“Okay . . . I’ll just say that you needed space because of the accident,” Robert adds. “We’re friends, and then maybe if you change your mind—”

“Good-bye, Robert.” I close my eyes for a moment, and then raise my voice to say, “Mom? Can you help me upstairs? Robert is leaving.” I look at him and add, “Now.”

When Mom comes into the room, I say with as little emotion as I can manage, “Robert won’t be around anymore, Mom. We broke up.”

She puts her hand to her chest as she lets out a little gasp. “Just now? His mother told Jillian Dawson that he was with you every day at the hospital. We took comfort in that.”

“He lied.”

“Oh.” She folds her hands together and waits.

“He cheated on me,” I say, trying not to let my guilt and anger show. It’s ridiculous that I feel guilt at all. It’s not like it’s my fault he cheated, but I still feel it. It’s like this idea that maybe if I’d done something different, he wouldn’t have cheated. I know it’s not true, but logic isn’t the same as emotion. Pushing my guilt away I add, “He was cheating, and that’s where he was the night of the accident—with her.”

“Oh, baby!” She’s off the chair and beside me in a blink.

I reach out to wrap an arm around her before she can touch me, avoiding the risk of falling into another hallucination.

She’s expecting tears, but this time I’m not crying. I did that already, and I refuse to cry over Robert again. I rest my head on my mother’s shoulder, and I feel an unexpected comfort at being hugged.

When she pulls back, she’s wearing her Intense Focus expression, the one that scares people into agreeing with her or donating to her cause du jour. “I’m going to call Celeste right now. She needs to know what her boy did.”

“No.” I catch her hand in mine and squeeze. “The other girl doesn’t deserve this. She’s . . . not someone Mrs. Baucom would approve of.”

My mother’s stern expression softens. “You’re nicer than I ever was. If your father had cheated on me, I’d be damned if I’d let him hide his shame.”

Hearing my mother cuss always amuses me. She does it so rarely that it makes me smile every single time it happens. “It’s not about him. It’s about me and about her,” I clarify. “Everyone’s already going to be looking at me because of the accident. I don’t want more attention.”

After a moment, she nods, and I loosen my grip on her hand.

She doesn’t remove her hand from mine. “I won’t tell Celeste he cheated, but I won’t lie and say he visited at the hospital”—she reaches out with her other hand and cups my face gently—“and neither should you.” Then she stands, affixes a smile, and says, “How about I get you something to eat? I had LeeAnn make up a bunch of your favorites. She left a fruit salad and a tossed salad too.”

Our cook, LeeAnn, comes in twice a week and makes a series of meals that are then labeled and stacked in the fridge. It’s like having fresh home-cooked meals, and my mother seems to enjoy the illusion that she prepares them because she does put them in the oven or microwave herself. Plus, with LeeAnn doing the cooking the meals are healthier and tastier. My mother has the ability to tackle a lot of things, but cooking has never been one of her skills.

“Fruit salad sounds good.”

She leaves and heads to the kitchen, and I can’t resist the urge to text Grace immediately. I give her the quick rundown. “Robert slept with Amy. Broke up with him just now.”

“Want me to beat him up?”

I smile and reply, “Let me think about it.”

“Love you.”

“You too.” I don’t know how a few short texts can make me feel so much better, but they do. Everything is less overwhelming with a good friend on my side.

DAY 11: “THE LIES”

Grace

I TRY NOT TO obsess over Eva’s texts from this morning, but it’s hard when I see Robert slinking through the hall with Reid and Jamie. Robert looks less arrogant than usual, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Nate is watching them too. I shove my history book into my locker and force myself not to speak or look at them.

“Yeung,” Reid says as they pass.

Robert, of course, says nothing to me, and Jamie doesn’t seem bright enough to initiate conversation unless there’s a keg, a drunk girl, and a dark corner. Then, he’ll nod and mutter, “Want to?” Sickeningly, it seems to work for him.

I pull out my Spanish book and look at Nate again. Eva texted that she and Robert broke up, and from the way Nate is watching Robert—and the way Robert doesn’t notice—I’ve already figured out that Robert is unaware of Eva’s renewed friendship with Nate. What I can’t decide is whether Nate’s anger at Robert is because he’s crushing on Eva and upset that she’s hurt, or if he knows about the breakup already.

“My dad said that Micki’s death and Eva’s accident had to be caused by the same person,” Piper says as she walks up to my locker with several of the others. They murmur a mix of greetings in my general direction.

“It’s possible, I guess,” I say. The idea isn’t too much of a stretch: two teen girls from Jessup in car accidents with no witnesses? It’s a little too coincidental.

“What does Eva think?” Piper doesn’t add “because that’s what we will think too,” but I know that’s her motivation. Half the girls in our class seem to share DNA with parrots. The other half smile and nod. I suspect they have opinions, but Jessup isn’t a hotbed of independent thought.