I frowned at my lap, frantically searching my mind, unsure if that was the truth.

Dixon stuck out his lower lip and nodded, like this was a possibility, but he had to be convinced first. “Let’s let TifAni answer,” he said, and all three of them looked at me, expectantly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I did tell you everything I thought was important.”

“You sure about that?” Vencino asked. He waved the manila envelope at me like I should know what was inside of it.

“Yes. Honestly, if I left something out I didn’t mean to leave it out.”

Dan gave my hand a reassuring little pat. “Why don’t you just tell us what we’re doing here?”

Vencino brought the file down on the table with a loud thwack. The force flung the front flap open, and a pile of colored Xeroxes reminded me. Slowly, with intent, Dixon spread the copies of the Bradley yearbook pages out on the table for Dan and me to see.

Vencino pinned each picture to the table with a yellow, ragged fingernail and read the things Arthur and I had written. “Chop my cock off.” “Choke me with it.” “RIP HOs.” I wrote that last one. Mr. Larson had told us to compose a Halloween haiku on an illustration of a grave, beneath the words “RIP Farmer Ted.” It had seemed like such a kiddie assignment at the time, but it had stuck in my head. Later, I’d jotted it down on Olivia’s picture and Arthur had giggled, insidiously, when he read it.

“This is your handwriting, is it not?” Dixon asked.

Dan regarded me sharply. “Don’t answer that, TifAni.”

“We don’t really need her to,” Vencino said and nodded at Dixon. Another file had materialized in his hands.

Notes. The ones Arthur and I used to pass all the time, even when we weren’t in class and could have just said whatever it was we were writing out loud. Some were about nothing . . . what a lemming Headmaster Mah was and what a slut Elisa White had become. I’d left my prints in the color of the ink, the same shamrock green as in the pages of the yearbook, my intent, laughable now, to proclaim my allegiance to Bradley. Not that they needed the green to even know it was me. I’d attended a Catholic middle school with nuns who didn’t know how to explain the sexual overtones in literature, and so it was eschewed year after year in favor of grammar and cursive classes. My perfect penmanship slanted and rolled across the pages of the yearbook, my DNA in every graceful loop.

Did you see Hilary’s hair today?

It’s so gross. Take a shower, sweetie pie. Her pussy must smell so rank. If she even has one. There were all these rumors in middle school that she was really a man. A hermaphrodite at the very least. I can’t believe Dean banged her.

Dean and Hilary? When? I’m pretty sure she’s a virgin.

Oh, come on. Everyone knows about that. Dean will put it anywhere. (No offense.) He’s going to be one of those guys who marries an ex–Ms. America but bangs the fat waitresses at T.G.I. Friday’s on the side. The world would really be better off without him. Raise your hand and ask to go to the bathroom if you agree.

You are never going to believe what just happened in the bathroom right now.

You better tell me fast, we have three minutes until the bell rings.

Paige Patrick was taking a pregnancy test.

And another note. A different day. This one dated at the top, because I started it and I was taught to put the date in the upper-right-hand corner of everything, even a stupid, hastily scribbled note.

October 29, 2001

Today Dean bumped into me in the hallway and called me a wide load. I’m seriously thinking about transferring. (I wasn’t! I just liked to say this to get Arthur to remind me of all the reasons why Bradley was superior to Mt. St. Theresa’s, which he would, happily: “Oh, you miss soccer mom training camp?”).

You say this at least once a week. You’re not transferring. We both know it. I’ll just kill them all for you. How’s that sound?

Swell. How are we doing it?

I have my dad’s gun.

What happens if you get caught?

I wouldn’t get caught. I’m wicked smart.

I didn’t know how to make the detectives understand. This was how we spoke to each other. We were all young and cruel. One time a freshman JV soccer player choked on an orange slice on the bus ride to an away game, and, instead of helping him, or even displaying the least bit of alarm, Dean and Peyton and all the guys laughed at the way the blood rushed to his face and his eyes bugged out of his head (the assistant manager finally realized what was going on and performed the Heimlich maneuver). For weeks afterward, the guys regaled us with this story, over and over, the veins in their necks straining with their laughter while the poor kid who choked on the orange stared at the lunch table, trying not to cry.

“I’m almost positive that when we look in your school notebooks we will see this is your handwriting, and that you use a green pen.” Detective Vencino patted his paunch, satisfied, like he’d just eaten a great meal.

“Well, you’re going to have to get a warrant to search TifAni’s things to be able to do that. And if you had that, you would have used it by now.” Dan leaned back in his chair and smirked at Vencino.

“It was just a joke,” I said, softly.

“TifAni!” Dan warned.

“Really,” Detective Dixon said. “It’s better if we hear it from her. Because as we speak, we are getting that warrant.”

Dan blinked at me, trying to decide. Finally, he nodded. Sighed, “Tell them.”

“It was a joke,” I said again. “I thought he was joking.”

“And were you?” Detective Vencino asked.

“Of course I was,” I said. “I didn’t ever think something like this would happen. Not in a million years.”

“I know it’s been a few years since I’ve been in high school”—Vencino began to pace—“but, little girl, you better believe we never made jokes like that.”

“Did you two ever discuss this . . . plan . . . verbally?” Detective Dixon asked.

“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think so.”

“What is this ‘I don’t think so’?” Vencino demanded. “Either you did or you didn’t.”

“I just . . . didn’t pay attention to it,” I said. “So yeah, he could have joked about it, and maybe I did too, but I didn’t make, like, a mental note of it or anything because it wasn’t something I took seriously.”

“But you knew he had one of the guns used in the attack,” Dixon said, and I nodded. “How did you know that?”

I glanced at Dan, and he gave me the go-ahead. “He showed it to me.”

Dixon and Vencino looked at each other, so astonished that for a second neither of them appeared angry at me anymore. “When was this?” Dixon asked, and I told him about that afternoon in Arthur’s basement. The deer head. The yearbook. The way he’d pointed the gun at me and I’d fallen on my bad wrist.

Detective Vencino shook his head in the corner, shadows darkening his face like a bruise. Muttered, “Little fucking punk.”

“Did Arthur ever joke”—Dixon bunny-eared that word—“about hurting anyone else?”

“No. I thought he wanted to hurt me.”

“See”—Vencino tapped his grimy fingernail against his chin—“that’s funny because Dean is saying just the opposite.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Dan jumped in. “What is Dean saying?”

“That Arthur offered the gun to TifAni. Told her now was the chance to shoot this—and excuse my language, but these are the types of kids we’re dealing with here—cocksucker’s cock off.” Vencino scratched a patch of skin under his eye and grimaced. “He says TifAni reached for the gun.”

“I never said I didn’t!” I exploded. “I was going to use it on him, not Dean.”

Dan warned, “TifAni—” at the same time Dixon slammed his fist down on the table, sending a few copies of the yearbook pages into the air, where they hovered, still as a picture, before slicing back and forth through space, not even hitting the floor for some time after Dixon shouted “You’re a liar!” His face was heart-attack red, the way only a natural blond’s can get. “You’ve been lying to us from the moment we met you.” He had been lying too, fooling me with his friendly mask.