“Let’s back up a second.” Detective Dixon shot Detective Vencino a warning look over his shoulder. “Tell me what you know about Dean and Arthur’s relationship.”

I thought of that yearbook in Arthur’s room. Their smiling, earnest faces. Not a clue in the world how it would all turn out. “They were friends in middle school,” I said. “Arthur told me that.”

“And when did they stop being friends?” Dixon asked.

“Arthur said it was when Dean got popular.” I shrugged. Story old as time.

“Did Arthur ever talk about wanting to hurt Dean?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.”

Vencino pounced. “What does ‘not really’ mean, TifAni?”

“No, okay? He didn’t.”

“Never?” Dixon prodded, gently. “Think back.”

“I mean, it was the usual talking shit about him. But no, Arthur never said, ‘I’m going to take my dad’s gun into the school and shoot Dean in the nuts.’” The word “nuts” made me giggle. I hiccuped and succumbed to a fit of silent, painful laughter, the kind that spreads like wildfire at a funeral, when someone breaks the somber silence with a wet, Diet Coke burp.

“My client is exhausted,” Dan said. “Maybe you ought to let her go home and get some rest. She’s fourteen, don’t forget.”

“So was Olivia Kaplan,” Detective Vencino said.

The sound of Olivia’s name straightened me out. I rubbed my arms, prickly with goose bumps. “How is Hilary?”

“She’s an amputee,” Vencino said, and nothing else.

I took a shaky sip of water. The room had chilled it even colder, and I winced when I swallowed, when the liquid skated by my lungs. “But will she be okay? Will she come back to Bradley?” I looked to Dixon to ask the question that I had been carrying around since I left the hospital. Maybe he actually had an answer. “Will Bradley, I mean, the school won’t shut down or anything, will it?”

“Do you want it to?” Vencino replied, behind Dixon.

I didn’t know how to make Detective Vencino understand just how much I didn’t want that to happen. I couldn’t return to my life just a few miles shy of the Main Line. Those few miles made the difference between Yale and West Chester University, moving to New York when you grew up and breaking ground for your own mini McMansion, hand stroking your belly, swollen like an overfed tick, as the baby kicked and kicked. I turned my hands up on the table. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

“Ah,” Vencino said, holding up his pointer finger like he understood. “Well it can now, can’t it? That you’re rid of all the people who caused you so much distress?” A cyanide smile crawled onto his face, and he gestured at me with a sarcastic flourish, Vanna White presenting the shiny new Toyota Camry only the winner would take home. “Take her in, folks! Right here in our midst! The luckiest girl alive.”

Dan glared at Vencino. “That’s a little out of line, Detective.”

Detective Vencino folded his arms across his chest. “Sorry,” he spat, “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than worrying about TifAni FaNelli’s feelings.”

Dan sniffed at him, turning to address Dixon. “Do you have everything you need?” He patted my back. “Because I think it’s in my client’s best interest to go home and get some rest.”

Rest. That would never come easy, even when it was supposed to come easy, ever again.

Out in the hallway, Dan asked for a moment alone with me. He told me he would be by the house in the morning, to have that “conversation” with my parents that I couldn’t be the one to have. The following morning was Friday, and I would have preferred he wait until Monday, so I wouldn’t have to spend the whole weekend cooped up with both Mom and Dad, who would no doubt be disgusted by me. But Dan said if we waited until Monday there was a chance the story could leak, and I wouldn’t want my parents to find out from The Philadelphia Inquirer, would I? “Let’s not delay the inevitable.” Dan put his hand on my shoulder, and I stared at the floor, at his shoes made of such bad fake leather they looked rubber.

“You did good in there,” Dan said. “Vencino is a bully. He’s just trying to get under your skin. But you didn’t rise to the occasion. That was good.”

“But they think I planned this with Arthur or something,” I said. “How could they think that?”

“They don’t,” Dan said. “Like your mother said, they’re just covering all their bases.”

“Am I going to have to come back here?”

“You might.” Dan gave me that heartening smile people give you when the truth is something you don’t want to hear, and you need to be brave.

Mom made me take one of those Anita pills, to help me sleep. I wanted to save it for later, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed and I could flip through all of the news channels, on mute, the captions setting on, but Mom insisted I take it right in front of her. Like it was a fucking vitamin instead of a sleeping pill that they later found out is as addictive as heroin.

Within fifteen minutes, sleep started with those weird dreams that you jump awake from, thinking, Well, that was strange. I had what looked like a raspberry, a beautiful one, plump and jewel ripe, growing out of the crown of my head. I kept trying to cover it with my hair, but every time I passed by a mirror, I’d see its large bubble body in profile. Soon, more sprouted—one along my hairline, another by my ear. I’m going to have get these removed, and it’s going to be very painful, I thought. This is the point at which I’d normally leap awake, but that Anita pill blunted the instinct, so I just twitched, once, and then deep into the rabbit hole of the bizarre and terrifying I went.

I was in a crowd of people. They were my classmates, that much I knew, only I didn’t recognize any of them. We were standing at the edge of a dock, and the colors were dull brown and yellow, old timey, as though from an illustration of New York at the turn of the twentieth century. It started as a whisper, “Arthur is alive,” and grew to an excited hush, making its way over to me. “Arthur is alive?” I demanded of no one in particular.

There was a push in the crowd, all of us on the move, trying to find Arthur. I struggled to elbow my way out, but I was part of a formidable unit. I knew if I could just break free, I’d be able to find him. We weren’t going to find him like this.

And then I was out, and Arthur was in front of me, laughing. A sweet laugh, like he was watching Friends and something Chandler said had amused him. Chandler had always been his favorite.

“You’re alive?” I gasped, and Arthur kept laughing.

“Hey!” I pounded my fists on his chest. “You’re alive? How come you didn’t tell me?” I pounded harder, anything to make the delirious laughter stop. This wasn’t funny. “How could you not tell me?”

“Don’t be mad.” Arthur held my fists still, smiling at me. “I’m here. Don’t be mad.”

I woke with the bad feeling first. The disorientation followed—I just woke up, how could something bad have already happened? For a split second, giddiness took over, like it does on a Saturday morning, when you think you have to get ready for school and then you realize, ahhhh, it’s the weekend. Weekends would lose their magic for a while. Everything did.

There was the sound of food cracking on the stove and the time on the TV box read 12:49 P.M. Dan had said he was coming by this morning. Had he? Did he share all the lurid details with Mom and Dad while I writhed and sweat, just a few feet away?

The blanket had bunched around my torso, leaving my legs and feet exposed. I rolled onto my side, and the warm, starchy stench of an overheated and immobile body rose up in the air. “Mom?” I called out, anxious for her response. It would tell me how angry she was.