Starla shifted in her chair. “I can explain that.”

“I’m sure you can, but explanations don’t really count for much when there is incontrovertible proof.” The principal tapped her unmanicured fingertip on the photograph, which, on closer examination, appeared to be a laser print, not a photographic print.

Lucy Muller, who’d up to that point seemed to check out of the meeting, finally spoke, whistling through her overbite like a piccolo. She was fired up and on the defensive. Starla, as her name implied, was the cheer team’s future star.

“I want to go on record now,” she said.

“This isn’t a courtroom,” Principal Sandusky said.

“Right,” the coach said, acknowledging that she’d overreached in her language. “I want to go on record that this morals offense, while serious, does not meet the requirement to remove Starla from the squad.”

Principal Sandusky didn’t appear to be too convinced. “Oh, really. Smoking and drinking?”

Starla knew better than to say a word. It wasn’t easy for her to keep her lips shut, but this time reason won out over the need to always jump into the fray.

Lucy Muller picked up the flimsy photograph. “It is a violation, but look at the date stamp on the border. The bylaws say that an offense is only punishable if the person violated rules after she had been uniformed as a member of the Buccaneers’ cheer squad.”

Ms. Sandusky studied the date: a year and a half the year before.

“You’re underage now,” she said, obviously miffed. “This kind of trailer-park behavior is unacceptable, and we have a zero-tolerance policy at Kingston High. What were you here, fourteen?”

Starla didn’t say a word. She didn’t even move her lips.

Coach Muller did, or rather, whistled. “In case you didn’t know,” she said, now lapsing into a slight Southern accent, “I was raised in Mobile Manor Estates near Louisville. I think we should consider leniency.”

The principal’s face went a shade of red. Not scarlet, but very close. The last time Starla had seen that same color was on a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. It was, she thought at that very inappropriate moment, her very favorite color in the world.

“I will take that under advisement,” Principal Sandusky said, looking first at the cheer coach and then over to Starla. “See that this doesn’t happen again.”

Starla nodded. She hated the woman, yet somehow she managed to smile just enough to signify that she understood and was still a very congenial person.

“I promise,” she said. “Thank you, Ms. Sandusky.”

MINDEE FINISHED HER FIRST GLASS OF WINE and returned to the refrigerator. By then, Teagan had come into the kitchen in search of dinner. He had enough food stains on his shirt to make the casual onlooker think he’d already eaten or was wearing a cool graphic tee.

“We’re having tuna noodles tonight. The good kind. The kind with potato chip crumbs on top,” Mindee told Teagan as she flicked him out of the room.

Starla wondered how anything with potato chip crumbs could be considered “good.” Her mom was a terrible cook. She didn’t mind enough to say anything. To keep her weight down, she’d taken to purging two nights a week. Only two, because she was sure that didn’t meet the wiki guidelines indicating a serious problem.

“First of all,” Mindee said, “you can only drink and smoke at home. If that photo was taken anywhere but here, you’re going to have your butt handed to you right here and now.”

“It was,” she said. “Promise.”

Mindee didn’t question her daughter’s veracity just then. That usually brought more drama than she could handle on a glass and a half of wine.

“Second of all,” she went on, “I am so pissed off at Katelyn. I could just kill her!”

“I know. Me too. But, Mom, really, I am kind of sad for her.”

“Sad? We can show her sad.”

“Look, she’s a nothing. She didn’t make the squad again—she didn’t even have a chance. She’s a clumsy brunette. When I think about it, she doesn’t even have a boyfriend. She never, ever, has.”

Mindee grabbed a kettle, a can opener, and a can of mushroom soup. “She hurt you, honey. She tried to take your spot. Get me the Starkist. Two cans.”

Starla got up and went to the pantry. “Coach Muller would never have put her on the team. She laughed at her like the other girls did. I did.”

Mindee fastened her eyes on Starla’s. “If she’s so damn jealous because of what you’ve got, then let’s give her something to talk about.”

Starla looked confused. “I don’t get what you mean.”

Mindee poured a bag of egg noodles into the just-boiling water.

“Let’s get her a boyfriend,” she said.

Again, a confused expression appeared on Starla’s pretty, pretty face. “I still don’t understand.”

Mindee indicated her empty wineglass. She didn’t worry about it being her third glass. She’d read somewhere online that three a night was not a serious problem.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “All you have to do now is get me the open bag of chips and crunch some up. Teagan gets cranky when he doesn’t eat. I can’t stand cranky preteens and all the drama they bring. We’ll take care of Little Miss Troublemaker after dinner.”

Mindee Larsen had no idea of the drama she was about to unleash. Neither did Starla. On his worst day ever, Teagan Larsen couldn’t even come close to being that bad. Sure, he might try. In a home with two contentious females and Jake Damon, his mom’s boyfriend, the boy had to try.

chapter 17

TAYLOR RYAN COULDN’T SLEEP. It might have been the jitters that came with being back at school after a long break. Kids were bragging or complaining about their Christmas gifts or where they went on vacation. Some complaints were deserved. Outside of Port Gamble were a number of mobile homes tucked in trailer parks or by themselves behind Douglas firs and big leaf maples. Some were hidden from view for a very good reason. The poor of Kitsap County, sometimes referred to as Kitsappalachia, were one group: people with drug or alcohol problems, mental illness, or something that forced them to live in circumstances that were far from ideal. Then there were the others, the criminals—the “rough crowd” as Valerie Ryan called them—who chose to hide out in the country so they could cook meth, grow pot, or do other things that led only to trouble.

“Trouble always begets more of the same,” she had told the girls on more than one occasion. “When you see trouble, don’t run to it like a moth to a flame. The moth gets burned, remember.”

And yet, that’s exactly what Hayley and Taylor did. Their mother knew it, of course, and her admonition was a warning with little teeth; it was nothing more than a reminder to be very, very careful.

“You poke at evil with a stick,” Valerie had said, offering chilling advice they’d never forget. “Never use your fingers.”

Taylor went downstairs quietly that night, although she didn’t need to be so light on her feet. She could hear her father snoring, and she knew that her mother probably had earplugs in and her head under a pillow.

Maybe under two.

She made her way to the kitchen and rifled through the refrigerator, but she wasn’t really hungry. She filled a glass with tap water and walked to the windows with the rippled glass that were original to the 1859 house.

The bay was a black void, with only the faint shimmer of waves at its rocky edges. A bird called out abruptly somewhere in the darkness. The finality of its cry chilled the teenager. The scream of an animal in the dark almost certainly meant its gruesome demise.

Taylor wondered about Katelyn and if her soul had crossed over, if Katelyn’s soul had been lifted to the place where there is an absence of all pain. She and her sister were blessed in many ways, but there was never a time when either could understand fully why it was that their empathy for the dead was so deep, so profound.