“Did Mr. Larson . . .” Dan cleared his throat. He looked as embarrassed as I did. “That night in his apartment?”

I stared at him for a second before I understood what he meant. “No,” I said. “Mr. Larson would never do something . . . like that.” I shivered to show my disgust.

“But Mr. Larson knew about the rapes? He could corroborate this story?”

That was the first time anyone had ever referred to what happened to me in the plural. The rape(s). I didn’t know those other things could be considered rape. “Yes.”

Dan made a note in his little notebook. His pen stilled. “Now, Arthur.”

Was he depressed, was he on drugs? (“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, but just pot.” “Pot is a drug, TifAni.”) Did he ever say anything that, looking back, could have been his way of warning me about what he was planning to do?

“I mean”—I shrugged—“I knew he had that gun. The one he had in the cafeteria.”

Dan didn’t blink for so long I almost waved my hand in front of his face and yodeled “yoo-hoo” like in the commercials. “How do you know that?”

“He showed it to me. In his basement. It was his dad’s.” Dan still hadn’t blinked. “It wasn’t loaded or anything,” I stressed.

“How do you know?” Dan asked.

“He pointed it at me. As a joke.”

“He pointed it at you?”

“He let me hold it too,” I bit back. “He wouldn’t be dumb enough to let me hold it and not tell me it was loaded. What if I . . .” I stopped talking, because Dan’s head dropped to his chest, like he had fallen asleep on an airplane. “What?”

Dan’s chest muffled his voice. “You touched the gun?”

“For, like, two seconds,” I said, quickly, trying to fix whatever it was I’d broken. “Then I gave it back.” Dan still didn’t look at me. “Why? Is that bad?”

Dan jammed his hands on either side of his nose, supporting the weight of his head. “It could be.”

“Why?”

“Because if they find your prints on the gun, it could be very, very bad.”

The overhead light shuddered and crackled, like it had sizzled a bug on a swampy summer night, and I realized what Dan meant. Had Mom known this too? Did Dad? “Do they think I’m involved in this?”

“TifAni,” Dan said, his voice high and astonished. “What, exactly, do you think you’re doing here?”

After Dan and I had our “powwow,” as Detective Dixon put it, like he was my football coach and I was the quarterback with the entire town’s expectations on my burly shoulders, I was allowed to use the restroom and see Mom and Dad. They were sitting on a bench, outside the interrogation room. Dad had his head in his hands, like he couldn’t believe this was his life. Like if he could just fall asleep he might wake up somewhere else. Mom’s legs were crossed, her stockinged foot half out of one of her flirty heels. I’d told her not to wear them here, but she’d insisted. She’d tried to make me put makeup on (“Maybe a little mascara before we go?”). I’d turned the lights off in the kitchen and gone and waited in the car, leaving her alone, blinking into the dark.

Dad stood to shake Dan’s hand as we approached.

To Mom I said, “Do you know they think I had something to do with this?”

“Of course they don’t think that, TifAni,” she said, her voice shrill and unconvincing. “They’re just covering all their bases.”

“Dan says they have my fingerprints on the gun.”

“Could have, could.” Dan’s shoulders jumped a little as Mom shrieked “What?”

“Dina!” Dad barked. “Lower your voice.”

Mom pointed her finger at Dad, her acrylic nail shaking in rage. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do, Bobby.” She drew her hand back, making a fist and sinking her teeth into her knuckles. “This is all your fault,” she whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut, tears worming paths through the thick layer of foundation on her face. “I told you! TifAni needed those clothes. So they wouldn’t single her out, and look, that’s exactly what they did!”

“This is my fault because I wouldn’t pay for clothes?” Dad’s mouth was open, his molars black. Dad hated the dentist.

“Please!” Dan whispered, loudly. “This is not the place to make a scene.”

“You are unbelievable,” Dad muttered. Mom only tossed her stiff, hair-sprayed hair back, settling into herself again.

“I don’t know if they have her prints,” Dan said. “But TifAni shared with me that Arthur showed her one of the guns that we think”—he held up his hands like a cop in traffic telling the southbound lane to stop—“was used in the crime. And that he let her hold it.”

The way Mom looked at me, sometimes you just have to feel bad for parents. For all the ways they think they know you. The mockery their kids make out of them when they find out otherwise. Before I’d told Dan about that night at Dean’s, I asked if he was going to have to share this with my parents. “Not if you don’t want me to,” Dan said. “This is privileged client information. But, TifAni, the way this thing is going. It will come out. And it’s better they hear it from you first.”

I shook my head. “I can’t ever tell them this.”

Dan said, “I can, if you want me to.”

Heels clicking against the speckled linoleum floor announced Detective Dixon’s arrival, and we all waited for him to speak. “How you folks doing?” He glanced at his wrist, even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “Let’s get going on this, huh?”

I didn’t know what time it was, but when I sat down next to Dan, Detective Dixon in the seat across from us and Detective Vencino tucked into the corner, my stomach moaned impatiently.

The table, smudged like Arthur’s glasses always were, was empty save for a cup of water (mine) and a recording device occupying the center spot. Detective Dixon pressed a button and said, “November fourteenth, 2001.”

“It’s actually November fifteenth.” Detective Vencino tapped the face of the watch he was wearing. “Twelve oh six.”

Detective Dixon corrected himself and added, “This is Detective Dixon, Detective Vencino, TifAni FaNelli, and her lawyer, Daniel Rosenberg.” The discovery of Dan’s full name gave me a lot more confidence in him.

With the formalities out of the way, I told my story again. Every last vulgar detail. It’s a certain kind of hell, confessing your most humiliating sexual secrets to a room full of hairy middle-aged men.

Unlike Dan, Detective Dixon and Detective Vencino didn’t interrupt me with questions. Which made me think it might be okay to leave out certain parts, but when I tried, Dan gently prodded me. “And it was Mr. Larson you ran into at the Wawa that night, remember?”

When I finished, Detective Dixon stretched in his chair with a loud yawn. He stayed like that, legs splayed apart, arms behind his head, staring at me for a long while. “So,” he said, finally, “your story is that Dean, Liam, and Peyton assaulted you that night at Dean’s house? And that Dean did again, that night at Olivia’s house?”

I looked at Dan, who nodded, before answering him. “Yes,” I said.

“See, TifAni, I’m not following.” The way he was slumped into the wall, Detective Vencino’s chest curled over his little potbelly. There wasn’t one part of him that wasn’t covered in itchy-looking black hair. “I guess what I’m not understanding is if Dean, assaulted you”—there was his rude laugh—“why would you even want to save him from Arthur?”

“I was trying to save myself.”

“But Arthur was your friend,” Detective Vencino said, condescendingly, as though I’d forgotten. “He wouldn’t try to hurt you.”

“He was my friend.” I stared at the table so hard it blurred. “But I was afraid of him. He was mad at me. I’d taken that picture of his dad . . . I don’t think you understand how mad he was about that. I told you. He chased me out of his house.”