“Hey, it’s all right. Are you okay?”

Sawyer began stacking her books, nodding maniacally, eyes searching for any hint of mint green. “I’m fine. I’m just really—really—”

Logan reached out and laid a hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. It was as delicate and uncertain as his eyes. Sawyer realized she liked them and allowed herself to breathe. “Sorry, I’m just jumpy.”

“Yeah, it’s not every day someone drops dead on campus.”

Sawyer glanced up at Logan. The words sounded odd and rough coming out of his mouth. He glanced back at her, a hint of a smile at the edges of his lips. “I mean, you know.”

Sawyer went back to gathering her books. “Yeah, yeah I guess so.”

Logan stayed hunched down but was silent for a beat. He licked his lips and said, “Hey, I wanted to thank you again for the ride the other day.”

“Don’t mention it.” Sawyer jammed the last of her books back in her locker and slammed the door shut. “Sorry again, Logan, but I’ve got to get to class.”

“Right.” And then, “Oh, wait. Hey, Sawyer—is this yours?”

Sawyer stopped without turning around, her stomach gone leaden. She didn’t want to see what Logan was offering her. He stepped in front of her, grin still wide, eyes still soft. He offered Sawyer a songbook. “This is yours, right?”

Relief flooded over her in waves. “Oh. Right.”

“Sawyer Dodd?” The voice that came over the PA system was deep and gravelly and bounced off the plethora of sterile metal and linoleum in the hallway. “Sawyer Dodd to the administration office, please.”

Sawyer’s eyes went up to the overhead speaker.

“Sounds like someone might be in trouble,” Logan tried to joke, but Sawyer couldn’t find the humor. He flushed red immediately and looked at the floor. “I’m kidding. I know you’re not—you know, the kind of kid who gets in trouble.”

“Thanks, Logan. Apparently, I’ve got to go.” Sawyer turned, songbook clutched to her chest, and Logan kept step with her.

“How about I walk you?”

“That’s really okay.”

“Too late.” Logan gestured toward the fall leaves taped to the open door of the administration office. “We’re here.”

Logan turned and offered Sawyer his awkward salute, and she was left standing in the hallway, watching his back as he headed down the hall.

“Sawyer Dodd to the administration office, please.” The overhead speaker squawked again, this time slightly more insistent. Sawyer blew out a sigh and pushed the door open.

The administration office was a cavalcade of students zigzagging through the bright orange half doors that separated the back office from the front. Most of them carried file folders or thick stacks of copy paper while they went about their work study office duties.

Sawyer cleared her throat. “I’m Sawyer Dodd,” she said to no one in particular. The girl at the closest desk blinked at her and blew a bubble the size of her head. She sucked it in, eyes still focused on Sawyer. She pressed the black button on the intercom in front of her, and Sawyer could see her wad of gum protruding in her cheek.

“Sawyer Dodd?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh.” The girl looked surprised to see her. “Principal Chappie wants to see you.”

“What about?”

The girl shrugged, went back to chewing her gum. She pointed to a bank of chairs lined up in front of Mr. Chappie’s closed office door. “You can wait over there, please.”

Sawyer hiked up her backpack and did as she was told, sliding her feet out in front of her. She absently studied the toes of her sneakers, then clapped the sides of her big toes together, a pleasing cloud of red clay dust puffing off the soles.

Sawyer looked at her shoes, looked at the fine red powder that now littered the gray, industrial-grade carpet. Her skin started to prick and she sat up straighter, her left hand slowly reaching out in front of her. Her fingers flicked. She imagined reaching under her bed in the dim, near-dawn light. She remembered her fingers falling over the soft leather of the single metallic flat as she looked for her sneaker. She remembered rolling the hard buds of dirt under her index finger.

Then she remembered the photograph that Detective Biggs had slid across the table to her.

Sawyer’s throat constricted. Her tongue darted out to lick paper-dry lips. How had the shoe—just one shoe—ended up under her bed?

Her body started to tremble, a slow, painful jitter.

How did the mud get there?

Sawyer remembered the hollow ring of Detective Biggs’s voice when he mentioned that someone might have been there when Kevin was killed. That a woman may have pushed the passenger seat back, gotten one shoe stuck in the mud when she slipped away.

One metallic, mud-covered flat.

Sawyer doubled over and held her head in her hands, her mind racing, trying to go back to that day, trying to go back to the day she had spent the last three weeks desperately trying to block out.

Had she taken a pill? Had she blacked out or blocked it out?

Her breath caught in her throat as her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest. She shook her head.

No. There was no way. I would have remembered…right?

She felt the wind on her face, the moist, biting sting of the wind as she jogged down the hill, picking up speed as she put precious distance between her and Kevin.

“I was running,” Sawyer mumbled. “If I was running, I wasn’t wearing flats.”

She thought back, clamping her eyes shut, trying to remember the way it felt each time her foot hit the ground. Before a track meet she would pinch her eyes closed and concentrate on the feeling of her feet falling in perfect quick-time rhythm, hitting the red clay of the track just softly enough to propel her forward one more step.

How did her foot feel?

“Ms. Dodd?” Principal Chappie poked his head out of his office, his voice shaking Sawyer out of her revelry. She sighed as her mind failed to grasp the image of her leaving that night.

“I’m right here,” Sawyer said, standing up slowly.

Principal Chappie stood aside and ushered Sawyer down the hall. He pushed open the door and she followed him in.

“Sawyer,” Principal Chappie said, arm extended. “This is Ms. Alum, the grief counselor.”

Sawyer swallowed hard, looking from Principal Chappie to the tiny, dark-haired grief counselor who couldn’t have been more than five years older than she was. She had heavy black lashes over wide, eager, brown eyes and a pin-tucked charcoal suit that was all at once businesslike and sexy.

“I don’t need to see a grief counselor, Principal Chappie. Sorry, Ms. Alum. They already make me see a psychologist twice a week. I’m really kind of grief-counseled out.” Sawyer hiked her backpack up her shoulder and turned to go, but was stopped when she came chest to tweed-coated chest with a mustached man, his stubby fingers clutching a black leather notebook.

“And this is Detective Biggs.”

Sawyer’s breath hitched. “Oh.”

Heat washed over her cheeks and Sawyer fought to stay cool, thinking that the detective could somehow sense her guilt, her confusion over the night, over the muddied shoe underneath her bed.

“Hello, Sawyer.”

Sawyer forced her muscles to move and felt her head bob in a semblance of a nod.

Detective Biggs offered a smile that wasn’t really a smile, his teeth a faded, nicotine yellow. “I’m sorry we have to meet again this way. Under these kind of circumstances.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer said, licking her bottom lip as her pulse started to speed. Up until Kevin’s death, she had never even seen a detective that wasn’t on television. Now, she seemed to have her own personal one.

Detective Biggs stared at her, and Sawyer felt the insane urge to bolt. She didn’t want any of this to be happening. She wanted to be normal again, to be staring at the clock in biology class, deciding which dress to wear to prom.

“Can you take a seat, please, Ms. Dodd?” Principal Chappie’s voice was kind.

Sawyer took a small step back, the detective’s eyes still on her. His face broke into what passed as a smile for detectives, Sawyer guessed. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Sawyer.”

Sawyer didn’t like the way the detective used her name when he spoke to her, holding it in his mouth and then pressing out the syllables. Sawyer sank into a chair opposite Ms. Alum, and Detective Biggs sat down next her, pulling out the same leather notebook he’d had at Sawyer’s house. Sawyer vaguely wondered if he bought them by the case. “This is just some routine questioning, you understand.”

Sawyer looked at the ring of faces around her: Ms. Alum’s was pretty but pinched with an attempt to look both serious and sympathetic; Principal Chappie’s lips were pressed together and he kept rubbing his thumb over the face of his watch, his impatience evident; and Detective Biggs looked as though he’d just waddled out of a cop show with a few crumbs of powdered sugar at the edge of his mouth, his caterpillar eyebrows sharp Vs.

“Routine questions about what?” Sawyer wasn’t sure she’d actually asked the question. The voice that came out was subdued and strange, and though she couldn’t understand why, she felt herself flush, felt her knees weaken and the all-too-familiar salivating that came before vomiting.

“Oh God. I’m sorry but I think I’m going to be sick.”

Ms. Alum patted Sawyer’s back soothingly. “Shall I take you to the ladies’ room?”

Sawyer shook her head, and Detective Biggs pushed a Styrofoam cup of water into her hands. She took a small sip, her eyes flashing behind the cup.

“I think I’m okay,” she said finally.