. "Bye."

I sat on a log and looked at the baggie in my hands. I'm not this person, I thought. But I guess I am. I guess whatever you're doing, you're a person who does that now. So I'm a person who buys drugs in the woods now, I guess? Maybe there's no use trying to figure out who I am until the whole thing is finished. I was just standing there, looking at the baggie in my hands and trying to figure out if now maybe Pilar and I were friends, or at least on the road to friends, or at least someone I could smile at in the hallways, when I heard a rustle and saw Bunni hurrying up the path.

"I just couldn't be there anymore," she said. She unbuttoned her tight military jacket, took out a pack of cigarettes, and sat next to me on the log. "It's Friday. Let's leave."

"Okay." I held up the baggie, and Bunni looked at it, and then at me, confused. "Let's go to Dutch's. I think she might be happy to see us." Bunni smiled a huge smile and jumped up, squealing.

"You did it? You seriously did it? You got something that will, you know... you did it! Oh my god, Celia, she's going to be ecstatic."

"I mean, why didn't you just ask Pilar? You know her, right?"

"Sort of. But if I did, she'd think they were for me. And then she'd think I was a slut! I wouldn't want everyone to think..." I couldn't help it. I started crying.

"Oh my god, sorry! Celia, I don't mean that. I'm sure Pilar won't tell anyone."

I blushed and hunched my shoulders, shrinking away. "Like it would matter. I don't even know if it will work. But it's worth a try, right." Bunni grabbed my hand and pulled me up, and we went flying down the path, running toward her car.
Chapter 6: Pigsty

Bunni cranked the music in her car and drove toward Dutch's house, laughing and singing at the top of her lungs. I was quiet, looking out the window. I kept telling her that I wasn't sure it would work, not to get too excited, but she didn't seem to hear me. Outside the window, I noticed more people around than usual - in the pizza place, outside the bakery, in the gas station parking lot, just hanging out on the sidewalk. I felt like I was living in a real town again.

"Bunni, why are there so many people out today?"

"It's Friday. Plus, Red is throwing a party tomorrow, which always gets everyone excited. So you know how it is."

"I... really don't. Who's Red?"

"You know that tall, skinny guy at school with the fire-truck red hair? I'm sure you've seen him."

"Yeah."

"That's Red. For obvious reasons. His real name's Lewis though. Anyway he was best friends with Tim. Pilar and Tim used to hang out at his house all the time when they wanted to go somewhere alone. They basically lived in his garden - he has like this giant garden behind his house. Then, when Tim died, Red got really intense. I think Tim kept him less crazy. He's kind of a psycho bitch."

"I'm sure it's not that bad."

"Uh, it is. He and this kid Jack, that art kid? They like hate each other, and he got mad about something he heard that Jack said, so he walked into the art room and smashed the head off Jack's piece. That was it, he literally decapitated it with a hammer and then walked out of the room like nothing happened. And that's not even like a bad day for him, it's just an example I can think of. For some reason, he listened to Tim? Did whatever he said. He was like a puppy dog around Tim, but now? He's a pitbull."

I had seen that sculpture in the art room, and I'd seen Jack working on it. It was a kneeling man, with tree branches growing where the head should be. I'd never realized that was round two, a replacement for something broken. Jack was sometimes in there working when I was. The only thing he'd ever said to me was "nice keys." He'd seen my Found on the Ground sculpture that I brought in from home, which had a collection of found keys at the top shaped like a lock, and said, "nice keys." Not exactly an olive branch, but not sexual innuendo either. At least not that I understood. Which made him one of the nicest people I'd met at Heartshire, sadly. That was before someone had drawn a penis on my sculpture in permanent marker, forcing me to paint the whole thing red. And then throw it in the trash. I kept a couple of the keys in my jacket pocket though, even though they were red now, just because it seemed cruel to throw them away.

"But he throws the best parties," Bunny said. "It's like prom. It's crazy! So fun."

We pulled into Dutch's driveway and I found I was relieved to see that it was like my house, small and plain. We went and knocked on the front door, but no one answered.

"It's okay," Bunni said, "just follow me." She walked around to the back of the house, knelt beside a garden-level window, and then slid the window open and lowered herself in.

"What are you doing?!"

"This is how I always get in. There's no use knocking; she never answers the door." I hesitated, and then lowered myself in after her. Dutch was sitting on a three-legged stool at her desk, eating a bowl of soup, and she looked up with a start and then smiled.

The room smelled like stale cigarettes and weed and mexican food and those woodchips you put in a hamster cage, and there were garbage and take-out containers everywhere. Bunni moved a large, chipped plate of nachos aside and sat down on the bed, the crinkling noises of wrappers all around her.

"Hey Bunni," Dutch said, barely looking up from her soup.

"Hi girl," Bunni said in a quiet voice. "How are you doing? This is Celia, by the way. Have you guys met?

I remembered that first day in the woods, when we'd been introduced. "Of course," I said, thinking of all the time I'd put into helping this girl who might now, finally, become my friend. "Nope," Dutch said at the same time. I nodded, unsurprised. I'd ruined my life for this girl, canceled all my chances at friendship and an even somewhat pleasant senior year trying to do her a favor, and she didn't even remember that we'd ever met. Great.

"I mean, uh, right, we have, but just not much, you know? Hi Celia," she smiled. "Sorry about the mess."

"Oh, it's fine," I said. My eyes were watering though, because it seemed like even the air was spicy. I started sneezing.

"Are you allergic to cats?" Dutch said, holding up a drowsy, brown kitten who had been curled at her feet.

"No, I just, are you eating something really spicy? It's like there's pepper in here or something."

Dutch and Bunni both laughed, and I was worried that I'd yet again said something stupid. "What?" I asked.

Dutch gestured to the corner of the room, and I jumped when I noticed a short, skinny, quiet girl in a black hoodie sitting on a footstool painting her nails. I hadn't noticed here at all! She didn't look up from behind her black hair, just raised her hand and said, "Pepper. Hi."

"Oh my god, I didn't even see you there!" I gasped.

Dutch laughed. "Yeah, that's Pepper. She sort of just blends into everything."

"Thanks," Pepper said. She looked up and held her blue, sparkly nails up to the light, accidentally sending a pile of clothes toppling to the floor, spilling a glass of grape soda.

"But yeah," Dutch said seriously, "I'm also eating lots of spicy stuff. This soup has like a hundred chilis in it. Pepper said spicy food might help me, like, sneeze out the baby or something?"

Bunni and I looked at each other. This was not a girl we could trust with a bag of pills. She could barely be trusted with soup. But on the other hand, she certainly couldn't be trusted with a baby.

"Um, 'sneeze the baby out'?" Bunni asked.

"Well, I don't know. Obviously not literally. But somehow it's supposed to, like, shake everything loose or something."

"Honey," Bunni said. "I don't think that's a thing."

Dutch put down her spoon and looked at her hands, picking at her nails. Her voice quivered. "I don't know what to do. He broke up with me, so I never told him. My parents don't know yet, and I feel like my time is running out. I just sit here for days and days. It's still early, you know? Like I might not stay pregnant. But what if I do?"

No one said anything, and I felt like I absolutely didn't belong in this room, with a girl who didn't remember me. But I also felt that creeping, sickly good feeling I'd had that day on the track when I learned all about Pilar. The inside. I was on the inside now, and no matter what anyone says, the inside is better than the outside. Of anything. I was standing there trying to suppress my feeling of belonging when Pepper got up from her pile of laundry, walked over, and sat on Dutch's desk. Without saying anything, she took Dutch's hand and started painting her nails a dark purple. Dutch just nodded, teary.

"Listen," I said tentatively. "I know we barely know each other, but hear me out. This is a really serious situation. You need to tell your parents and go to a doctor. You need to know all your options, and if you want to end this pregnancy, you have to decide soon. You gotta be careful. If you don't want to end it, you have to stop smoking and eating all this junk, and figure out what you're going to do."

Dutch looked up at me. "You know what my grandmother says? 'If everybody minded their own business, the world would go round a deal faster than it does.'"

Bunni put her hand on my shoulder. "She's right, Dutch" Bunni said. She reached into my pocket and grabbed the baggie. "Come on. Celia got you these pills, but you should really talk to a doctor about them. Okay? Don't just take them, because we don't really know if they'll work. Okay?" Bunni put the baggie on the desk, and Dutch looked at it, wide-eyed.

"Thanks," she whispered, watching Pepper paint her ragged, bitten nails. Pepper looked at me and smiled.

"I didn't know she could smile," Bunni whispered to me.

"I can," said Pepper. "I usually only do it when no one's looking. What are you doing?"

I looked down and realized that, without even meaning to, I'd started folding the clothes on the bed.

"Oh I just... well, come on. This room is no way to be living. Let's clean it up, okay? It will make you feel better." Bunni jumped up and began carefully collecting all the dishes in an empty laundry basket, while Pepper and Dutch half-heartedly shuffled some papers and makeup around on the desk. I was sorting and piling clothes when a hot pink sneaker pressed into the pile. I looked up to see it was attached to a girl, in jeans and a pink tanktop, lowering herself through the window. When she finally dropped in, I saw that her short hair was the same bright pink as her sneakers, and she turned around and popped up with a huge smile.

"Hey Dutch!" she chirped. She dropped a bag of take-out on the desk. "Extra spicy," she said, and smiled at Dutch. She held her hand out to me and smiled, "Hi, I'm Kat," chomping on a wad of pink bubble gum. She pulled me in and hugged me, and she smelled like cherry candy and pineapple ice cream, like a human candy store.

"Hi," I said, surprised at how bubbly and shiny she was in every way. Her hair, her shoes, her personality, her voice... god, even her teeth were shiny. She seemed so nice, but I could tell she could destroy me if she wanted to.

"You don't go to Heartshire, do you?" I asked. "I feel like I would have noticed you."

Kat laughed. "Sometimes people notice me, sometimes they don't. But no, I don't go to Heartshire anymore. I graduated last year."

"Oh cool, so what do you do now?" I asked.

"Whatever I want!" Kat said, laughing. "Hey," she said, looking at me more carefully, "don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Yeah, probably from a video that somehow everyone has seen," I said, wishing I hadn't just brought it up.

"Oh yeah! You're the 'you can do anything you want' girl! You're famous."

And I realized that maybe Pilar was right. People were going to think what they were going to think. It wasn't true, so maybe it shouldn't matter. But it did matter, to me. Pilar, if anyone, should have understood how awful it was to be surrounded by people who had their own version of the truth. People who wouldn't listen to you long enough to know you at all. People who thought her boyfriend was a secret drug addict, when he wasn't. People who thought I was a secret slut, when I wasn't. People who thought they knew everyone's secrets, when they didn't. People who thought all the wrong things they thought without ever once thinking they might be wrong. People. People were the worst.

"Look," I said, keenly aware of how quiet and still Dutch and Bunni and Pepper had gotten, "that video is bullshit. I went to hang out with some creepy dude who went to the same camp as me when we were kids, and he looked something up on his computer, and he asked if he should email or print it, and I said 'you can do whatever you want.' I am not a slut. I'm like the opposite of a slut. And even if I were a slut, whose fucking business is it anyway? I literally just met you, and you've already got me filed in your brain under S for 'skanky'. Please unfile me. Please. That video is crap, and it's ruining my life."

"Aw Sweetie," Kat smiled, putting her arm around me. "We're all filed. I'm under D for 'dumb blonde', because I was blonde before I was pink and because I've got nice tits. Nevermind that I've got a full scholarship to fashion school next year because of my fashion blog, which has like three million followers. Nevermind that I'm spending my first semester in Paris, so I'm taking a year to learn French. People see what they want. Good tits? Dumb."

"Doesn't it bother you?" I asked.

"Used to," Kat said. "But I got some really good advice that's always stuck with me. This girl once told me, 'you need to relax.'" She winked at me from under her perfect cat-eye-liner lid.

At this, the sheer ridiculousness of my life struck me as, for once, funny. And I laughed. I laughed so hard I had tears running down my face. I laughed so hard I couldn't talk. "Getting Better all the Time" started playing in my head. The Beatles. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 1967. Capitol Records. And when Pepper said, "Well, now I have you filed under L for 'losing it', everyone laughed, and I felt like maybe I could start again.

"Hey," I said to Pepper, "do you know the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?" She just looked at me. "You know, because your name is Pepper? So I thought maybe you might have listened to it." She was still just looking at me. "By the Beatles?"

"Yeah, I know it's by The Beatles, duh, it's like the most famous album of all time. I was just looking at you because, uh, yeah, of course i know it. Who doesn't?!"

"I don't," said Dutch, and Pepper looked surprised.

"Seriously? How is that possible? Kat, Bunni, come on."

"Nope," Kat said.

"Sorry, I don't really know album names. Is it new?" Bunni asked.

"I..." Pepper looked at me, wide-eyed. "Can you believe I'm friends with these people? Man am I glad you're here. Also, the rest of you, no, it isn't new. Please get your lives together."

Kat looked at the piles of clothes. "So we're like, cleaning? Finally! Only Pepper, can you do my nails first? For the party? I'm thinking..."

"Pink?" Pepper said in a mock cheery voice. She dug around the desk for a sparkly cotton-candy-pink polish and gave it a violent shake while Kat sat on the desk next to her.

"You're going to the party tomorrow, right?" she asked us. "Everyone will be there. Even Dutch, if I can get her out of this room for once. Even Pepper!" Pepper nodded. "She's going to wear her party hoodie."

"It's this same one," Pepper said. "Once it's at a party, it's a party hoodie."

"I wasn't actually going to go," Bunni said. "Billy and I were gonna, you know, hang out. My parents are out of town." Kat smiled, and I blushed a little. Kat looked at me with questioning eyes.

"And I.... I don't know. No one invited me?"

"Oh my god, of course you're invited!" Bunni said. "So I'll go, of course! And we can all go together. Of course we'll go."

"Say 'of course' one more time," Pepper muttered. The room got awkwardly quiet. I wasn't really in the mood for a party, for more time with all the people I couldn't wait to get away from during the week. But I did want to be friends with these girls, and it seemed like the way to do that was to go. The more I thought about the party, the more I thought about Tim. How it wasn't fair, what people were saying. How there was no one to stand up for him. How Pilar tried to, and she got silenced, and now she almost couldn't even care. How I wished someone would stand up for me.

"Hey, do any of you guys know what really happened to Tim? Because everyone keeps saying he died at a rave, but I heard there wasn't even a rave that night." They all looked at me like I was crazy. "Sorry, but I mean, come on. Does this not bother anyone else? Everyone's saying he died at a rave, but there wasn't a rave? Doesn't that seem like a problem to you?"

"Dude," said Pepper. "There was a rave. I heard about it on the Monday after he died. Everyone was saying Tim died there."

"But where's 'there'? Where was the rave? Why was no one else from our school there? Why did no one hear about it until after? Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Why would people say it if it wasn't true?" Pepper asked.

"Uh, let me tell you what I've heard that I was doing last Friday. I heard that I gave Sam Katz a blowjob in his car. I heard that I got naked in Jess Marion's hot tub. I also heard that I hooked up with three guys from the football team at Salion High while we were playing them in an away game. You know what I was really doing? Listening to the Aerosmith discography alone in my bed while my dad was on a date." I pictured him and Lorina, laughing, sharing nachos. Somewhere in a cheesy booth where she'd pretend that his stomach didn't hang over his belt and he'd pretend her eyebrows weren't drawn on too heavy with cheap eye liner. Where they'd blissfully pretend, for just a couple hours, that my mom wasn't home alone, abandoned. Where they'd pretend I didn't exist at all. "Why would people say it if it wasn't true? Because people, especially in high school, are awful."

"I like the new girl," Pepper said to no one in particular without looking up.

"Well, even if there wasn't a rave, what would we do about it?" Kat asked. "Anyway, if you want to find out, talk to Maddox and his friends. They knew Tim really well, and also, they told the police they were at the rave with him that night. Or at least that's what I heard."

"Oh great. They hate me."

"They don't hate you," Bunni said reassuringly. "They think you're a slut. And they laugh at you. But they don't hate you."

"... Thanks?"

"Sorry! I just mean... they don't hate you, okay? That's something."

Kat smiled kindly. "It's just that bitch Dori who's with them all the time. She hates other girls. But they know she's a bitch. Maddox is actually okay, if you give him a chance. It might take a while, though."

"So where can I find him to ask him about Tim?"

"Calm down, Nancy Drew," Pepper said. She showed Kat the now-complete manicure, and Kat blew her a kiss in approval. "Party."

"What?"

"They'll be at Red's party."

"Okay, anyway, what do you think should I wear?" Bunni asked Kat.

"That depends a good deal who you're trying to impress," Kat said.

"I don't really care --" said Kat.

"Then it doesn't really matter what you wear."

"-- as long as I impress someone."

"Well you always do that, baby. I say, the more glitter, the merrier"

I finished cleaning Dutch's room while Pepper painted a second coat onto Dutch's nails and Kat put together an outfit for her from the clean clothes piled on the bed. Bunni laid on the floor, talking to Billy on the phone and nodding or frowning at the clothing choices Kat was offering until they'd both approved Dutch's outfit. I was cleaning up her desk when I noticed a notepad where she'd been doodling, where she'd written:

I do not think, my future love,

That it is time to be:

I'd just assume your soul stay

Off in space or in the sea.

Or wherever souls stay waiting

'Til it's time for them to roam.

So I really hope you'll wait

A while till making me your home

I closed the notebook and put it in a pile with all the papers before anyone noticed me reading it, but it made me so sad for Dutch. Nail polish and a clean room might distract her for a minute, but they weren't going to help. Probably nothing was going to help her, and certainly nothing was going to help Tim. But I was going to try anyway.

Being in a better mood had turned Dutch back into a pig, and she finished off the plate of nachos Bunni had found on the bed and was biting the heads off gummi bears one at a time when we left her. I was happy to find that on the way out we got to use the door instead of the window. Kat hugged us goodbye, jumped in her jeep, and drove away, shouting "You'll see me there!" and waving as she disappeared. Once Bunni and I were in the car, she turned to me seriously. "Celia, you really have to be careful with this Tim thing. It just makes people mad to talk about it. I don't want to be rude, but you really can't afford to make anyone mad right now, you know? You have to let them see what you're really like. Once they get to know you, people here will really like you. I promise. It's really better if you just leave it alone."

"Okay, sure." But I wasn't going to.

I heard a beep and jumped! When I looked up, Kat's window was right outside mine. I rolled down my window and she leaned in. "By the way," she asked, "what's going on with the baby? She's still pregnant, right?"

"We got her some pills," I said, as if it was something I did all the time.

"Oh I thought it would all work out. Great!" and she was off again.
Chapter 7: A Mad Party

Saturday passed slowly. I put in my earphones and blasted some Dead Kennedys for my routine walk to the corner store. I let the striped cat follow me around the parking lot while I checked for things to add to my sculpture: found an old penny and a large, rusty nail. I bought the striped cat a tuna pouch and watched her eat it, so fast that her whole body convulsed. I walked to the dollar store about a mile away and bought a tacky postcard covered in smiley faces. When I got home, I laid on top of the covers and filled it out for my mom with the lyrics from Stealing People's Mail, a classic Dead Kennedy's song that my mom loves.

Mom mom mom why aren't you answering

Did the Dead Kennedys get you?

She would get the joke. She'd think it was funny. But seriously, why wasn't she answering? I filled in my red notebook.

Weather: sunny, cold

Song: C'Mon

Mood: anxious

Overheard: "Don't worry about Celia, she doesn't mind." - Dad

I was so nervous about seeing everyone outside of school. I'd been hiding in my house since the video came out, avoiding every conversation, but now I had a cause. Mission #1: Be the Perfect Kid was going well. I was too much of a loser to get into any trouble. Mission #2: Help Dutch and get someone to talk to me was complete. Well, complete-ish. So now I had room for Mission #3: Find out what Happened to Tim and Maybe Make Some Friends in the Process and also Leave my House Sometimes. It could use a better title, admittedly. So I committed to going to the party, even though I really, really wanted to stay in my room.

But the rest of the day passed, despite my nervousness. I worked on my painting. I did my hair. Then I hated it, brushed it out, and did it again. I walked to the drugstore and picked out a new lipgloss. I checked the clock, and checked it again, and again and again until it was time for Bunni to pick me up. I mailed the postcard to mom on my way out the door, putting up the little red mailbox flag so the mailman would know to pick it up. I was waiting on the porch in a tanktop and jeans when Bunni pulled up.

"Oh, you're wearing that?" she said, with a forced smile. I tried not to cry. No, this is just what I was wearing to the porch. My secret, awesome outfit is under this. I winced, but she parked the car and followed me back inside and went through my closet until she found something she deemed appropriate: a tight, blue dress and black heels. She also redid my hair. I still wore my regular jacket over it, though. "Just for the car," I said when she frowned at me. I just felt naked without it.

When we pulled up to Red's house, I could see now why picking out the right outfit had been important, and I was glad Bunni had convinced me to change. "Honestly, where are we?" I whispered to Bunni when we pulled up. "What kind of house has columns? What sort of people live here?"

"Ugh, I know, right? Red's dad is like a bajillionaire or something. Plus Red takes parties very seriously. I think it's a gay thing. Hey girl," she said, pointing at me, "you better leave that jacket in the car. You look like a freak." I obliged. "Much better."

"He's gay?"

"As gay as they get. Huge queen. Or, sorry, whatever the word is."

"Pretty sure the word's just 'person,' I said, smacking her on the back of the head. It was so large a house that I was scared even to go near it, but even though I felt timid, I raised myself up and tried my best to look like I belonged.

"Sorry! Anyway, tah dah!" By then we'd reached the front door, which opened into a huge foyer with a giant vase of roses on a table in the middle and a huge spiral staircase.

Wow, could this Red person throw a party. Parties at my old high school had pretty much started in someone's basement, with a bottle of schnapps someone swiped from their grandmother's liquor cabinet if there was anything other than soda and chips, and ended up on the beach with everyone lying around, hanging out and looking at the stars. They did not have hundreds of people, from all over the place. They did not have music blasting from speakers all through the house around a huge swimming pool. They did not have a bar, and whole counters of delivery food, and room after room of the fanciest house I'd ever seen. This place made Pat's house look like a stable. I didn't even want to think what it made my house look like.

"What's this party even for?" I asked Bunni.

"Oh it's un-fourth," she shrugged, pointing to a banner over the stairs that would have given me the same non-answer if I'd noticed it before.

"Explain please."

"Today's October fourth. It's just not the Fourth of July, which is when Red used to have this big party. But now he goes on vacation all summer, so he had to move it. So it's the fourth, but not!"

I was trying to think of what to say when Kat came running into the foyer and hugged Bunni. "Okay," she yelled over the music. "In that direction," she said, waving her right arm, "is Maddox and his friends. And in that direction," she said, waving the other hand, is the pool! This party is mad!"

"What if I don't want to be 'mad'?" I asked, looking around.

"Oh, you can't help that," Kat said, twisting her gum around her finger. "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" I asked.

"You must be," Kat said with a mischievous grin, "or you wouldn't have come here."

I started to reply, but she had disappeared into the crowd, so I decided to head toward Maddox and try my luck. I looked through the crowd, room after room, until I made it to a set of French doors and saw a beer pong table set up outside on the patio under the trees. Maddox was at one end, and his friend was at the other. In the middle, Dori was lounging on a swing with her feet on the edge of the table, eyes closed, oblivious to the ping pong balls soaring overhead. I straightened my dress and walked toward them, my heels clicking on the patio now that I was outside of the music.

"No room," Maddox said, without looking away from the game. "Sorry."

"There's plenty of room," I said, trying so hard to be cool that I could hear my own voice shaking. I smiled and sat on a deck chair.

"Have some wine," Maddox's friend Mark said in an encouraging tone. He was slouched at the table. I'd seen him before - he was always wearing baggy clothes and a black backpack with his drumsticks sticking out the top like rabbit ears. Now was no exception. I looked all around the table, but there was nothing on it but beer.

"I don't see any wine," I said.

"There isn't any," he said, smirking.

"Then why would you offer it?" I scowled.

"Why would you sit down without being invited?" he said.

"I didn't know it was your table," I said. "It's not your house. It's not your party. I was invited and I can sit where I want. I'm Celia, by the way."

"Yeah, I know."

"And you're..."

"Busy." He laughed. I really felt like this was going to be impossible.

Maddox had been looking at me the way a fox looks at a mouse. "That's really not a good hairstyle on you," he said.

"I really can't imagine caring at all what you think of it," I said. "Anyway, can I talk to you?"

"You are talking to me," he laughed.

These people were infuriating, but they had the answers. "It's about Tim," I said. Maddox put down the ball and looked at me. I didn't know what to expect, but I was definitely worried. I'm not sure when Dori had woken up, but I'm sure that now she was staring at me.

"And why is that any of your business?" Dori asked. She was short, with black hair, thick eyeliner, and a puffy jacket. She looked like a little animal: an angry one.

"Okay Dori, I get that you hate me, so whatever. Also thanks for telling everyone I'm a huge slut. Super helpful. I'm not, by the way. Anyway, as I was going to say, I know that Tim was your friend. And I just want to find out what happened to him. The things I've heard don't add up. I want to find out what actually happened."

All three of them stared at me. "What's in it for you, bitch? It's not like you can sleep with him" Dori smirked. I ignored her.

"Nothing? I feel like I'm crazy - why does no one else care about this? If Tim could be killed, any of us could! Why is everyone lying about it? Why doesn't it bother anyone? Doesn't anyone care about Pilar? You're his friends - don't you care about him?" They just looked at me, and then at one another, and then back at me. "Look, can you just tell me if there was a rave?" They looked at each other again, and then Maddox nodded, and Dori sighed and nodded, and they turned back to me.

Maddox looked at his friend across the table.

"Move over and let her play," he said, and the friend dropped his ball in the cup in front of him and slumped into the swing with Dori. Dori, who apparently found this uncomfortable, got up and moved to the other end of the swing, putting her feet on Maddox's side of the table and knocking over half the cups. "Ugh, switch sides," Maddox said to me, so I switched to the side of the table covered with sticky, spilled beer and tried to set the cups up correctly. I'd never played beer pong before, but I really wasn't in the mood to get made fun of again, so I gave it my best shot.

"Okay," Maddox said once the game had started, "about Tim. This stays between us. No one can find out you're digging around. No one can find out we talked. No one. Okay?" I nodded eagerly. "Especially not Pilar. She can't handle it. Don't talk to her about Tim. Just don't." I nodded.

"Yeah," Dori said, "don't talk to Pilar about him. Pilar without Tim, you might as well say, is the same as Tim without Pilar. A part of her kind of died when he did."

"And don't talk to Red about it either," Mark said. "Don't even let him hear you talk about it. He and Tim were... Tim was his best friend. Just... don't bring it up."

Maddox nodded. "The thing is everyone who didn't know Tim was happy to believe it was drugs, because Tim was, well, not the best student. Okay, he was kind of the worst student. But he was a really good guy. If you were friends with him, he'd do almost anything for you. And he was definitely not a partier. I'll tell you what a rave and a desk have in common - Tim wasn't at either one."

"How do you know?" I asked, pretending to drink a cup of beer that Maddox had landed the ball in.

"There wasn't a rave," Dori said. "There couldn't have been. The building where everyone says the rave was? They'd already started tearing it down a week before. Ugh, this is stressing me out to even talk about it." And she leaned back, put a pillow over her face, and seemed to fall asleep.

"Don't worry about her," Mark said. "She does that. But yeah, also, Tim had asthma and a bunch of really serious allergies -- he never smoked anything or took anything. Nothing. Kind of a health freak. Totally straight-edge. They said there were pills in his system, but like, not Tim. No way."

Dori spoke from under her pillow. "Tim just wasn't the kind of guy. He seriously loved Pilar, and he loved his little sisters. He wanted to start a business so he could make a lot of money and help his parents. His youngest sister, she'd got some kind of problem, and like they have insurance, but not the good, good insurance, you know? So he wanted her to have the best of everything. You didn't know him, but seriously? Not Tim. Nope." She closed her eyes and put her head down again.

"Yeah," I said to her, "it's almost like people shouldn't spread rumors, because then everyone believes them and the real truth gets totally ignored. I'm sure you'd never do anything like that." Dori pretended to be asleep. Maddox looked a little sorry, but only for a minute. They all seemed to be finished talking, as if they'd explained anything, and I was figuring out what to say next when a girl in a little black dress stumbled out the door and bumped into me, spilling her drink all over my dress.

"Crap, I'm gonna go clean this up," I said, but Maddox and his friend didn't even look up from their game, as if she'd never been there. I tried to search for a bathroom, but the hallways were crowded and all the doors I tried were locked, so I wandered back outside. Beyond the terrace, I saw the huge swimming pool, lit up for the party, surrounded by colorful gardens. I found myself singing along to Young Americans. David Bowie. 1975. RCA. Red's taste in music was even slicker than his house. Maybe we'd be friends.
Chapter 8: Red's

I snuck down the terrace stairs and out into the garden so that I could be alone for a minute. As I walked along, past rows of rose bushes in all shades of red, pink, and white, I noticed a bench under a huge weeping willow and made my way toward it. The tree's branches hung almost to the ground and made a shady glen inside, where I sat on the bench and took a deep breath. Where am I? Who are all these people? Why do I even care about this Tim person? But I did care about him. Even if he was dead. Even if I didn't know him.

I took out my phone to take a picture of the tree, and when the camera flashed I noticed something. There on the bark, a cheesy heart with "P+T 4 EVER" carved in it. This must have been where Pilar and Tim would hang out. I heard voices and quickly hid behind the trunk of the tree, but then the voices got closer and I realized they'd come inside the willow branches too. I peaked out and saw three football players, all in their jerseys, talking and laughing on the bench as they rolled a joint and passed it around.

"Look out!" said the one with a two on his jersey, "You're spilling it everywhere."

"I couldn't help it," said the one with a five on his. "He hit my arm."

"It's sort of weird to be here now, you know?" said Two.

"Yeah," said Five. "I don't like it here."

"Hey do you guys ever feel like, I don't know, like Tim's still here?" said Two.

"Uh, no?" said Seven, laughing.

"Yeah, me neither, I was just asking," Two said.

"I kind of know what you mean," said Five. "I just miss having him around sometimes." he turned his head and I could see that it was Jack, the guy I'd seen in the art room sometimes. Who Red hated. Who was, apparently, also a football player.

The three of them were sitting on the bench in quiet when I shifted my weight and my foot crunched some leaves. I heard them coming over to see what the sound was, and I wasn't sure what else to do, so I pretended to be passed out next to the tree and hoped they'd leave me alone.

"Dude," one of them whispered to another, "isn't that the girl from the video? You know, the slutty girl?"

"Yeah. I heard she told Pilar she thought it was funny that Tim died. What a bitch."

Then I heard it: the photo sound from someone's phone. They all laughed.

I couldn't believe this was happening. What should I do? If I get up, they'll know I was faking it. If I stay here, they'll think I'm wasted and they'll send that picture to everyone. But before I could think of what to do next, I heard more footsteps coming, and looked up a bit to see someone parting the willow boughs and entering the clearing, furious. He was wearing red sneakers, tight leather pants, black nail polish, and a tight white tee shirt that said "Can you not?" in black letters, and he had short, spiky hair in the brightest red shade I'd ever seen. This must be Red.

"Idiots!" Red screamed. That seemed like as good a time as any to open my eyes, so I did. He was staring at me. I scrambled to my feet and he pointed at me, looking at the three football players huddled together. "Who is this?" None of them said anything.

"Idiots." Red looked at me with a smile. "What's your name, honey?"

"Celia. I'm new. Everyone hates me."

"Then why are you at my party?" he said with a fake, sweet smile.

"I... I came with Bunni?"

"Oh. Then everyone doesn't hate you, do they?" he sneered. "Why are you hanging out with these losers? And what are you all doing back here?"

"Uh," I said, "I'm not hanging out with them. I was just looking for a quiet place to sit."

"Yeah," said Jack, "if 'sit' means 'pass out under a tree.'" He and his friends laughed. I caught his eyes, and he looked embarrassed to have made the joke. Whatever that was worth.

"SHUT UP, Jack," Red said, his eyes wide with rage. "I KNOW you know I don't want YOU here. Get out! Out! What have you been doing here?"

"Seriously," Jack said, putting his hand on Red's shoulder. "we're just hanging out. We miss him too, Lewis. We were all friends with him."

Red scowled but seemed calm. He looked at me. "She wasn't."

"Listen," I said, brushing the leaves of my clothes. "You're right. I'm new. I didn't know Tim. I don't know anything about him. But I know he wasn't at that rave, and I know people are lying about how he died, and I know that's shit. Because people will talk and say whatever they want, even when it isn't true. Someone might even, for example, text around a picture of a girl taking a rest and tell everyone she was passed out drunk, even though that wasn't true at all," I said, staring at Jack. "Or, you know, someone might take a video of a girl sitting on a bed innocently talking, a girl who was only there to try to help someone she didn't even know, and tell everyone she's a slut. Those are just, you know, imaginary examples of things that, I would imagine, could really ruin someone's reputation for no reason."

Jack was staring down at his phone. Red walked over and put his arm around me.

"Oh, I like you," Red said, smiling. "Now tell me. Do you dance?"

"Not really."

"Sure you do! Come on, then!" and Red stormed out of the tree branches back toward the house, obviously expecting me to follow.

I looked at the three football players standing stupidly under the tree, and they gestured to me that I should definitely follow him, so I did. We were almost to the house when Bunni ran down from the porch to meet me.

"How's it going?" Bunni asked.

"Kind of weird. What a surprise. Where's Dutch?"

"She's late."

"Yeah, I know," I joked, "that's how I got into this whole mess." Bunni snickered and bumped me with her hip.

We followed Red up the stairs and into the crowded living room, where the music was too loud to hear each other talk. I didn't really know how to dance like everyone there, but I was happy to find that I recognized most of the songs, so I tried my best to get along. Bunni fit right in and before I knew it she was gone, dancing with another group of people I didn't know. I kept seeing Red show up throughout the dance floor, yelling at someone to "Get out!" or hugging someone and spinning them around. I really wanted to leave before it was my turn for either of those things. I was looking for a reason to go when Kat waved at me from the doorway, so I made my way to her, grateful to have someone to talk to.

"How are you getting on?" Kat said.

I waited for a quiet moment in the music when she might be able to hear me and said, "You can't hear anything in here! And I don't know how to dance like this!"

"How do you like Red?" she said quietly with a smile.

"Not at all. He's just so extremely--" and just then I noticed Red dancing close behind me, listening. "-- cool that it makes me nervous to be around him, because I feel like a loser in comparison."

Red smiled and danced away. And when Dutch showed up nervously in the doorway, Kat went off to talk to her, and I was left alone again.

I wanted to go home, but I'd come with Bunni and I was sure she wasn't ready to leave yet, so I made my way out of the living room, away from all the noise, and back to the bench under the willow tree. At least it was quiet, and pretty, even if it was a bit boring. I laid on the bench looking up through the leaves at the sky and wondering about Tim and Pilar, how they'd probably spent long afternoons here, how sad she must have been when he died, how, I realized, they'd probably done a lot of gross stuff on this bench. I got up quickly and sat by the base of the tree instead. When I put my hand on the ground, I noticed something hard. Directly under the little heart carved in the trunk, someone had hidden something under the root: a small, shiny, dark wooden box with a tiny keyhole in the front.

I held it in my hands, turning it over and over and trying to open it, sure that it belonged to Pilar and Tim. I knew I should give it to Pilar, but I really wanted to look inside. Still, there was no way to... and then I remembered. The key! That tiny key I'd found when I'd tripped in the woods on my first day at Heartshire High. The one with the little diamond, that had just been too pretty to put in my sculpture. It was still in my inside pocket in my jacket, with the few red keys I'd kept. I hid the box in my bag and walked quickly toward Bunni's car, which was thankfully unlocked, and rooted around in my jacket for the little key. My hands were shaking, but there was the click: it fit.

The inside of the box wasn't that exciting - photos, notes, a few little trinkets, some dried flowers, and then at the bottom, wrapped in a napkin from the cupcake shop, was a pregnancy test: positive.

I looked up and saw Red and Dutch fighting on the front porch. Well, mostly it was Red that was doing the fighting; Dutch was just looking at him, scared. For some reason, I closed the box and shoved it in my pocket so that no one else would see it. I wasn't sure why, but I didn't want anyone else to have any clues until I knew what they meant. Once it was tucked away, I got out of the car and marched toward the porch.

"What's going on?" I yelled. Dutch looked relieved.

Red turned to me and glared. "Your friend here is a downer. She's moping around, asking people all these questions about drugs and what they do - this is a party, not Wiki-How. People are complaining and looking things up on their phones, and she's just being a downer and killing the vibe. We are supposed to be having fun! So if she doesn't stop, it's time to go bye-bye."

People around us were staring, and Dutch was so obviously embarrassed that I just wanted to give her a hug. Red looked like he was going to bite my head off if I said anything, but I knew that I had to anyway.

"Oh please. How about you stop pretending you're the king of the world and listen very carefully. Dutch is stressed out - she's having a hard time, you know? Like, you'd think you could imagine what it's like to have a tough time. Asking for advice isn't a crime. The drugs thing, probably not the best, but it's not like anyone here has never seen drugs before. So we'll leave your party or whatever, but you need to chill."

"Wow." Red began slow clapping and I felt like running away. "Are we going to keep having these fantastic little run-ins, where you stand up to me and then I do what you say? Because I do like the fighting part!"

I didn't say anything. I wasn't sure if he hated me, or if we were becoming friends.

"Whatever, you guys can stay if you want. Just be more fun." He twirled away and I stood there in shock.

Once Red had gone back inside and the people around us had stopped paying attention, I took Dutch's hand and led her to Bunni's car, where we could talk in quiet.

"Maybe you just weren't quite ready for a party this big yet, you know? But it's great that you got out of your house," I said.

"Yeah," Dutch said, "I guess this was just another bad decision. Honestly, after seeing how it went for Pilar, I should have known better." I could tell that she immediately regretted what she'd said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"God, see! I can't do anything right! I'm not supposed to say anything about Pilar, and I can't even do that right." She was crying.

"Shhhhh, it's okay," I said. "You didn't really say anything. I don't even know what you meant." Dutch smiled. "But hey, if it's about how Pilar was pregnant? I already knew about that."

Dutch sighed with relief. "Yeah. Pilar was pregnant. I don't think anyone else knew. She was actually really excited about the baby. Then her parents put her on a lot of meds to help her handle Tim's death, and she miscarried. I know it sounds terrible, but that's what I want, you know? But for her it wasn't good. Like, Tim was already gone. And then Pilar's life really fell apart. But maybe if she hadn't gotten pregnant in the first place..." Dutch was crying again.

"Does Pilar know you're pregnant?"

"No, of course not! How could I tell her? How could I ask her for help? All she wants in the world is not to think about what happened. We used to be good friends, you know? But once her parents sent her away, she became so distant. Now we talk, but not really. She's not the same. There's no way I could ask her to help me, you know... get rid of it. She'd hate me." Dutch was still crying, holding my arms and wiping her tears against the inside of my elbow.

"Dutch," I said. "It's not your fault that you're pregnant. It's not Pilar's fault that she got pregnant. It's definitely not her fault that Tim died. Sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes you make a mistake. We all make mistakes. Maybe the pregnancy isn't even a bad thing. You're growing a baby, you know? Your own baby! It will be hard, sure, but maybe it will also be amazing?"

"Maybe," Dutch said. "I just wish I could wait a while to find out."

And we just sat in the car, saying nothing, watching people dance in and out of the party without a care in the world, as the sky grew darker around us.
Chapter 9. Mocked

By the next weekend, Dutch and I had become great friends. She'd all but moved into my house, which of course my dad barely noticed. I had her listening to The Clash and Led Zeppelin and Blondie and the Eagles. She played me new stuff and sometimes I really liked it: Sleeter-Kinney and Feist. I was still doing my homework, doing the dishes, coming home on time, cooking myself eggs and spaghetti. Exhibits R, S, and T through Z, then back to A again. He didn't mind that Dutch was there - I think he was happy that I had a friend. He ignored her the same way I ignored Lorina, and we lived more as roommates than anything else.

I was happy. I had someone to talk to at school, and at lunch, and at home. I had a friend to be there for, and as much as it kills me to say it, I loved that she needed me. I knew that if nothing had ever gone wrong in Dutch's life, we wouldn't have become friends. Of course I wanted her life to be easier, but I was, secretly, glad that we had a secret together. Pepper and Kat and Bunni were now in my life too. There were texts and people to eat with and inside jokes, and I even realized I'd missed checking a whole bunch of days off the calendar, and got to cross them all out at once.

Weather: Getting colder

Song: Little Green

Mood: happy

Overheard: "I wish I lived here with you." - Dutch

On Sunday afternoon, we were sitting in my room, eating dinner, if you can call candy bars and microwave popcorn dinner. Dutch was in the little bathroom attached to my room when I heard her gasp and yell "Celia!" I opened the door and saw her panicked face, and then I saw the blood.

"Oh my god, are you okay? Are you hurt?"

She was shaking her head violently. "No, nothing hurts. I mean it feels like cramps, but I just... Celia, I think I'm having a miscarriage."

"Did you take those pills? We have to go to the hospital."

She shook her head again. "I didn't take them. I couldn't. I didn't want to hurt her. I mean, I don't know if it was her, but that's what I felt like. Anyway, I couldn't stand the idea that something bad might happen to her. That she might be born, you know, messed up. So I didn't take them."

I put my arms around her. "This is what you wanted, right?"

"Right," she said, but she didn't sound so sure.

"Dutch, you can still have a baby. You can have lots of babies. Just not this one, not now. It's not the right time. You were a good mom to her. You took care of her. She just wasn't meant to be." And Dutch put her head on my shoulder and started to cry, a mix of relief and sadness.

I left her in the bathroom while I looked up what you're supposed to do in case of a miscarriage, and then I set about the tricky work of convincing her to go to the hospital. She didn't want her parents to find out, which would mean she couldn't use her insurance, which would mean she couldn't afford it.

"You just have to tell them," I said. "They won't be mad at you."

"They will!"

"Well, so what if they are? It's worth it, to make sure you're healthy and everything's okay. What if the baby's still in there? Huh? And even if she's not, what about the next time, when you're older, when you really want to have a baby - what then?" Dutch was quiet now. "So let's go tell them. I'll go with you. And then we'll go to the doctor."

"You're right," Dutch whispered. "When you say it, it all makes sense."

She was silent the whole drive. I played songs I knew she liked, songs we'd cried over together. Old ones and new. I didn't say anything. I felt guilty for feeling even a little happy that something bad had happened to Dutch, even if it was why we became friends. Is everyone like this? I wondered. Do regular people ever feel good in bad times, when they can be there for someone and do a good job at it? Is that normal? Am I a terrible person? I tried not to worry about me, but just to think about Dutch and what she must be going through. When we pulled up to her house, she was shaking. "Come on," I said, "let's go."

"No Celia, I think... I have to do it myself. But will you wait here? I think it will help."

So I waited in the car, nervous for Dutch, happy for her, sad for her. I took out my red notebook and wrote while I waited.

Weather: Cloudy

Song: Baby be Simple

Mood: relieved

Overheard: "They won't be mad at you." - Dutch

I kept watching the door for her, kept checking my phone for messages, but nothing. Then, after about twenty minutes, the door opened, and Dutch and her mom came out. I got out of the car, and her mom came and gave me a hug, so hard that I could feel my ribs squeezing.

"Thank you, Celia," she said. "Rebecca told me how you said she had to come to us, and to the doctor, and I wanted to say thank you." I'd heard her mother call her Rebecca before, but it had always sounded wrong, until now. Now, in the driveway, under the bright sunlight, with her curly brown hair loose around her face and her tired eyes finally relieved, she looked like a Rebecca. She looked, I realized, like herself.

I gave Dutch a hug and the two of them got in their car for the hospital, and I drove home to my empty room in my empty house, happy for a minute that something in this damn town had finally worked out okay. Sad that I was happy about a miscarriage - were you supposed to be happy about those? Missing my friend. Feeling fucked up that I felt sad that my friend didn't need me anymore and worried that she might go back to her regular life now that everything was okay. What kind of a friend feels that way? It started to make sense to me that I was alone again. I could feel the soft edge of depression seeping in and starting to grab hold. I was worried about becoming mom. I was worried that I hadn't written to mom in a week. I was mad that she never answered me. How could she just not answer me? How could she leave me like that? And then, how could I leave her like that? I worked on my painting for the first time in a week. But I didn't care so much about the droplets anymore; now I wanted colors, and big petals, and sun. Something outside of this room.

***

Dutch wasn't at school the next morning.

Weather: cloudy

Song: Landslide

Mood: worried

Overheard: "Maybe she's sick." - some girl

I worried through my first class while I waited for her to answer my text.

Celia: Everything okay?

Dutch: Yeah. Just taking a day off to rest.

Celia: How are things with the parents?

Dutch: Fine. I think they're relieved too. Thanks for helping me.

Celia: Of course. See you tomorrow.

Phew. On my way to class, I walked by Red holding court in the hall. "I heard she's knocked up," he was saying to anyone who would listen, and the crowd was growing. "And that's why she's been asking around about all those pills. Although I don't know who'd ever even sleep with someone like that - not exactly a looker, you know?" He was laughing.

I wanted to walk right in the middle of his circle of onlookers and punch him. I wanted to slap his ridiculous grin off his face. I wanted to hold him on the ground and make him apologize for every mean rumor he spread, every hateful thing he brought to this school. To teach him that you can't just mock people, ruin their lives, and get away with it. But I knew none of that would do any good. It would also be Dad's Exhibit A in The Case of Why Celia Shouldn't Live with Her Mother, otherwise known as The Case of Dad not Wanting to Pay Alimony to Mom. I knew better.

I punched him anyway. I'd never punched anyone before, and in the two or three seconds that I thought about it before doing it, I thought it was a pretty bad idea. But it was already happening, almost in spite of me. I was just so, so mad, and it had to come out. And it came out on Red's face. Then there was a lot of blood, which I wasn't ready for. My hand was sticky and numb. Immediately after, I looked at my hand, and all I could hear was the blood pumping in my ears. A little part of me felt really, really good. But I knew better.

Forty minutes later, sitting and waiting for my dad in the principal's office, "the incident" became Exhibit A in The Case for Celia getting Expelled. I didn't like sitting in the principal's office in the silence, waiting for my father. I didn't like the principal, with his pit-stained shirt and too-short hair. But I liked it better than being stared at in the hallway, and better than having another face-off with Red. Plus I didn't have a choice. So I waited.

When my dad showed up, he had on what I came to know as his "dad face". Concerned. Caring. A father that any girl would dream of having. Involved. He knocked politely and entered the principal's office with his dad face in full effect. He put his hand on my shoulder in a way that came off as both stern and proud. He was dad-ing it up for the principal, which I was actually a little grateful for, but it also made me mad. Part of me wanted to turn to him and say, "I'll give you $10 if you can tell me which day is trash day. Or the name of my friend who stays at our house almost every night. If you can tell me what grade I'm in without stopping to think." But I kept my mouth shut.

"Mr. Sunderland," the principal said with a sigh, "do you understand why we may have to expel Celia?"

"No," my dad said, "I didn't even know that you were considering expelling her."

"It's what we do when a student instigates a fight," he said. My dad looked at me.

"I didn't 'instigate' a fight. He was telling lies, dad, and saying things he had no business talking about, and he does whatever he wants to hurt people and no one seems to care!"

The principal laughed a soft laugh.

"This is funny to you?" I asked. "I mean, people's feelings, people's lives... you think it's funny?"

He smiled as if I was an idiot. "No, it's not funny, but you can't think that talking is the same as hitting someone. If a classmate is teasing or making jokes, that's just his way. He never hit anybody. Now you must agree with that."

I was sick of being ordered around, especially to agree with something I didn't agree with, but I was also afraid of being expelled. So I said quietly, "He didn't hit anyone." Then, unable to help it, I added, "But what he did was just as bad."

"It's important that you learn to control your emotions, young lady. It's a part of growing up. And someday you'll realize that what other people say doesn't really matter as long as you do what's right."

Seriously, F this guy, I thought, unable to speak.

"Celia," the principal began again in a serious tone, but my father interrupted him.

"Sir, I'd like to explain a bit if I could. Celia has been very sad lately, and she's had a hard time with the adjustment to your school. Our family has been through a lot. Celia's mother is, well, she's not a well woman. And that's been very hard on Celia, and of course on me."

The principal nodded. I looked at my dad, who seemed to be serious. Like he was tired from tucking mom into bed each night and feeding her soup. Like he hadn't left her all alone and drifted off to make his own life easier however he could, leaving me to fend for myself, motherless and friendless and alone. I was worried I might punch him too.

"I know you don't really know Celia, but it's important you know her history, if you'll listen. Celia was a real wonderful kid. At her old school, she really shined. She was excellent at French, and art, and really everything. But when her mother got sick, and we had to move, things got hard on her. She helps out a lot at home. It's been a lonely transition for her -- for both of us. I'm sure Celia's very sorry for her actions today, but this isn't her. She's never hit someone before, and I'm sure she never would again. She's going through a time where, maybe I haven't been giving her enough attention at home." He turned to me. "And I'm very sorry for that, Celia."

And my dad went on, apologizing to me and even tearing up a little bit, and asking the principal if he could just forgive this one mistake I'd made, and they went back and forth about how hard they both try to help poor lost kids like me who just can't figure it out, and shook hands, and I wasn't expelled, and my dad and I were out the door. Once we were in the hallway, he turned to me with his "dad face" turned off and his regular face back.

"Thanks, Dad," I said. "Let me tell you what happened! This kid Red..."

"Celia," he said, holding my shoulders in his hands, "I don't care what happened. Do you know how inconvenient it was for me to leave work for this? I don't ever want it to happen again. Go back to class." And he walked away, checking his phone. Click. Exhibit I-lost-count: Dad leaving me behind again.

I didn't go back to class. I was going off-script. I went back to the woods. I didn't need any help finding the path anymore.

When I got there, I sat on a stump next to some guy whose name I was pretty sure was Chad and just looked at the ground. When he handed me a joint, I smoked it with him. Why not? I was trying to do everything right, but here I was. My dad was mad at me. My mom was still alone. Even your mom won't answer your calls. I'd punched Red in the face, which wasn't going to improve life at school at all. Dutch was my only real friend, and she was the laughing stock of the school. I was almost expelled. What was the point? Why should I keep trying to do what's right when none of it mattered and no one cared what was true and what wasn't? May as well be here in the woods with some guy who may or may not be named Chad instead of in history learning about the War of the Roses if everyone was gonna hate me anyway. I was staring off into the trees, feeling admittedly a little sick from my first joint and kind of enjoying the punishment, when my phone buzzed.

Dutch: What happened?!

Celia: Nothing. I punched Red.

Dutch: That's not nothing.

Celia: It's fine. Not expelled.

Dutch: Thank god!!!

I snapped a picture.

Celia: Is this guy's name Chad?

Dutch: LOL yes where are you?

Celia: Expelled myself for the afternoon. BFFs with Chad now.

Dutch: haha

"What's the deal with this school?" I asked Chad.

"What?"

"I mean, how do you fit in here?"

"You're asking me?" Chad laughed.

"I mean, I guess."

"Yeah, I don't know. People like parties, I guess. Anyway, I gotta go."

So he left, and I looked at the empty clearing in the forest, and I decided to have a party.

Two weekends from now, my dad would be traveling for work. Usually when he traveled for work, I cleaned the house. I collected my evidence of being the perfect daughter. But so what? I could still do that. I could have a party, and then I could clean the house, and no one would even know. I started telling people, and I put the date in my calendar, and otherwise I mostly forgot about it. People actually seemed to think it was cool that I had punched Red in the face -- a lot of people were sick of his shit. Things were coming together.

But there was still the matter of what happened to Tim. It had bothered me since I learned about it, but now that I'd found the pregnancy test, it bothered me even more. I just knew that Tim would never have left Pilar like that. He would never have left his baby. Everyone knew they were in love, even though they didn't know about the pregnancy. It just didn't add up. And I felt so bad for Pilar - she was sure that someone had killed Tim, but everyone was acting like she was crazy. Why wouldn't they listen to her? I knew what it felt like to be ignored. So I found Pilar's number, and one afternoon when I finally got up the courage to bring it up, I called her.

"Hi Pilar, it's Celia," I said, unsure how to start.

"Oh. Hi?"

"Listen, I know... hey this is kind of out of the blue, but..."

"If you're calling about your party, I can't really sell you anything. I mean I'd like to, it's not you, I'm just sort of out of the game, you know?"

"Oh no, that's not why I'm calling. Are you coming to the party?"

"Probably, yeah."

"Oh that's great. Well, back to the thing I'm actually calling about. Um... Hey Pilar? I believe you that someone killed Tim."

Silence.

"It's just I know there wasn't a rave. And... I know about the baby."

Silence.

"And I believe you. That's all I wanted to tell you."

"... How?"

"How what?"

"How do you know about... you know."

I wasn't sure how to tell her about the key, the box... I hadn't realized until now how much I'd been snooping in her life. So I took the easy road. "Dutch told me. By accident though. I swear she didn't mean to. Just, with her being pregnant and everything..."

"Dutch was pregnant?"

Shit. "See? That's how it happens. You say the wrong thing sometimes, when you don't mean to. Dutch isn't pregnant now."

"Neither am I."

"Yeah. I know. Anyway, I believe you."

"Why?"

"Because that's not who Tim was."

"How do you know who Tim was?"

"... I'm right, right? It's not who he was. He never would have left you, pregnant."

"He never would have left me ever," she said quietly.

"Do you want to do something about it? I can help you."

"Why don't you come over?" Pilar asked. I could hear a spark of hope in her voice. "I can tell you about him. Maybe you can help me figure out what to do."

"I'm on my way," I said before hanging up. Before leaving, a grabbed a couple CDs for her to borrow. I wasn't sure what the perfect album for reliving your dead boyfriend's murder with a stranger was. Seventeen Seconds? Blue? Electroshock Blues in case she was only into music from the last decade? I put them all in my bag.

I drove to Pilar's, smiling. I felt kind of shitty that I was only smiling and happy again when I was digging around in someone's misery. But I really did want to help her, didn't I? Not just be a part of her grief, be on the inside, and make a friend? I didn't even know anymore. I just felt bad all the time. I pulled into the driveway of her house: the kind of house people had in TV ads, with a big stone facade and beautiful manicured plants around the door. Not huge, but perfect. I knocked on the door and checked my phone while I waited. When I heard the door open, I looked up, but the smiled immediately faded from my face when I saw a man in a suit scowling in the partially-opened doorway.

"Are you Celia?" he said, looking at me with distaste.

"Yes?"

"My daughter is having a difficult time in her life, Celia. And I, as her father, am working very hard to keep her healthy and safe. So you can imagine my displeasure when I learned that she once again believes that someone killed Timothy. You can imagine my surprise when I learned that you, a girl who didn't even know Timothy and didn't live here when it happened, have reignited these crazy conspiracy theories in her. I don't blame my daughter, Celia. She's distraught, and she needs a coping mechanism. But I do blame you. I ask you, please, to put this foolishness to rest and to leave our daughter alone to heal."

He began to close the door, but I put my hand out to stop it.

"Sir, I don't think Pilar's crazy at all. I think she's right. It's just Tim... the way they say he died doesn't make any sense. If you look into it..."

Pilar's father leaned toward me, scowling. "I've looked into it, Celia. I've read the police report. Have you? No, because you're talking about something you know nothing about. That boy went to a rave, and he took too many drugs there, and he died. Now that is a shame and we're sorry that happened to our daughter, but it's not a murder. It's irresponsibility. Actions have consequences, Celia. This was a hard way to learn that, but it's an important lesson. Now, my daughter would like to move on with her life and leave behind this distasteful moment of her past, and I need you to help her do that, by leaving our family alone. Goodbye."

He closed the door, and I stood on the porch, dumbfounded. The police report said Tim was at a rave? That didn't make sense at all! I went back to my car and drove to the street, where I parked out of sight and called Pilar again. No answer.

Celia: Are you okay?

Pilar: No. Leave me alone.

Celia: But what happened?

Pilar: My dad hates when I talk about it. He thinks I'm crazy.

Celia: But you aren't!!

Pilar: Doesn't matter, I have to stop talking about it or they'll send me away again.

Pilar: Sorry about my dad.

Celia: It's okay. You have to stop, but I don't. Can I go talk to Tim's parents?

Pilar: I haven't been able to face them.

Celia: I can.
Chapter 10: The Quadrilles

Pilar sent me the address to Tim's house. It was a short drive, maybe ten minutes, but the feel of their house was completely different. There was a wooden bucket on the porch with soft, purple pansies growing there, and a wreath on the door that didn't match anything, but looked homemade. I knocked, unsure of quite what I'd say.

"Who is it?" said a quiet voice from the other side of the door.

"Um, Celia?" I answered hesitantly.

"Who?"

"Uh, Mrs. Quadrille? Can I come in? It's... it's about Tim."

Silence.

"Hello?" I asked again. I heard the lock unlatch and the door opened slowly. A short lady in a red sweater, with her hair pulled back in a bun, stood next to the door, seemingly unsure of what to do next. I heard soft footsteps and saw a little girl, maybe six or seven, running up to the top of the steps away from me.

"Please, come in," she said.

As I followed her to the living room, I noticed that Tim was still everywhere. Tim at his first communion, Tim at little league, Tim in a tuxedo standing in the garden - pictures of Tim covered the entry-way table, the stairwell, and the walls. There were pictures of his sisters too, some of them together with Tim, that seemed to me the most sad. It made me feel shaky and lost. I hadn't really seen him, except in an obituary I'd looked up online. He looked like someone I could have been friends with. He looked just... normal.

I followed Mrs. Quadrille into the living room, where her husband was sitting in a lounge chair reading the newspaper. Mrs. Quadrille sat down on the couch and I stood there dumbly twisting and untwisting my headband in my hands, looking at a picture of Tim as a young boy. It looked like his first day of school.

"Oh," said Mrs. Quadrille. "That's Timmy on his first day of school. See that backpack? He loved that backpack. He was so proud of it. It had trucks on it. He loved trucks. Of course that was when he was only a little boy. Now he... I mean, when he was older... I'm sorry." She sat back down on the couch, while her husband looked up from his paper. "Have a seat," she said.

"Thank you," I said as I sat down next to her. "I'm Celia. I'm one of Pilar's friends. I go to school here at Heartshire."

"Were you friends with Timmy, dear?" Mrs. Quadrille asked.

"No, Ma'am. I never met him. I moved here this year. But it seems like he was a great guy."

"Thank you," Mrs. Quadrille said, holding back tears.

"I'm so sorry about what happened, and I..."

"Can I get you some water?" Mrs. Quadrille interrupted. "A sandwich?"

"Oh no thank you, I'm fine."

What seemed like an eternity went by before Mr. Quadrille broke the silence.

"Celia," he said, looking up from his newspaper, "I don't mean to be rude, but why are you here?"

"Of course, sorry. I'm here about Tim. I... I don't... I don't think he overdosed." I looked down at my hands.

Mrs. Quadrille started sobbing into her hands, and I felt my face go red.

"I'm so sorry. Maybe I should go," I said, getting up.

"No, please stay," Tim's mother said quietly, without lifting her head. Mr. Quadrille got up now, and placed his newspaper on a side table, and patted his wife on the back, looking at me as if the whole thing were my fault, which I suppose it was. At last Mrs. Quadrille seemed to recover her voice, and with tears running down her cheeks, she looked at me again.

"You haven't lived here long, or been friends with Tim, so you can have no idea what he was like. He was such a lovely boy. Can I tell you about him? He loved to play football. Loved it. The way he would run, and the way he threw the ball - it was so natural to him. He'd just bound through the air." She was smiling, talking about her son, showing my pictures. She put the photo in her hands down and sat down again, very sadly and quietly, and looked at me.

"It must have been fun to watch him play," I said.

"You have no idea," said Mrs. Quadrille. "It was fun to watch him do everything. A joy. He loved to play the guitar. He loved to eat - if he'd come home from practice and I'd made a beef stew, he would just sing about it with happiness and dance around the kitchen. He had such a sensitive stomach, but he loved beef stew. He loved being around his sisters, taking care of them. He was like a big dog in a litter of puppies when they were around. And they loved him, so much. He just had so much drive in life, so much purpose. He was such an excellent painter, too."

"He was a painter?"

"Oh yes, very much. He loved to paint. Here, I have some of his drawings." She got up to look on the bookshelf, and brought me a huge sketchbook. I opened it, and Tim was suddenly more than just an idea to me - he was a person. There were beautiful pen and ink sketches of landscapes, charcoal portraits of Pilar where her face came alive on the page, and detailed, intricate watercolors of animals. And then I turned the page and saw it - the mural. The sketches for the mural I'd seen that first day in the empty lot, with all the fantastic animals jumping and somersaulting and leaping into the sea and sky. Tim had painted the mural. The tag hadn't said Time, it had said Tim. When I'd seen that mural, I felt I'd found my first friend here. I'd forgotten about it, and it had been Tim all along. I fought back tears.

"What is it dear?" his mother asked.

"Oh nothing," I shook my head. "Just, this mural. I've seen it and... I just didn't know it was Tim's, that's all."

Mrs. Quadrille nodded. "If you've seen his mural, then of course you know him. You know what he's like. Sorry, what he was like."

"I believe so, a little bit. Did he like music?"

"He did, but in a different way than his friends. He liked his dad's music: The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds. Stuff you probably haven't heard of. He was kind of an old soul."

I smiled. I wasn't even surprised.

Mr. Quadrille looked up at me, softening a bit. "What did you come to talk about, Celia?" he asked.

"Well, like I said, I don't think he overdosed. I just don't think that was Tim. No one else does either. And I know the police report says he was at a rave, but I think it's important you know that there wasn't a rave that night."

Mr. Quadrille sighed. "We know that, Celia."

"You do?"

"Of course. People will talk - it's a small town. And I thank you for being concerned, but the police report doesn't say anything about a rave."

"Are you sure?" I asked, feeling immediately stupid after asking it.

Mr. Quadrille smiled softly. "I'm sure. I've read the damn thing so many times, I probably have it memorized. They did an autopsy, Celia. They found all the drugs in his system. They're all listed there." He put his arm around his wife, who was quietly sobbing. "We don't know why he did it. He wasn't at a rave, though. He was alone. They found him in an empty building alone. No signs of a struggle. 'No signs of a struggle,' the police report says, as if a boy pumped full of strange drugs isn't a sign that something's gone wrong. Anyway, it doesn't say anything about a rave."

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry to make you talk about all this and I wasn't even right," I bumbled, gathering up my jacket and bag. "It's just..." I stopped, shocked. Yes, Tim's parents already knew there wasn't a rave. Sure, that had just been a rumor, not bad police work. But why would Pilar's dad lie about it? He wasn't just confused or misinformed - he'd told me that he read it in the police report. Why lie?

"It's just what?" Mr. Quadrille asked, interested. "Explain yourself Celia."

I hesitated. Maybe coming here hadn't been a good idea.

"It's just that Pilar's dad told me there was a rave. He told me it says so in the police report. So something doesn't add up. And I don't think your son would have killed himself, on purpose or by accident." I stopped for a second to catch my breath. "And Pilar is so scared about it, and so sure that it wasn't Tim's fault, and I think it's too hard for her to come here. So I'm here, and... I don't know. I just want to help. I think we don't have the whole story."

"Celia, that's very kind of you," Mr. Quadrille said. "But I don't think there are answers. And there certainly aren't any answers that will bring Tim back." He hugged his wife.

"No, that's true. But there might be answer that will bring Pilar back, you know? There might be answers that could help someone else. I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm looking for. I just wanted to tell you that I believe in your son and I think someone hurt him, and I wanted to see if you had any idea who it might have been. I'm sorry for bothering you. I'll go."

I started toward the door when I heard Mrs. Quadrille say behind me, "You can look through his room."

"Monica, I don't think..." Mr. Quadrille started, but he interrupted her.

"No Griffon, it's fine. Someone should. What can it hurt? We've looked, but what can it hurt? She wants to help him. She wants to help our Tim. I want her to look through his things. I want everyone to look through his things. I wish everyone in the world could see his art, his pictures, his smile on the first day of school. What's the harm? She's not going to use it up! There will still be just as much pain in there for me when she's done with it."

I stood awkwardly in the hallway as Mrs. Quadrille curled up on the couch with another photo of Tim. Her husband kissed her softly on the head and then motioned to me to follow him up the stairs, which I did, quietly.

"Here's his room," Mr. Quadrille said. "Listen, I'm sorry about my wife. This has been so hard for her, for us... Anyway, here's his room. I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything. Stay as long as you like."

I opened the door to what had been Tim's room, and stepped inside, leaving the door to the hall open. His bed was made. His clothes were put away. The books and awards on the shelf were neat. I wondered if he'd left it this way, or if they'd cleaned it after he died. It felt wrong to be in his room without his permission. But I was doing it for him, and for Pilar. I looked in his desk drawers, in his backpack, under the bed. Anywhere that I'd keep something important, I looked, but there was nothing that seemed out of place. There were notebooks and packs of gum, flyers, clothes - regular stuff. That was the hardest part. It was a regular room with regular things, just a space where he'd been completely himself, and now he wasn't anything. I felt cold, and sat on the bed, looking at the scuff marks on the floor.

I wondered how many times Pilar had been here with him, watching a movie or laughing over a joke. I turned on the TV, and turned it back off. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, which was full of socks, and noticed how neatly they were rolled and stacked, and I pictured his mom putting away his laundry. I brushed them aside to see if anything was in the bottom of the drawer, and heard a plasticy crinkle. I froze. I didn't see anything in the drawer though. I moved them aside again, heard the crinkle again, but saw nothing. I squished the socks, and one pair made a crinkle noise for sure, so i unfolded it. There was a plastic baggie inside, with about 20 white pills in it. I can't even say why I did it, but I shoved it in my jacket pocket, re-rolled the socks, and closed the drawer.

I felt like a thief, which I guess I was, but I wasn't sure what else to do. I saw Tim's parents in the living room, and I couldn't bring myself to lie to them. I just shook my head kind of sadly, and they nodded, and I thanked them and let myself out.

***

Back at home, I put the baggie on my bed, took a picture of the pills, and sent it to Pilar, telling her where I found them.

Pilar: Looks like the stuff my dad gave me for nausea when I was pregnant. Scopolamine.

Celia: Your dad knew you were pregnant?!

Pilar: Nope, I was puking all the time and he thought I was sick.

Celia: Where'd Tim get it?

Pilar: Idk

Celia: What would he want it for.

Pilar: I don't know!

I looked around online to try to learn more about scopolamine, and found out that it does relieve nausea and is mostly prescribed for that. But it looked like it was also used as a date rape drug, because it made it possible to talk people into doing things they wouldn't normally do. What was Tim up to? I didn't want to ask Pilar any more questions, because I was worried that if I learned Tim really was involved in doing something bad, it might break her heart. Instead, I stuck the baggie in my bathroom cabinet and went back to my painting for a while. This whole situation was starting to give me a headache. In honor of Tim, I started adding a giant owl to the corner, underneath the daisies. He would like it, I thought. But now I felt like maybe I didn't know as much about Tim as I'd thought.

I put Tim and the pills aside and went on with my life, as much as I could. I was focused on my party, on keeping a low profile at school, on making and keeping a few friends. Pilar was a friend now, though I didn't see her at school very often. She knew I was on her side, though, and I felt like other people knew, too. I just wasn't sure exactly what I was on her side of. So I behaved myself, Windexing the bathroom mirrors and studying for my math test, collecting more evidence of my perfect-daughter routine, looking forward to that one evening of breaking out of it and finally making Heartshire my real home. 
Another Chapter: The Party

I thought it only happened in TV shows and movies. It's so predictable. The main character is going to have a party, just a few close friends, while their parents are away. And they tell their one friend, who for some reason is ten times cooler and has all these other mystery friends that aren't in any other episodes of the show, and that friend tells someone else, and soon the main character is at home waiting in a vacuumed living room with a bag of chips when everyone within a seven-town radius shows up with a keg and loud music and a bunch of older guys from another school. And there's the main character, shocked, and you watch it and think, This is crazy. That never happens. People you don't know don't just show up at a party. More likely, you plan a party, and you're expecting like twelve people, but instead only two show up, which you all pretend is better anyway. At least that's what I'd always thought. Joke's on me.

But now it was eleven pm, and I was sitting in my previously-clean living room talking to someone I'd never met before, and it was kind of great. Just to have people around. Just to be a normal person. To not be listening to an empty house and wishing my mom was there and wondering when my dad would be home. To play the Stones and have someone else know the words. It didn't sneak up on me like a TV party. It happened slowly, and I had plenty of time to look around and wonder what was going to happen next.

Someone took my empty Diet Coke can and handed me a cold beer bottle. "Drink up!" It's not like it was poison, so I ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, I'd very soon finished it off. I know something interesting is sure to happen tonight, I thought. I felt that energy in the air that's sometimes there before something very big happens, if you know how to listen for it just right. That's something I'd learned from a life with mom - you can walk into a room and feel when something good is going to happen, and feel when something bad is going to happen, and either way, when it's going to be big, you know. This felt good. And I told myself it was going to be the only bottle I drank that night. But I'd always had a bad habit of giving myself very good advice but very seldom following it.

I sat on the couch, my arms over the back, my bare feet on the coffee table. I felt like a princess. People were smiling at me, talking to me. I could live here, after all. I could survive this year, I was sure of it. So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that I had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. So I sat with my cold beer making rings on the coffee table and just watched the party go on around me while I got lost in the lyrics of the song on the radio.

"Will you go a little faster?" said a puppy to a cat.

"There's some things that want forgetting that are chasing at my back.

See how eagerly the others all around us all advance!

They are waiting for us, kitten -- will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful we will fly

When it takes us up and throws us, with the stars, into the sky!"

But the cat replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance--

Said she thanked the puppy kindly, but she would not join the dance.

Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.

Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" her furry friend replied.

"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

The further off from earth, you know, the nearer to the stars--

Then turn not back, beloved cat, but let's go get what's ours.

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"

I'd always thought it was a weird song but then, at that minute, it made total sense to me. I was joining the dance, even if it wasn't perfect. I wasn't worried or worried-about-being-worried; I just was. I was just listening, smiling and happy, when I made eye contact with a boy across the room, who was standing in a clump with all his friends. I'd never seen him before, but he looked a little older. He was very cute. They whispered something to him, and he looked at me, and then crossed the room. When he got to me, he sat on the sofa next to me and said, "I'm going to kiss you." He said it nicely, and I was surprised how unscary it seemed, so I smiled and I let him. And when it was finished, he smiled and walked back to his friends. Suddenly I was worried it had been a dare or a prank, but it didn't seem like it. No one was laughing at him, or me, and he smiled at me again, and then slowly he and his friends made his way to another room and that was it.

Pilar came and sat down next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.

"What up, girl? You look happy," she said.

"Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess I am," I smiled. I looked for the guy, but he was gone from the room. "What's up?"

"So, I've been thinking about the pills," she said. "And I was thinking about them and thinking about them, Why would Tim have them? Where did he get them? I was worried maybe he got them from me, but I only took them for a couple days, because then my dad gave me something stronger since they weren't working. But then I miscarried and the nausea went away and that was it. But what if... what if he got them from my dad? Would my dad give them to him?"

"Pilar, why would he get them from your dad?"

"I don't know! But there's nowhere else to get them, really. They need to be prescribed. There's no one at our school that had them. Tim had a really sensitive stomach, maybe my dad gave them to him to help him out?"

"Is there any way you can find out?"

"If I ask my dad anything about Tim, he'll lose it."

"Well does he have like records or anything?"

"Yeah!" She smiled and hugged me. "He does! He has this order software on his office computer where he has to track everything in and out and record what doctor was given the samples. And when he gives stuff to me or my mom if we're sick or whatever, he just lists it as expired."

"Okay, so check that out next time you're home and he's not. Meanwhile, enjoy the party." She clinked her bottle against mine and wandered off, and I leaned back on the couch feeling like everything was coming together

Then, I heard it.

Crash.

I came out of my beer-and-kiss-induced haze and walked toward the sound. I looked into my bedroom to see my big easel tipped onto the floor, paint and brushes everywhere. But there wasn't anyone in the room. And then I heard footsteps, and noticed that the window was open. Outside, on the tiny slip of roof that surrounded the window, was the boy who'd just kissed me. I went to call his name, but I didn't know it.

"Hey!" I said, and he turned around. He was calm, even happy.

"Oh, hi!" he said, as if we'd just run into each other at the drugstore or something.

"Hi. What are you doing on the roof, dude?"

"Oh, I'm going to jump off," he said, so matter-of-factly that it took me a minute to register what he was saying.

"What? You can't jump off the roof -- you'll die!"

"No, no," he said. "It's fine. They said I could. They said I'll really like it."

"Who said you could?" I asked, confused. He looked like this all made so much sense to him, I was beginning to wonder if it was me that was making the mistake.

"They said. They said I could fly." He smiled at me and turned his head up to the sky.

Thump, I heard my heartbeat as I realized he was actually going to do it. I could hear people behind me now, muttering voices. I could see that eyes were looking at the window from behind me, turning their heads this way and that to try to see what was going on. I could hear voices from beyond him, down on the lawn: some were laughing at him, some were shocked, and some were chatting as if nothing were going on. Thump, my heart went again. I could feel the sweat on my face, taste the bitterness in my mouth. There was a cool breeze, and it felt freezing. Everything was in close-up and slow motion, and I was so hot. The sky was so clear. I saw his foot step forward, the same way someone steps off a curb. The thump in my chest got harder, and I reached both my arms through the window at the same time, leaning my whole body against the roof. I scrambled, grabbing for anything. He took another step, and I managed to grab one of his shoes by the heel. Now I could hear my heart in my ears. Thump thump thump. I held onto the shoe so tightly that my fingernails broke. And then I was holding just an empty shoe. He disappeared into the darkness as hard as he could go. Thump.

I didn't scream - I couldn't. I couldn't move. It wasn't real. All I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears: thump thump thump. People behind me were rushing toward the window, pushing me to the side, running downstairs. The people on the lawn, who'd been laughing and chatting, were shrieking, or running. Or at least it sounded like it; I couldn't see them. I looked at the shoe in my hands, unsure of how it got there. It took three breaths before the realness of the moment hit me, and then I gasped.

I dropped the shoe as if it were a live rat. I pulled myself out the window and looked over the edge of the overhang. The boy was lying on the ground, not moving. People were crouched all around him. I kept seeing the flash of photos from phones. Other people were standing in a group, watching, holding onto each other. They looked like ants, terrified and scrambling and small. Someone looked up and pointed at me, which shook me from the moment, and I popped back inside the window and ran downstairs and out to the lawn.

When I got to the lawn and saw him, I breathed again - he was alive. His eyes were open, and he was talking, but he wasn't moving at all. There were only five or six people left in the yard, and I recognized most of them from school. All the boys who'd been with him before were gone. I moved closer to the boy on the ground, who smiled at me. I smiled back, as the sirens got louder and louder. I wasn't sure what else to do.

When the ambulance arrived, a paramedic put his arm around my shoulders and walked me briskly to the empty living room. He held me by the shoulders gently while he looked at me.

"Is this your house?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Celia."

"Okay, Celia, can you tell me who that boy is out there?"

"I... I don't know. I don't know him."

"Okay, Celia. Can you tell me what he took?"

"What he... what?"

"What drugs he took. Can you tell me what drugs he took?"

"I don't... there's no drugs here. I think he was drinking a beer."

"Okay, Celia. Can you tell me how he fell?"

"What?"

"Fell, Celia. How he fell. Did he fall off the roof?"

"Yes."

"How did he fall off the roof?"

"I mean no, he didn't fall. He... he jumped. He said..."

"What did he say, Celia?"

"He said they told him he could fly. He just... jumped."

The paramedic shook his head and walked back into the yard, leaving me in the living room. I hadn't realized until now that Dutch was there, watching me, worried, and waiting. She came closer now, and put her arm around my shoulder, and didn't say anything.

"I'm not drunk," I told her.

"I know," she said, rubbing my back.

"I'm not. I mean I drank more than I expected. I wish I hadn't drunk quite so much. Maybe I could have stopped him sooner?"

"What happened?"

"He just jumped, Dutch. He thought he could fly?"

"What?"

"I know! But he was up there on the roof, and he looked at me and told he could fly just like he was telling me the sky was blue, and then he walked right off. He was totally calm. He wasn't drunk or crazy or sad. He just... thought he could fly? He said they told him he could."

"Who's they?"

"I don't know! He was with some guys before, but I don't see them anywhere."

"Who is he, Celia?"

"I don't know!"

"What? I saw him kiss you before!"

"Yeah, I don't know. He smiled at me, and I smiled back, and he came over, and we kissed, and he just left. It was so weird. But it was nice! It was just this moment. I don't know...." And I stopped talking because there were three police officers in the living room now, and I realized they were listening to me.

The night went on forever. I told the story, and then I told it again. I drove with them in the police car, leaving the house unlocked and full of police. I didn't want to, but I didn't know if I was allowed to say no. I couldn't think in the back of the police car. I wasn't drunk, but I couldn't pay attention to anything except the sound of my own blood in my ears. I remembered being so sure that being on the inside is better, no matter what. No matter what's happening, no matter how bad it is, I used to be so sure it would be better to be on the inside than on the outside, alone. I was sure on the inside now. I'd been, I was certain, wrong.

Once we got to the police station, I sat on a bench and waited, and then I sat in a room and waited. I did whatever they told me to do. Everyone was polite and every room had a florescent light that seemed to buzz louder than the one before. A lady in a rumpled suit jacket gave me a styrofoam cup of dishwater coffee that squeaked in my hand when I clutched it. They started to ask me questions, and I heard myself answering them, like I was standing in the doorway observing the whole conversation. I learned that the boy's name was Reggie, and that he was from the next town over. And that he was high on some drug that apparently makes you do whatever someone else suggests you do. Like kiss a girl. Or fly. And I learned, for what felt like the hundredth time, that your life can change a lot in one day through absolutely no fault of your own but being born into a deep well of bad luck that never seemed to run dry.

I answered all their questions, alone with a portly officer in a room with white walls. No, I didn't know him. No, I didn't push him off the roof. No, I didn't invite him. Yes, there was alcohol. No, I didn't buy it. But no matter how many answers I gave them, I wasn't getting an answer back to the only question I cared about - was Reggie okay? We'll look into it, he kept saying. We'll let you know. But no one was letting me know, and I was shivering from exhaustion and confusion, and I just wanted to leave. I was so uncomfortable, and I started to feel like there was no sort of chance of ever getting out of the room again. I just wished I was home.

Then the door opened, and there was my dad. Dad with his dad-face, loving and concerned. And, I could tell, underneath that, furious. It occurred to me that if he'd indeed been out of state for business, he couldn't have gotten back in just a few hours. So he was caught in his own lie too, and he knew it. I think that's mostly why he was mad. He ushered me to the hallway where I sat on the bench staring into the now-cold cup of coffee and tried to listen through the door. Between the polite muffled conversation, I heard bubbles of loud anger, bits of words that were too loud to be held back by the door. Without a warrant and underage girl and questioning her without a parent all came through pretty strong. Finally the door opened, and my dad reached down and took my hand and marched me out the door.

We drove home in silence. I knew he'd been lying. He knew I'd been lying. All I had wanted, once, was to do something for myself and not have it come back to bite me in the ass. When we got home, he parked the car silently and walked inside. It looked like a party had been there, but it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. I assumed Dutch had cleaned up a little. There were two big trash bags on the kitchen floor, and lots of cups on the counter. My dad stood in the mess and looked unsure what to say.

"Dad," I said quietly, "I need to find out if Reggie is okay."

"Who is Reggie?" he asked with a calmness that made me shiver.

"The boy. Reggie's the one who... fell. They wouldn't tell me if he's okay. I just need to know."

"No," my father said, shaking his head. "You don't tell me what you need. I will tell you what I need. I need you to go upstairs and get out of my face for a little while. And once I go to bed, I need you to come down here and clean this house until it's back to normal. Drugs, Celia? Drugs and alcohol and parties and cops and people jumping off the roof? And you think you can tell me what you need? Why didn't you call me?"

"Because I thought you were on a business trip in Texas. You know, like you said you were. If I'd known you were only an hour away --"

"Oh no, Celia, you will not make this about me. Where I am is none of your damn business. Where you are supposed to be is here, in this house, not committing felonies."

"Where you are is my business though, dad. Because I'm a kid! I'm your kid. I'm not supposed to parent myself. I'm not supposed to make my own meals, and clean the house, and wonder if you're coming home. I'm not supposed to --"

My dad walked closer to me, putting his face right in mine. "What you're not supposed to do," he said, gritting his teeth, "is this. You see this mess? There were police in my house, Celia. You were taken to the police station. Someone jumped off the roof!"

"And I still don't know if he's okay!"

"Who cares? That isn't your concern."

"It is my concern, dad. Some people can't just turn off their feelings. Some people care about other people. I know you can just leave me by myself all the time, I know you can leave mom with no one to help her, and you don't care at all, but some people aren't like that. I'm not like that!"

"What you are is someone who makes bad decisions. You're just like your mother, which I've been trying to save you from, but I don't know why I bother. You want to be so much like her? Fine." He stomped up the stairs, and I slumped in a kitchen chair, thinking the fight was over. But minutes later, I heard him walking back down the stairs deliberately. He dropped a plastic bag in front of me on the table. "You want to give up on your life? Here."

I looked into the bag, and then looked at him with disbelief. Rage. It was a bag of letters from my mother.

"How could you?" I asked. "How could you keep these secret from me? Do you know how much I worry about her? How much I miss her? How can you be so heartless? What is WRONG with you?" I shoved the letters in my bag and left. Once I was in the car, I could hear him yelling from the porch, but I didn't care. I wasn't going back there. He wouldn't miss me anyway.

I drove to the nearest hospital, went to the reception, and asked for Reggie's room in hopes that he was there. He was. When they asked my relationship to him, I said I was his sister, which they seemed to believe. When I got to his door, I knocked softly, so afraid of what I'd find on the other side.

"Come in," he said.

When I opened the door, I saw that Reggie was alert, propped up sitting in his bed. Immediately I breathed a sigh of relief, which he must have noticed.

"Not dead," he said, grinning.

"Not in jail," I said, pointing at myself. He laughed.

"Yeah, that's a relief," he said.

"Are your parents here?"

"Nope. I'm here at the University; my parents live on the East coast. But I'm 19 so they didn't have to be notified, and I figure why worry them. Although they'll find out when the get the ER bill I guess, but I'll just tell them I slipped."

"But you... what did happen? Why did you jump?"

"I don't know. That sounds stupid, I know, but I honestly don't know."

"Were you that drunk?"

"No, I wasn't. I think I had two beers. I was just there to watch out for my cousin, which I guess I didn't do a great job at. She goes to your school. But don't worry, I told the police I was drunk and I thought I could fly off the roof. So, no harm no foul."

I will admit that my throat unclenched. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until, once again, I could breathe. "But what happened? You kissed me, which of course was nice but I don't even know you, and then you went flying off the roof without even a second thought."

"Someone gave me a pill. He told me it would relax me? I don't know what that stuff was but man, it really messed me up. It's like anything someone told me to do, I just did it, without even thinking."

"What kind of pill?"

"I don't know, they were white and in a plastic bag. They said to take three. I thought it was just going to be chill but this was super different. I'm glad they didn't tell me to kill myself." He laughed.

"That's not funny. If someone did tell you to kill yourself, you'd probably..." I stopped. Tim. That's what happened to Tim. The pills from my bathroom, the ones from Tim's room - that's how they got him. Someone had killed him without killing him. Someone had given him the scopolamine, and then given him the other drugs and told him to take them. Someone who had access to all those drugs and to Tim. Someone who wanted Tim out of his family's life. Someone who had just learned that his daughter was pregnant, and it was Tim's fault. Oh God.

"What?" Reggie asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I am, I just... I think I have to go."

"Really, I'm okay. I broke my ankle and my collarbone, and they think I sprained both my knees. I have a lot of bruises. My hand is pretty messed up. But I'm okay. Don't worry."

"Okay," I said.

"And also? I'd like to see you sometime that isn't, you know, the weirdest day of my life. Because that was a pretty good kiss."

I smiled, and we exchanged numbers. I kissed him on the forehead, and I spilled his bucket of ice chips everywhere. So pretty much the best I could hope for, being me.

I went to the hallway and closed the door behind me, sighing with relief. Not only was Reggie okay, but it sounded like I wouldn't be in trouble. Like, I was definitely in trouble with dad. And I was probably in trouble with the police too, because it's illegal for me to have a party with alcohol, right? But kids do that, and they don't go to jail. Their lives aren't ruined. Okay, so it's not great, but my life's not, you know, Lifetime-movie-level ruined. I was sure those pills were gone from my bathroom, though, which was actually for the best, at least with police searching around. I drove around, unsure where to go. I knew that I didn't want to go home. I wandered around a 24-hour minimart and bought myself a Sprite and some Twizzlers, mostly just for something to do. Then I drove to Dutch's house.

Celia: I'm at your house. Can I stay here?

Dutch: Of course, come in.

I let myself in her back window, kicked off my shoes, and got into bed next to her, where she was watching some bad cooking show on TV.

"Thanks for cleaning up," I said.

"Of course. Did your dad kick you out?"

"Nope, I left. Because of this," I said, taking all my mom's letters out of my bag. Dutch looked at the letters and then looked at me, shocked. "Yup, he's been hiding all these letters from my mom. And he doesn't think he did anything wrong. I just can't anymore, Dutch. I can't be around him."

"You can stay here. Did you get arrested?"

"No. I went to the police station, and they asked me tons of questions, but in the end they let me go when my dad got there. But I went to see Reggie at the hospital. The guy? His name, it turns out, by the way, is Reggie. He's fine." And I told her the whole story. And we read the letters from my mother, which were sad and scary and wonderful and which made me guilty and proud and lonely for my mother. Sure she was having hard times, and she missed me, but she had these little freedoms now that she was away from my father and the normalcy that raising two daughters required.

There were lines that drove us to fits of laughter. "I've gotten a dog, whose name is macaroni, and who bathes in the tub," she wrote, in one of the letters, with a sketch of the little guy shaking himself dry with a wry smile. There were lines that made me feel like an awful daughter: "I'm here alone, since you and Ruby have left me, so I try not to let the hours go by too cruelly." There were lines that made me angry: "Now I can finally laugh again." But they also let me breathe.

I closed the last letter and burrowed under the covers, snuggling into Dutch. "Can I hate my mother and also love her, and miss her, and be glad she isn't here?"

Dutch pet my head. "That's what mothers are."

We laid there quietly, under the blankets, and then I told Dutch what I thought happened to Tim. I couldn't say it to her face, but under the blankets, without looking at her, I could say it. I told her about Pilar, and the pills, and Tim's parents, and the whole thing. Once I was done with it all, I started crying a little. It seemed like too much had happened, in such a short time. I just didn't know what to do.

"How am I going to tell her, Dutch? How? How can you tell someone that about their dad, especially when you aren't sure?"

My phone rang - Pilar. I wasn't sure I should even answer it.

"Hello?" She was crying. "Pilar, what's wrong."

"I did it, Celia. I looked up my dad's records. You'll never believe it. He got the scopolamine for Tim. And all these other drugs - so many drugs I'd never heard of. And misoprostol and mifepristone. I won't be surprised if you don't know what those are, because I didn't either. But I looked them up. They're the meds he gave me to help with my nausea, Celia. But they weren't really for that. They're to cause a miscarriage. He knew. He knew, and he tricked me into killing the baby. And somehow, he killed Tim. And then he pretended I was crazy, and that was all Tim's fault." She was whispering, breathless, crying, crazy. "It's all his fault."

"I know, Pilar. Listen. Take pictures of the records and send them to me, and I'll do the rest. We'll talk about it on Monday, okay?"

"That's the thing, Celia. They're sending me back to that crazy house! They're not even letting me go to school anymore! They're locking me up!"

"Oh my God, Pilar, what's happening?"

"I'm leaving. I'm leaving before they wake up. I was going to wait until after graduation, but I can't go back to that place. I used my dad's credit card. I bought a ticket to Vegas. I'm going."

"You can't leave!"

"... I can't stay. I have an aunt there I can stay with. My mom's sister. She won't send me back, even if my dad tries to make her. It will be okay. It will definitely be better than here."

"Can I do anything to help?"

"Yes, Celia. You can prove it."

I told her I would. And then I told her to come over and say goodbye before she left. Dutch and I left the bad cooking shows playing and went to sleep. I woke up to a hand on my shoulder and dawn just breaking outside. Pilar was standing by the bed. She looked so tall, looking at her from lying down. She was wearing a black cotton dress and a stack of silver bangles on her arm, and I was struck by the fact that she looked, for the first time since I'd met her, happy.

"I gotta go," she said quietly. She put a stack of papers on the floor next to my bed. "The records." She took a big plastic bag from her purse - it was full of other bags all stuffed with pills and papers. "Everything I have left that I've taken from my dad, in case that helps you at all." Then she took off one of the thin silver bangles and put it on my wrist. "You're okay, right? I mean, from today?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"And the guy who fell? Or jumped, or whatever? He's okay?"

"He's okay."

"Celia?"

"Yeah?"

"I know I don't really know you that well? But you're my best friend."

I nodded. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

"You'll come back when it's all over?"

"Who knows. Or you'll come to me. I'll see you soon though. I gotta go."

And she was up and out the window before I could even wake up enough to realize it wasn't a dream.
Chapter 11: Stolen

I was staring at the ceiling in Dutch's room. There were so many things that didn't seem real, so I had to tell myself the story like I was hearing it for the first time. Pilar has gone to Vegas. Her dad killed Tim. Reggie was okay. I wasn't arrested. My mom has been writing to me this whole time. I can go back to her. Everything is terrible. Everything is okay. I wasn't sure what was true.

Weather: the cold of night

Song: Don't Go to Strangers

Mood: everything

Overheard: "You're my best friend." - Pilar

It was on my shoulders now, to bring all the evidence to the police. I had to do it for Pilar, so she could come home. I had to do it for Tim. For his poor mom and dad, who just wanted the truth. For his sisters, who missed him. For me, for some reason. I was sick of people getting away with it, making their lies into the truth and everyone letting them. But I didn't want to go to the police until I had everything ready. Just another opportunity to prepare my evidence. I was getting a little tired of building my case against the world. Why was everything such a fight? But it seemed like, finally, I was winning.

Still, the police hadn't done it right the first time, and I didn't want to give them any space to make a mistake. I reached for my phone and texted on a group text.

Celia: Meet me in the forest in 15 minutes. 911.

I had to make sure I could get all the help possible, especially since Pilar was gone. I woke up Dutch as gently as I could.

"Hey, you still have the pills, right? The ones we got from Pilar?"

"Yeah," she said, groggy. "In the bathroom. You need them?"

"Bring 'em. And get ready - we have to go."

She nodded and didn't ask any questions, just brushed her teeth, put on a winter coat and handed me a packet of Pop Tarts and the bag of pills on the way out the door.

When I arrived everyone was already there. I guess my vague, demanding text, early in the morning after everyone had last seen me carted off to the police station, must have shown it was serious. Dutch and I heard talking as we were approaching the clearing, but we could hear them go silent at the sound of our footsteps. And then we saw them all. Pepper, in her big black hoodie, looking like a sleepy rat. Kat and Bunni, sharing a cigarette. Billy standing around behind them like he had no idea why he was here, which to be honest, neither did I. Maddox and his hangers-on, nervous and itchy-eyed. Red, without time to put an outfit together, looking like a regular boy in sweatpants and a coat. An unlikely crew.

"Guys, it's about Tim. I figured it all out. All of it. But I need help collecting evidence."

"I told you guys she wasn't in danger..." Pepper whispered.

"Sorry I scared you but we really have to get this done, fast. I might not be in danger, but Pilar is."

"I literally just saw Pilar at the coffee shop," Dori said, rolling her eyes and picking up her things to go.

"It's enough, Dori. You didn't. She's on her way to Vegas."

"No I'm not," said a voice from behind me. And there was Pilar, shivering in her dress in the cold morning air. I threw my arms around her, confused. "When I got to the airport, the ticket didn't print. My dad must have denied the charge. Which means he knows I'm trying to leave. I'm sure he's got someone looking for me." Everyone was looking at her, shocked.

Dori stood up. "I can hide you. Let's go." And for the first time in my life, I was glad Dori was such a sneaky little bitch. She grabbed Pilar by the hand and led her off away from the way we'd come into the forest, Pilar looking over her shoulder with wide eyes.

"It's okay, Pilar. We got this," I said. I came to the center of the ring of trees and started taking things out of my backpack, explaining what I'd found. The box, with the positive pregnancy test: not exactly proof that anything went wrong, but if Pilar's dad tried to deny that she'd ever been pregnant, this would prove him wrong. The records that Pilar had given me. Her giant bag of drugs. The pills she'd given to Dutch. I explained that didn't have the scopolamine anymore - that was a problem. Maybe whoever'd given it to Reggie still had it? I quickly texted him and asked him to track it down, before I turned back to my friends.

"So, this is what happened. Pilar was pregnant - I don't know if you guys knew that, but she was. And Tim knew. And they were really happy. Here are some other things we know for sure: Pilar's dad gave her two medicines for her nausea that actually caused her to miscarry. And he had a bunch of scopolamine go missing from his supplies. And I found that scopolomine in Tim's room. I brought it back to my house, someone found it and gave it out at the party, and that's how Reggie fell off the roof. Because scopolamine makes you do what people say. Tim had always had stomach problems, and Pilar's dad could have told him that's what the scopolamine was for - he would have taken it. But if you take too much, it makes you do whatever people say. And Pilar's dad had a bunch of other drugs go missing that day - the kind that can kill you. Guys, Pilar's dad killed Tim. And now that she might tell someone, he wants to hide her back in the nuthouse forever."

There was silence.

"Oh god. Honey, you are crazy for doing this, absolutely mad." Kat joked, trying to break the tension.

"Yeah. I know. But all I need from you guys are a few details and help filling in some of the gaps."

Maddox had been staring at the pile of evidence on the ground, but now he looked up at me. "I feel like you're forgetting something."

"What?" I asked.

"If you tell the police this whole theory, you're admitting that you stole illegal drugs from Tim. That you hid them in your house. The same drugs that made that guy jump off the roof. That's robbery, and possession, and dealing... . That's... you could go to jail, Celia."

I couldn't believe the thought hadn't occurred to me.

"What if... what if we don't tell them that part?" I tried. "We'll just show them the other evidence, and we'll leave that part out."

"And you think the Quadrilles will lie to the police? You think you'll lie to the police and not get caught?"

I sat down, defeated. It was all going to fall apart. If I brought the truth to the police, if I made it so Pilar could come back, I'd go to jail. I couldn't do that to my mom. I didn't know what to do. I thought I had figured out everything, but I had nothing.

"Are you kidding?" Red asked. "You weren't dealing drugs. You weren't taking drugs. You brought home some pills, you didn't know what they were, and then someone stole them from you. You just need a good lawyer. My parents have, like, 80 lawyers. I'm gonna call you one right now. Moving on."

"Wait, Red, I can't... I don't have any money."

"Yeah, duh. We've all seen your shoes. But I do. Tim was my best friend. Don't worry about the money."

I took out my red notebook and starting taking notes from everyone while Red was on the phone. Dutch told me how Pilar's symptoms and cravings might have been red flags for Pilar's dad. Bunni told me how Tim had started acting weird around the same time, like he was worried all the time. I told them I needed evidence, and everyone dug through texts, photos... anything that could be used to show what happened. Maddox wrote down everything he knew about scopolamine, and even tracked down the guys who had given it to Reggie. I texted Reggie to make sure he was okay with what would happen if we went to the police.

Reggie: You gotta do it.

Bunni was lighting another cigarette as I finished taking notes and making plans. "Ugh. This whole thing is giving me the creeps! We have to go get some food after this. It's like an obligation! And I mean, we can write things in a diner just as well as in the woods, right?" She grabbed her pink pastel bag and led the way, and we all followed her, down the path. I could see everyone's breath rising in the cold air like smoke, like we were one big dragon snaking its way through the woods. I couldn't believe I was here, with this group of people, in this woods, for this reason. It was like a dream.

We drove in a caravan to the coffee shop, but once we got there, I stopped at the door. "Guys, I gotta go talk to Tim's parents. It can't wait."

"Do you want us to come?" Maddox asked.

"No, I can do it," I said. "Hey, just don't talk about this at breakfast, okay? We can't risk anyone finding out."

They nodded and headed inside, but Red stayed behind. He was staring at the grey sky and watching the red sun break through the clouds. A vee of geese flew low, rustling the air with their dark wings, and he watched them. Then he looked at me.

"What's up, Red?" I asked.

"You know who started calling me Red? Tim. That's why I dyed my hair red. He said he liked red hair. I thought he would like it."

I thought I could see tears in his eyes.

"I know he loved Pilar, Celia. And I'm glad he did. He really loved her, too. But sometimes..."

And then I understood why Red was so mad all the time now. "You loved him, didn't you?"

Red put his arms around me and rested his head on my shoulder. "Yeah."

"Did you ever think he'd love you back? That same way?"

"No. But it didn't matter."

We stood there on the concrete steps for a long time. I could see everyone inside stealing glances at us, but I just couldn't let Red go. Finally, I whispered, "Why don't you come with me to see his parents?"

Red shook his head. "His parents... they wouldn't like it. But I just wanted someone to know." I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out one of the red keys from my old sculpture that I was still carrying around, and pressed it into his hand.

"You were his best friend, Red. People love their best friends."

And he went inside, and I left.

***

This time, Tim's parents seemed happy to see me, even though it was early in the morning. Even Tim's little sister stayed downstairs, peeping out from behind the doorway, until Mr. Quadrille shooed her to her room. That won't last, I thought. I sat at the kitchen table and Mrs. Quadrille insisted on serving me a piece of pie, despite my insistence that I wasn't hungry. It turned out I was, though - it tasted like something a mom would make. Not my mom, of course, but mom kind of moms. Like Tim's mom. Who wasn't Tim's mom anymore. Or was she? I was lost in my own thoughts while she was talking about Tim and all his favorite things to eat, and all the things she sometimes made just to feel a little closer to him. It made what I had to say next only that much harder.

"Um, Mrs. Quadrille? I found some things. I want to talk to you about them."

"What kind of things?"

"First, can I see the police report? You know, from Tim?"

Mr. Quadrille must have heard me in the next room, because he came to the doorway. "What do you want to know?" he asked, curious.

"What drugs, exactly, they found in his system."

Mr. Quadrille wasn't kidding that he'd almost memorized the police report. He read off a list of scientific-sounding names about twenty items long without even stopping to think. I pulled the reports Pilar had printed from my bag, and read him the same list right back. He was shocked.

"What is that?" he asked.

"It's a list of drugs that were ordered by Pilar's dad about a week before Tim died. They're listed on his records as "expired", but that's not what happened. That's how he lists them when he gives them to someone. And I think he gave them to Tim.

Mrs. Quadrille went pale and had to sit down. "So you're saying he did take the drugs? He killed himself? Or he was, what, getting high? What does this mean?"

I shook my head. "No. I mean, yes, he took the drugs. But I don't think he took them because he wanted to. I think he took them because someone told him to."

"No, Tim... Tim got along well with Pilar's parents, but he wouldn't have taken this many pills without talking to us. It's too weird. He'd had so many stomach problems, he had to be really careful about medications, and he was always wary of taking new ones and what their side effects might be. And to take them alone, in the woods? Why would he have done that?"

"Because he couldn't say no."

"What?" Now both of them were looking at me, and I realized I was shaking. I was giving them some hope of understanding what happened, and I didn't want to let them down.

"Did you hear about the party that I had last weekend?"

"No," Mrs. Quadrille said.

"Okay, well I had a party. And it ended pretty badly; someone fell off the roof. Except he didn't fall - he jumped. He wasn't trying to kill himself. But he thought he could fly. Because someone told him he could."

"Why would he believe that?"

"Because someone had given him scopolamine. It's this drug that's really good for nausea. Pilar's dad had given her some when she... she was having some stomach pain. And see here, on the order records, there's an order of 32 pills listed as 'expired' just before the other meds that Tim took."

"So George gave him some medicine for his stomach aches. What does that have to do with your party?"

"Listen, scopolamine... it's good for stomach aches, when you take like half a pill. But if you take a bunch, it's really scary stuff. It makes you lose all your judgment, and your ability to say no. Basically, you'll do whatever anyone tells you. That's why that guy tried to fly off the roof. Because of the scopolamine. And he found it at my house. Because..." And here I stopped, because I realized I'd have to confess what I'd done. "Because I found it in Tim's sock drawer. I know I should have told you. But I wanted to make sure I was right before I got you upset."

"Are you saying," said Mr. Quadrille, now holding his wife's hand, "that you found drugs in our son's room, and you stole them, and someone took them and jumped off your roof?"

"Yes."

"Celia, of all the..."

His wife put her hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, dear. It's okay. It doesn't matter. Is the boy okay?"

"Yes, he's fine. And I'm sorry. But look. Pilar's dad gave Tim this stuff, and he did it so he could tell him what to do. And then he gave him all those other pills, and he told him to take them."

"But why? George was always nice to Tim. They liked Tim and Pilar together. They were good kids, you know? We all liked them. Why would George want to do that? Celia, it doesn't make any sense. I'm so grateful that you're looking around, but I think..."

"Pilar was pregnant," I whispered.

"What?"

"Pregnant. Pilar was pregnant. That's why she was nauseous. And her dad figured it out."

"What?"

"She was pregnant, Mrs. Quadrille."

"No, it can't be."

"Yes."

"Did she have... what happened?"

"She thought she had a miscarriage."

"She thought she did?"

"Look at the other "expired" pills on the list. Her dad, Mrs. Quadrille. Her dad gave her some pills that made... her dad did it. That's why he wanted Tim gone. That's... that's what happened."

Mrs. Quadrille was just staring at me, blinking. There was nothing behind her eyes. Mr. Quadrille's face was getting tighter, and redder, and angrier by the minute.

"Are you telling me," he said in a low voice, "that he killed our grandchild, and then he killed our son?"

"Yes."

Weather: clear

Song: Like a Rolling Stone

Mood: cleaning a wound

Overheard: "Yes officer, I'd like to report a murder." - Mr. Quadrille, on the phone, while I played checkers with one of Tim's sisters and the birds sang outside.

Celia (to group): I told them.

Bunni: What happened?

Celia: They called the police.

Red: On you?

Celia: On him. Tell Pilar.

Dutch: Her phone was shut off.

Shit.

***

The police cruiser pulled into the broad driveway as the afternoon sun was pouring through the yellow leaves.

"Some place," the driver said letting out a low whistle, looking at the house bathed in gold light. "Can you imagine living here?"

"Nope," the second officer said as he slammed the passenger-side door. "But I can't imagine murdering a nice teenage boy and shipping my daughter to the nuthouse either." They walked past the perfectly groomed white roses toward the front door.

"You got a daughter?" the officer who'd been driving asked.

"Yeah. She's 15."

"Seems like you could imagine it, then. If someone knocked her up."

"I can imagine punching him pretty hard." The other officer smiled and knocked hard on the door, two clear knocks. Thunk thunk.

The man who opened the door had a loose tie but a wide smile. White teeth, expensive. He was so at ease, like nothing bad could ever happen to him. Like if the police were here, it was to tell him that he'd won a Lexus in the police raffle.

"Oh! Hello officers, how may I help you?"

"Sir. Please step outside," the officer said as he reached inside and put his hand on Pilar's father's arm and walked him forward. "George Chenille, you are under arrest for the murder of Timothy Quadrille. You have the right to remain silent. If you do say anything, what you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult with a lawyer and have that lawyer present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you if you so desire."

"I don't understand! I did nothing wrong! Murder? Are you crazy? You're going to have such a lawsuit on your hands!" Pilar's little sister Teri came running out the front door and down the steps, staring at her father. His eyes softened.

"Honey, it's okay. It's okay sweetie, there's just a misunderstanding. Tell mom to call our lawyer, okay? You gotta go do it now." He was still trying to smile.

"What happened?" Teri said, confused. She shivered.

"Nothing, honey, it's just a mix-up. These guys are just trying to do their jobs. We'll get it all straightened out. Just go get mom, okay. Tell her to call Steve. Right now."

Little Teri ran back inside and closed the door. But George could see her standing in the window, looking back at him, not moving. He watched her there, as his head was lowered into the police car. As the door slammed. He was still trying to smile.

***

After I got back from the police station, I went straight to Dutch's room, where she was waiting for me. I crawled into her bed, exhausted, and she caught me up on everything that had happened since I left. How Red has started weeping at breakfast. How Dori had taken Pilar to her sister's apartment a few towns over until they got word that her dad was arrested, when she'd gone back home to see her little sister. The whole conversation seemed like an out-of-body experience. Had it only been weeks since the first day of school, when I hadn't known anyone? It wasn't even Christmas yet, and here we were.

My day had been one that I'd never imagined I would have, back at the police station under those buzzing fluorescent lights. I was so glad Mr. Quadrille had gone with me. I was so grateful for Red's lawyer, who I think had scared everyone there. I think if I'd gone alone, I might have given up. The dismissive questions. The long wait. The smirk on the officer's face, as if I was telling him I wanted them to arrest the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. I was sure if I'd been alone, they never would have let me in the door. And once they had, they probably never would have let me out again.

But two men, they listened to. They were somber, serious. I should have been mad that they wouldn't listen to me, when I was the one that found everything. But I didn't care. This was about Tim, and Pilar. In fact everyone was so nice to me, it almost made me feel bad. I stared at my feet most of the day, letting these men speak for me, hunching my shoulders and making myself smaller and smaller as if I might disappear. I thought about Pilar. Would it be better to know, and feel the relief of the truth? To know that Tim didn't leave her on purpose? To know that she hadn't been crazy to suspect something? Or was it better before, thinking she was crazy but still trusting her father? Now she didn't have any doubt. Tim had wanted to stay with her, but her dad had torn it all away from her - Tim, the baby, and their future. I was so sad and confused for her that I couldn't think.

Now, in Dutch's bed, I relaxed a little bit. There was so much to talk about that we couldn't say anything, so we didn't. We had been flipping channels and just lying there not talking when I heard the local news say "respected pharmaceutical mogul." I sat straight up.

"We have just heard the news that George Chenille has been arrested for the alleged murder of Timothy Quadrille, a beloved Heartshire High School student whose death last year had been, until this point, presumed to be a drug overdose. Mr. Chenille's lawyer has declined to comment. We will keep you posted as more information comes in. But I'm hearing, John? It looks like we have Timothy's father live with a comment."

There was Mr. Quadrille, who looked a way I've never seen a person look. So relieved and so disappointed all at once. There was nothing in his eyes but emptiness. He looked at the camera, and I could tell by the background that he was still at the police station, where we'd just been a few hours ago.

"We are, of course, devastated to find that our son was murdered, and murdered by a man he trusted and that we thought of as a friend. We are relieved that justice will be served, but it will not bring back our son. My wife and I want everyone to remember Timothy for what he was: a loving, trusting, decent young man who was taken advantage of by a predator. This man believed that with his wealth and power, he could get away with the murder of a child for his own convenience. And now it is our job to show him that this kind of evil will be punished."

My phone buzzed.

Red: Holy shit.

Red: You did it.

Celia: We did it.

Red: You did. I was wrong about you, princess. You're the shit.

Celia: I wish it was better news.

Red: At least it's real.

Red, who loved drama more than anyone, wasn't loving this drama, I was sure. Yes, he knew the truth, and he knew Tim didn't kill himself. But he'd also just learned that his friend was murdered. Everyone was discovering something I'd learned already - nothing is certain, and there's never anyone you can really trust.

Dutch's mom called us down for dinner, totally oblivious to what was going on. I was hungry, but I really had to see Pilar. I knew it was probably a bad idea, but I decided to drive over to her house anyway. There were news vans all along the street outside the entrance to the driveway, people milling about dragging big black cords behind them, other people in parkas shouting and setting up lights. I drove past them, and parked in a sea of fancy cars in the driveway.

Celia: Can I come in?

Pilar: Sure, I'll come get you. They basically forgot I'm here.

I waited in the car until Pilar peeked out of the front door, checking to make sure she was out of sight of all the news cameras. She waved me over, so I left the car and jogged across the driveway to her at the front door. I followed her wordlessly up the stairs, trying not to stare at the scene in the living room.

Mrs. Chenille was seated in a throne-like chair at the end of a formal dining hall. In a black sweater, slacks, and flats, she looked ready to go to the ballet. People dress like that at home, I thought. Even when it's the end of the world. One scary phone call from a debt collector and my mom was in a dirty sweater and sweatpants for days. But there was Mrs. Chenille, holding a cup of tea with both hands as if it were a life preserver, as she sat under a huge portrait of her husband. There was a giant crowd assembled all around the room - men and women in suits and other clothes that were more casual than suits but still what I considered fancy - loafers and black sweaters and things that I had never seen people wear in real life, holding lots of leather notebooks and shiny black pens. The ones who looked important, the ones with briefcases and stacks of paper and their phones buzzing, crowded around the table, while the others, maybe neighbors or friends, men in polo shirts and women carrying around plates of food and everyone looking like they could be in a magazine ad for life insurance or boats, if they had been smiling. In the middle of the coffee table was a large plate of pastries that no one was touching, and somehow that made me the most sad. Like her dad had somehow poisoned everything, even the littlest thing. The whole scene was too absurd, how fancy and clean and shiny it was in face of all the evil that had been done. Pilar seemed used to it.

I followed Pilar up the stairs. I'd never been in a real mansion before, other than Red's house, which I was barely in and which was too full of people to really look around. The whole house seemed hollow, like it might fold in on itself and disappear. Pilar walked down the white carpeted hallway into her room, and turned back to look at me. "Sorry about the circus," she said. "It's been like this all day." We sat on her bed, a giant marshmallow of pillows.

"How's your sister?"

"Mom shipped her off to my aunt's 'for her protection'. What's new.

"What are they all doing?" I whispered. "There can't be that much to do now, before there's even a trial."

"They're just earning their money. Getting in my mom's good graces. For all the lawyers, this is their chance to make sure they're on the inside and that my mom chooses them. The neighbors? They're so happy, it's gross. They love being a part of it. They get to watch the king fall. This is like their dream. They get to hold my mom's hand and cry, then be brave on the news. Even my mom loves it. She gets to sit there and be the center of attention, have people bring her tea and pat her on the shoulders. No one's paid this much attention to her in a long time. Everyone will be talking about her. 'Poor Edith," they'll shake their heads. 'Poor Edith.' You'd think, for someone who spent every day caring only about being rich, she wouldn't enjoy being called 'Poor Edith' so much. But she will."

"You really think she likes it? Pilar, your dad..."

"Yeah, I know. My mom isn't like a normal mom. Your mom probably, like, bakes you cookies and stuff, right?"

I thought about the M&M cookies my mom made me for the drive to this place, with the little hearts pressed into them.

"Yeah, she does."

"Okay so, there you go. My mom orders cookies from the best bakery in town, and then throws them out immediately so that I don't get fat. That's what my mom is. You know what she did when the police came. She called one of her lawyers, and then she changed her outfit. Like, how fucked up is that? That she had to have the right outfit for being the sad wife."

"My mom's... difficult too." Pilar looked at me. "Sorry, I know this is about you, and I can't imagine what you're thinking or feeling. But I'm just saying, I know what it's like to have your parents let you down."

"You don't." Pilar was sitting straight and serious in her white bed. In a white tee shirt dress, she honestly looked like an angel. A very sad angel.

"I do, Pilar. You know where my mom is? I don't. I don't know where she is, because the court said she was unfit. That's what they said, like that was enough. They were right; she was unfit. She'd be up all night, crazy. Yeah, she'd made me cookies. She'd make a thousand of them. Then we'd eat only cookies for weeks, because we'd be out of money, and she'd scream at us if we didn't want them. Or the time she decided to take us all to Disneyland, but the car ran out of gas on the way there and it turned out none of her credit cards worked, and we had to leave the car there and hitchhike home. She'd get drunk and fall asleep on the beach and I'd have to go find her and drag her to the house so she didn't freeze to death. Unfit. But she was my mom, you know? She would sing me songs, and when her mind was clear she'd read my papers and write these amazing notes on them. Or be so interested in my art. And she had the best Christmases, with twinkly lights everywhere and a huge dinner and all kinds of shiny presents. She knew all my friends' birthdays. And she'd French braid my hair. And we just left her. She was standing in the driveway, watching the car leave. And she was crying. And we just left her. And my fucking dad moved me to this shithole of a town and could care less if I live or die. He kicked me out of the house. I haven't heard from him in days. And this whole time, the whole time we've lived here? My mom's been writing to me, trying to be a mom, and he hid all the letters. Like they were nothing. He didn't kill anyone, but he may as well have killed her."

I started sobbing uncontrollably, and Pilar put her arms around me. I could tell she was crying too, although she didn't make any noise. She had practice in crying quietly.

"I'm so sorry," I choked. "I can't believe I'm making this about me."

"This is about you, Celia. You figured it out. You cared about Tim and you showed my dad for what he really was. You proved I wasn't crazy. You're the only one who believed I was anything other than a crazy rich girl. You didn't have to do any of that. You have your own shit to deal with. You don't know me from anyone. But you helped me. And it honestly screwed up your life kind of a lot in the process. So why did you do it?"

I looked at the floor. "I don't know. It just didn't seem fair."

"What didn't?"

"That Tim died and no one knew why. It didn't seem fair."

"It wasn't. But why did you care?"

"Because I'm sick of shit being unfair. I hated it here when I got here. Everyone just hated me, for no reason. And made up lies. And you know what's crazy? The first day here, after my first terrible day at Heartshire, I found this mural and I thought, hey, the person who made this is someone I can be friends with. Like, I have a chance here. There's at least one person I can be friends with. It's the only reason I even had a glimmer of hope. And I just found out that the mural..."

"... is Tim's, right?" Pilar said.

"Yeah. It's so beautiful, Pilar. And it was... can you tell me about him?"

Pilar went to her closet and dug into a chest, and came back with a box that she dumped on the bed. Letters, drawing, photos... I could tell they'd been folded and re-folded and re-folded, cherished.

"Pilar? I have to tell you something," I said.

"Anything."

"Dutch never told me you were pregnant. I found your pregnancy test. I found the wooden box you and Tim kept at Red's house, and I didn't tell you. I'm sorry."

Pilar looked so sad that I wanted to run from the room.

"How did you open it?" she said dryly, staring at me.

I'd actually forgotten about the key, and now I felt even worse. "Well, I found the key too. It was totally an accident. I tripped in the woods back when I first went there with Bunni, and I just saw this shiny thing, and so I put it in my pocket. I didn't know what it was at the time. But then, once I found the box, I realized that must be the key." Pilar wasn't saying anything. "I'm really sorry. I wasn't snooping or trying to take anything from you, I just... I just found them. It's like... it's like Tim wanted me to find them or something. Like he wanted it figured out."

Pilar was very quiet, so I almost couldn't hear her. "Okay, I get that. But why didn't you tell me?"

I was embarrassed. "I don't know, Pilar. I just felt like you were so upset, and I didn't want to bring it unless it mattered. If nothing had come of it, I would have just put the necklace in the box and put it right back in Red's garden, and never said anything about it."

Pilar looked up, hopeful. "You found the necklace?!"

"Oh, yeah!" I'd forgotten that the key had been on a little chain with a tiny diamond, and I jumped up and took it from the pocket inside my jacket, where it was still stashed. I handed it to her, and she started to cry again, still silently.

"He gave me this when he found out. About the baby. He said when coal gets put under pressure and pressure and pressure, and goes through what you'd think would be unbearable, it comes out a diamond. And that that's what our lives would be - it seemed impossible, but it would make us into what we were meant to be: perfect." She put the necklace on and cupped the tiny stone in her hand.

"Pilar, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I don't have the box - it's at the police station. They took it along with everything else we gathered up. I wish I could have met Tim."

"Me too," said Pilar. "He would have liked you. He would have been happy to have someone to listen to David Bowie with and talk about painting. He would have liked how you keep trying even when everything is pointless."

"I would have liked him too."

I reached into my backpack and took out my mom's letters and stacked them silently on the bed next to the letters she'd pulled from her closet. And we laid there, reading all the letters and passing them back and forth and crying and laughing, until we realized it had grown too dark to see. Pilar opened the door to the hall and held her hand to her ear.

"See? They all left. Even my mom. I just found out my dad killed the love of my life, and... no actually, worse. I just found out that my dad made the love of my life kill himself, and my mom literally forgot I was here." She said it like a joke, but I could hear the little catch in her voice that happens right before you cry. I started refolding the letters, stacking hers in her box and mine in my backpack, when she returned from downstairs with an angry smile and the plate of pastries. We ate all of them, and used the pillowcases as napkins, leaving chocolate smears and powdered sugar and raspberry jam fingerprints along their edges.
Chapter 12: Evidence

On Monday, somehow, I had to go to school. It was even more ridiculous and unimportant than ever. Once again, people were looking at me and whispering about me, but they didn't make fun of me anymore. I was on the inside now, for sure. But I was so far on the inside that I was once again unapproachable, like I was dangerous or something. There were posters around the school for the Halloween Dance. I couldn't believe it was all still happening - pop quizzes and dances and gym class. I didn't have the energy to care about it anymore. It all seemed like a puppet show to distract us from everything that was really going on. Pilar told me they had art therapy classes at the home she'd been sent to, and that after a while there she noticed they always fell on visiting day, so that the kids whose families didn't visit would be distracted. That's what high school is, I realized.

But I kept going, because Red's lawyer said that the absolute most important thing was that I not get in trouble. He told me he could keep me out of trouble as long as he could still tell the story of my being "a good kid". And that meant no drugs. Easy. No drinking. Easy. No skipping school. Fine. And no running away from home. Hard.

That afternoon, my dad came to Dutch's house to pick me up, and Dutch's father informed him that I would not be going with him. My dad screamed, but Dutch's father didn't budge. "Call the police if you want, but she's not going," he threatened. My dad, as no surprise to me, disappeared without a fight. I was sure by now he'd heard about Pilar's dad on the news. I wondered if I even knew that I knew her. I guessed not.

October and November passed. I cared about two things: the trial, and my mother. I did go to school, but I did only the minimum, and no one seemed to mind. I felt so guilty for living off of Dutch's parents, using them for everything from shampoo to breakfast cereal, but they promised me that they didn't mind. I tried to help in other ways, doing the dishes or cleaning Dutch's room or helping her learn French. I started taking photos again for my I'm a good girl file, documenting my time studying and my decent exam grades, when I got them, and my dinners with Dutch's family. My time was spent with Dutch and my other friends, worrying and wondering. In between, there were relaxed moments where we went for pancakes and tried to live our normal lives. I studied for a few tests. We even went to that Halloween dance, for about an hour, until we traded it for lying in the bed of Red's truck parked in the abandoned lot and looking up at the stars. We went to the football game on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and drank hot chocolate and watched Bunni's dance team perform. But no matter what we did, it always snuck in, either as pride or relief or worry. It was all we thought about.

I texted Reggie sometimes. We went on a few dates. I couldn't get past that, though - I couldn't stop seeing him fall from the roof. I didn't want to think of that night every time I went out for a burger. He understood. I'd still message him when I saw something I thought would made him laugh. We talked on the phone sometimes. He was back at school and having fun.

I used the pages of my red notebook to answer every letter my mom had sent me that my dad had hidden. I told her everything. I detailed all the evidence I had collected, all the ways I'd behaved and all the ways I'd misbehaved, and catalogued the days I'd spent at Dutch's house. I was going to come home to her, and if he wanted to fight it, he'd have to own up to all that had happened. Plus, I knew a good lawyer now. Plus, I'd be 18 at the start of the summer and it wouldn't matter anyway. I was coming home, I told her, and nothing could stop me.

December came and went. The lawyer Red had hired for me did what he'd promised from the beginning, and despite my nervous breakdowns over the weeks and months, and my heart pounding at every police siren, he made sure that I didn't get in trouble. Some nights I woke in a cold sweat, and Dutch would startle to wake and pet my hair until I fell asleep. I couldn't shake the idea that the ground was going to fall out from under me. But it didn't. I spent Christmas with Dutch's family. Her mom gave me money to go shopping for Christmas presents - I felt guilty and grateful. I bought my mom a cheap reloadable cell phone and mailed it to her, hopeful that we'd be able to talk soon. Dutch's parents gave me a new pair of sneakers and a new backpack. I prepared myself for whether I'd open a present from my dad if he sent one. He didn't. Reggie came home for winter break and we spent an evening driving around and talking. We made out in the back of his car for a while. I really liked him. He went back to school.

Over winter break, Dutch worked diligently on her college applications. I decided it wasn't the best time. Dutch's parents kept buying college guides and leaving them for me to read. I thanked them, but never opened the books. I met with my lawyer, who tried to convince me that my story was my ticket to a better life. "College admissions will love it" he kept saying, begging to let him put me on TV. "You could sell your story and really clean up." But I just couldn't. It wasn't mine to sell.

It was the middle of January when I started getting trial updates from the Quadrilles. After all the waiting, now the bad part would start. Every day, my friends and I waited to hear when we'd be deposed and we worried, in secret and together, about our testimony. Everyone's secrets would come out. Pilar's pregnancy. Dutch's. Everyone's drug use. Maybe even Red's love for Tim. We'd all be dragged through whatever mud Pilar's dad's lawyers could dig up. I might be prosecuted for stealing drugs. Dispensing drugs. Who even knew what else. We were miserable, waiting. School was like a holding pen where we just waited out the days, happy to do any assignments that took our minds off the lingering trial. People at school got bored of gossiping about the trial and about Pilar and Tim - things weren't happening fast enough. No news meant nothing new to spread around, so they moved on to other things. We didn't; we worried.

We missed Pilar, who had left over winter break and was finishing the school year in Vegas. We saw her photos online. She was dancing in a show a few times a week, spangled and bejeweled like a butterfly, ready to go full-time when she graduated. She looked like she was finally free, finally finding herself, there in the colors and the lights and the warm air. I liked those pictures, but I liked best the ones of her and her sister, with their aunt and uncle, by the cheap hotel pool or at McDonald's for breakfast or making goofy faces on the couch. She was a kid during the day, loved and noticed. She was a showgirl at night, loved and noticed. Pilar had a real family now.

One day I opened my notebook to write a letter to my mom, and out fell the tattered tally I'd begun at the beginning of the school year. I had stopped crossing off the days what felt like forever ago, when I'd stopped being so lonely. I looked at the sad tally and smiled. Life was, in so many ways, harder now. People I loved had had their hearts broken. Families had fallen apart. My father had left me. My mother was still alone. So many terrible things had happened. But the truth had come to the surface, and I wasn't lonely anymore. And that was, I was sure, better. I took out a marker and crossed off a huge swath of days. One hundred ten days left until school was over and I could go to my mom.

February came and stayed, the end of a long winter where I missed the California sun in a way I hadn't known I could. People at school started to hear about college admissions. My friends were less worried about the trial, as nothing had happened for months. Mom hadn't turned on the phone yet, which made me wonder if she'd ever opened the mail. Or even gotten the mail. Did she know I missed her? And then it was Friday of our spring break, the first week of March, though it was still sleety and cold and felt nothing like spring. And I opened the door when I got home from school. And mom was there.

I couldn't believe it. I dropped everything in the doorway and ran and held her. Dutch's parents were explaining in the background how they'd gotten her a ticket because they'd known we were missing each other, and I wanted to hug them, but I just couldn't let go of mom. She looked good, and I was relieved, though I'm ashamed to say that I was a little sad that she did. I expected her to look anguished, like missing me had worn her to nothing. Instead, she looked tan. She was as happy to see me as I was to see her, and I knew our visits were supposed to be approved by my father, but I didn't care. We spent all of spring break together, baking and talking and snuggling on the sofa and annoying each other and making fun of this terrible, wonderful town. I played her new music I'd come to love, and she begrudgingly admitted that some of it was okay. Elliott Smith she thought was great. I explained that it was very sad because he died after stabbing himself in the chest, though some people thought he was murdered. "Those are the same thing," mom said. She quizzed me on album dates and I had her guess the bob Dylan song from the lyrics. When she had to leave, I promised her I'd see her right after graduation. She said she'd be counting down the days. I showed her my countdown. She hugged me and scratched my head like a cat and I could hear her crying little tears. I knew how lonely she must be.

Mom left, April came, and the trial still wasn't over and Pilar was still gone. I figured she may be gone forever at this point. If I were her, I'd stay gone too. Heartshire wasn't a place you could stay forever. Her mother was at the courthouse every day of the trial, fighting for her husband. And his money, I guessed. Every day I worried that I'd be called to testify, but the call never came.

Until it did. My lawyer called and explained that I would have to go to be deposed, which meant I'd have to answer all the questions they asked, whatever they wanted to ask, and truthfully. After that, they could call me as a witness. I told my friends it finally happened, and they'd probably be next. It would all be public record, and for the rest of my life, anyone would be able to find anything I said. I spent a series of afternoons in the lawyer's office, going over potential questions, facts, and evidence. I felt like I could face him; my confidence was growing.

When the day came, I was excused from school. I couldn't eat breakfast - I was too nervous. Dutch's mom insisted I eat something, so I tried a piece of dry toast, which made me think of back on the first day of school at Heartshire High. I couldn't believe that was just this school year. I swore I was a completely different person then. I left the toast when I heard the lawyer beep in the driveway, and I gathered my purse and went to meet him. Dutch gave me a hug, but I was too nervous to say anything. All the way to the courthouse, the lawyer was giving me last-minute tips and advice. "Don't let him threaten you," he said. "Don't let him intimidate you. Just tell them the truth, tell them everything that happened, and you'll be fine."

When we walked in the courthouse, the first person I saw was my father, who I hadn't seen in months. He was sitting on a bench in the entryway, in a black suit. He came over to give me a hug, but I walked by him without stopping. I could see him flinch. I was, I didn't want to admit, glad he was there. Then we entered the deposition room, and there was a long wooden table where a row of lawyers flanked Mr. Chenille. My lawyer and I sat on the other side of the table, and I looked at Mr. Chenille while the lawyers talked. He looked older, but he hadn't lost his air of confidence. He looked at me with what seemed to be pure hatred, and although I tried not to be thrown off, I was.

When they read my name, I jumped and said "Here!" as if I were in school, and then turned red with embarrassment. They told me just to relax and explained all the rules. And then the questions started.

It wasn't the worst day of my life. Finding out what happened to Tim, or leaving my mom in the driveway, or watching Reggie fall from the roof - those had all been worse. But it certainly wasn't the easiest. They asked me every little detail, again and again and again. Everything I said, they questioned over and over. Was I sure? How did I know? Didn't I have reason to lie about it? I twisted the silver bangle that Pilar had given me around my wrist, around and around and around. I wouldn't let him win.

At three in the afternoon, they announced that we were done for the day, and I was relieved that it hadn't been too bad. I didn't know at the time that it would last six more days. Every morning was the same - the dry toast, the ride to the courthouse, the endless questions in the stuffy room, and the twisting bracelet. Every evening I laid in bed next to Dutch and wondered if I'd said anything wrong, falled into any trap, that would let Mr. Chenille go free. I was sick with worry. Some of the things they asked seemed so trivial and unimportant, but they followed up and followed up so much that it made me wonder. Others, that I was sure were the most important details of all, they didn't ask a thing.

Finally, on the last day of my deposition, one of the attorneys called for a break. It was three o'clock in the afternoon.

"It's the oldest trick in the book," my lawyer said. "Now that they've worn you out, they're saving the toughest questions for the end. They're going to try to trap you, so just keep telling the truth, and if you don't remember, just say that you don't remember."

"Okay," I said. But as we sat at the table for longer and longer without them coming back to the room, I started to get more nervous. The roof of my mouth was so dry that I felt my tongue sticking to it, and I was desperately looking for a water glass when they filed back into the room.

"Celia, thanks for your time," one of the lawyer's said. "That will be all."

I was confused, but I looked at my lawyer hopefully. He shrugged and followed the other lawyers into the hall, and then came back after a few minutes to join me in the otherwise empty room. I waited as long as I could while he tried to figure out the words he wanted to say, and then I couldn't take it anymore. "What is it? What's going to happen to me?" I asked in a trembling voice.

"To you? Nothing."

I let out a shaky, relieved sigh. "Then what's going on."

"Celia, George Chenille hung himself in his holding cell. He couldn't face the trial. It's over."

I was furious and confused. "What? He won't be punished? He won't have to answer for what he did? He killed an innocent person and... that's it?!" I was slamming my hands against the table, outraged.

"There will still be a civil judgement against the family, Celia. The Quadrilles will win. It will cover their lawyer fees, of course, as well as award them enough money to take care of their daughters for a very long time. Everyone will know what he did, Celia. Everyone will know he's guilty."

I wondered if Pilar knew what happened yet.

I learned later that he'd left a note, but I never did find out what it said. I couldn't imagine it was anything worth hearing.

That night, Dutch and I played cards for hours while waiting to hear from Pilar. War, over and over, no one winning. Finally, the text came.

Pilar: Thank you.

***

The end of May and the end of all the days I'd wanted to end when I wrote them down what felt like a lifetime ago. I was lying in the grass when I heard a car pull into the lot and park. It was Ruby, who had come to town for my graduation, of all things, and had been staying with Dad.

"This is where you're hanging out?" she said, laughing. "In a parking lot?"

"It's not a parking lot. It's the woods. It's the edge of everything."

"... Wake up, man. It's a parking lot." She hugged me, handed me a bottle of ice tea from her car, and sat down next to me in the grass.

"You won't believe what it's been like here this year," I said, and I told my sister, as well as I could remember, all the strange Adventures of mine that you have just been reading about. I told her about running through the woods that first day after Bunni, tripping and finding the tiny hidden key. I told her about Pilar, all the things I'd learned from her. I told her about Red and how I'd punched him, about his party where I'd found our Pilar has been pregnant, about Dutch and her pregnancy scare, about Maddox and Matt, about Reggie and the party, about how I'd cried so many tears this year that it was a wonder I hadn't drowned in them, and about Tim, and the case, and all the other moments I could remember from this year at Heartshire that turned my whole life upside-down.

When I finished, she hugged me, which was not a typical Ruby move. The last time I remembered her hugging me was on my tenth birthday. "It has been a tough year for you, Celia, certainly. But it's getting close to the end of the year. You have to take care of yourself, you know - none of this stuff is going to help you get into college. With all this going on, how are your grades? What's your class rank?"

All I could do was laugh. I'd been dreaming to think that Ruby would care about any of this, any of the real things that were happening around me. I wasn't going to change her, but I didn't need to be around her right now. So I just toasted her with my bottle of ice tea, got up, and walked toward my car.

"Don't run off, Celia! This is important!"

I stopped. "It's not, Ruby. Don't you see that? It's not. I'm not flunking out of school, okay? I'm gonna graduate and get out of here. But an A or a B? It's not important. It's not more important than helping Dutch stay healthy and safe. It's not more important than helping Tim's parents find out what happened to their son. It's not more important than making sure Pilar's dad paid for what he did. It's not more important than getting back to mom. It's not more important than being away from dad after he hid all her letters. It's not more important than Pilar being free. You're dreaming if you think that grades are the most important thing. It works for you, in your bubble. But it's not life, you know? It's not. You haven't lived here. You... come here."

I walked her around to the back of the lot, to Tim's mural. The sun was setting, so the light through the forest caught the painting just right, and it seemed to glow and come alive. And there were all Tim's animals, just as if they were real. The whole place around them became alive with the strange creatures of Tim's imagination. The long grass rustled at their feet as his blue rabbits hopped along, hurried and twitching. A pink lion stalked among the trees. I could hear the wings of the giant owls, the chatter of the tall and lanky flamingoes dressed for tea. There were shrill cries of tiny tigers and giant housecats.

Both of us stood, with closed eyes, and half believed Tim's imaginary circus to be true. We knew we only had to open our eyes again to see that none of it was real. The calls were just pigeons, the rustling was just gravel. But it was, for a moment, as real as everything that I had been through this year. It made Tim come back to life, if for just a second. I wasn't going to give up on Ruby - she could learn what really mattered in life, in time. It could make her into a real person, living here. Heartshire had that power over people. And someday maybe she'd be a real grown-up, not the fake kind, and find out that the sorrows and simple joys of the world are what matters. But I was going to leave her here. I'd be 18 next week, and they couldn't keep me from mom. And it was time for me to go.

Before I left, there was still something I needed to do though. I needed to say goodbye.

***

Back at the mural a few weeks later, it was a brilliantly sunny day, although cooler than usual. Ruby had helped me scrape together a little money, and we'd scouted out nurseries, and together we'd bought a small tree, about three feet high. Angel's trumpet, it was called, with white trumpet-like blossoms hanging down all over. It was beautiful. It's the tree they make scopolamine from. It felt only right that it would always be here, telling the world what happened, singing Tim's song to the heavens.

Cars started pulling up and people began joining us. Tim's parents, in black. His mother gave me the most motherly hug I've ever felt. Red, in a tight black sweater and jeans, with a huge bouquet of roses in all colors. Jack was there, and he'd stolen his sculpture from the art room and brought it along. Reggie was there, home from college for the summer, and my heart jumped in my chest when I saw him. He put his arm around my shoulders and I felt warm and safe and tingly. Dutch and Pepper were there, both in black. Some of Tim's friends, football players and artists and girls. Maddox and Matt, and Dori, who looked like they'd tried to look presentable for the first time in a few years. My dad, actually, which was a surprise. We were getting ready to start, and I heard another car pull up. It was Pilar, in the same black dress she'd been wearing when she's shown up in Dutch's room to try to say goodbye that first time, in the night. I ran across the parking lot to hug her, and then walked back with her to the warm and welcoming crowd.

Tim's mother asked to start by reading a poem, at which she pulled a rumpled piece of paper, glowing in the strong sun, from her pocket. She sighed deeply and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to read this:

'They told me you had been to her,

And mentioned me to him:

She gave me a good character,

But said I could not swim.

He sent them word I had not gone

(We know it to be true):

If she should push the matter on,

What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,

You gave us three or more;

They all returned from him to you,

Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be

Involved in this affair,

He trusts to you to set them free,

Exactly as we were.

My notion was that you had been

(Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she liked them best,

For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest,

Between yourself and me.'

The rest of us just kind of looked at each other. "Oh, that was very nice," I said, unsure of what else I could really say. "What was it?"

"I don't know!" Mrs. Quadrille said, throwing her arms in the air. "I found it in one of Tim's notebooks. And then she laughed a childlike laugh, and smiled. It was Tim, I guess."

We planted the tree and laid the other flowers at its trunk. Red had gotten Pilar's box back from the police, and he gave it to her - she buried it below Jack's statue. I took the silver bangle Pilar had given me off my wrist and hung it from the tree branch, and she hung one of hers. We told stories about Tim. We cried, in the sunlight, and were, for a moment, witnesses to a life. We said goodbye. We stood around until we were tired of standing, and then it was time to go. Pilar went home with Tim's parents, which seemed to mend something for all of them. Who knew how long she would stay. Tim's father hugged Red so tightly, that I knew he knew the real truth. Dutch and I had said our goodbyes yesterday - she would come to visit me this summer at mom's. Ruby and my dad left quietly and kindly, with Ruby touching my arm gently and my dad smiling a little. Reggie gave me a kiss and told me he'd text me later. I said I was leaving for the summer, and he said he'd be here when I got back. And then everyone was gone except me. My car was packed. It was time to go home.

Weather? Sunny.

Song? Dreams

Mood? Hopeful.

Overheard? "He would have loved this" - Tim's dad

I never would have thought I'd be sad to leave Heartshire, but I knew I'd be back. You can have more than one home. You can be more than one person. And I knew, now, you could live many, many lives in just two hundred and thirty seven days. "The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing at the same time," I remembered David Bowie had said. And for Tim, I put on Queen's Under Pressure as loud as I could. Hot Space. 1982. Elektra Records. I'm gonna be a diamond too, Tim. Thanks for all the friends. I swear I saw an ear twitch or a paw move on that mural as I peeled out of the lot.
