* * *

“It’s a juice box, not a male model,” Chloe said when they were sitting in the lunchroom.

“What? Oh. Ew.” Sawyer put down the juice she was drinking and rolled her eyes at Chloe. “You’re gross.”

“Sorry. Just trying to inject a little lightness into the day, I guess.” Chloe’s smile was wistful but held no joy. “How’s detention?”

Sawyer shrugged and shook her head, distracted.

There had been the pale drone of sad, whispered stories on campus since Sawyer stepped into the Hawthorne High student lot: Is Maggie really dead? Did she really hang herself in her closet? I didn’t know she was so depressed…

A semiofficial rumor—some kid was related to someone at the county coroner’s office—said that Maggie had hung herself, that she was found in her own closet, a belt wound around her neck. Rumor or not, the idea that Maggie—or anyone, for that matter—could loop something around her neck and kill herself made Sawyer’s blood run cold.

It had only gotten worse as the school day progressed, and every time Sawyer saw the red, puffy eyes of a fellow student, she was thrown back to Kevin, back to the Monday after his death when she trudged through the molasses-smeared memory of her heavy feet, her guilty heart.

Sawyer chewed her bottom lip. “Do you think she really did it?”

Chloe unwrapped her spork, stabbed at a dish of electric-looking orange pieces. “Did what?”

“Killed herself.” Sawyer’s voice dropped into a hoarse whisper. “Do you really think Maggie killed herself?”

“Well…yeah. She hung herself, S. She was in her own closet.” Chloe shuddered. “It’s just awful.”

“But—” Sawyer started and then stopped, snapped her mouth shut when Chloe looked up at her questioningly.

“What are you thinking?” Chloe asked.

A hot blush washed over Sawyer’s cheeks and she shrugged, shoulders to earlobes. “Nothing, I guess.”

Sawyer gathered up her lunch tray, unease settling over her. Maggie had harassed her every day for the last year and a half straight. Could it be a coincidence—or a message?

TWELVE

Sawyer dressed carefully, pulling on a simple black sheath dress and dark tights. There was a cold bite in the air, and when she stepped outside, goose bumps littered her bare arms. She shivered, sunk her key into her car door, and slid inside.

She was at Maggie’s house twenty-three minutes later.

Sawyer parked across the street and watched the mourners crossing the Gaines’s well-kept lawn. The front door to the house opened and closed rapidly as people slipped inside, their black clothes blending them together into a faceless mourning mob. She sucked in a painful breath—each time she breathed lately, she felt a sharp stab of pain in her abdomen—and kicked open the car door.

“I can do this,” she told herself. “I need to do this.” Sawyer took a shaky step onto the concrete and willed her legs to carry her across the street. She paused on the Gaines’s front porch when a chilled breeze cut across the lawn, carrying with it the super-sweet smell of lilies. It made Sawyer’s head hurt, made her remember the last time she had slipped into the black dress she now wore. The last time was at Kevin’s funeral.

The warmth enveloped her the second she stepped through the door. People were packed into the living room and spilling into the kitchen, clothes in shades of mourning black and muted grays, eyes uniformly red and puffy. There was a spread of barely touched luncheon meats and cold salads that people silently poked at; no one seemed to be talking, but the quiet hum of conversation was everywhere.

Sawyer beelined for a tall, thin woman in a long-sleeved black dress. Though her eyes looked weary and her cheeks were sunken, she shared the same thick, blond hair as Maggie, the pale in her eyes a distant match to the bright cornflower blue of her daughter’s.

“Mrs. Gaines,” Sawyer breathed, “I’m so sorry.”

Elaina Gaines’s eyes raked over Sawyer and softened as a fresh wave of tears spilled over.

“Sawyer! We haven’t seen you in ages.” She threw her arms open and embraced Sawyer in a stiff hug, her thin, spindly arms gripping Sawyer tightly. “Thank you for coming.”

Sawyer nodded, swallowing heavily. “Of course. Maggie and I were…” She struggled to say the word since so much time—and animosity—had passed between the two girls. But the photograph, two bone-thin girls in oversized helmets, grinning toothless smiles, was still in a simple frame on the mantle: Maggie and Sawyer as third-graders, arms entwined, showing off their Best Friends Forever embroidered bracelets. Sawyer felt the burn around her wrist from the bracelet she never wore.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Mrs. Gaines just wagged her head, pressing her hands to her cheeks. “No, thank you. I’m just so—we’re just so—” The woman looked away uselessly, her shoulders racking under her silent cries. She sniffled finally and breathed deeply, using the heel of her hand to wipe at her tears. She forced a small, polite smile.

“The new choir uniforms are lovely.”

Sawyer cocked her head, confused. “Yeah, they finally got it right this time.”

“Maggie was so excited to wear hers. She loved to sing.” Mrs. Gaines’s eyes shone. “She sang like an angel.”

Sawyer nodded, the words “she did,” coming out soft and breathy. Guilt tugged at her heart as she remembered the exchange she’d had with Maggie about the solo.

“We plan on burying her in the dress.”

Sawyer felt all the air leave the room. She knew Maggie was dead. She knew that she had killed herself in a horrible way, but the idea of her being dead and buried left a burning hole in Sawyer’s gut.

Maggie was really dead.

“I just wish Mr. Rose had decided to add some color to the dresses. The cut is so nice, but the black is so drab.”

Sawyer began to focus on the dresses—the rack of plastic-wrapped garments and Mr. Rose’s sheer joy over them. Anything not to think of Maggie buried.

“The sashes are red,” Sawyer heard herself mumble.

“Sashes?”

Sawyer made a motion around her waist. “The dresses have a big red sash that goes around the waist.”

Mrs. Gaines’s eyebrows pressed together as she chewed on her bottom lip. “There was no sash on Maggie’s dress. It was still in the plastic bag when we—when we—” Her words dissolved into tears, and Sawyer patted her shoulder, unsure how to comfort a woman who had lost her child.

“Maybe it just fell out at school or something,” she said, feeling inadequate and dumb.

Mrs. Gaines swiped at her tears again and steadied her shoulders. “You know who would love to see you? Olivia. She’s around here somewhere.” Mrs. Gaines started to crane her neck, and Sawyer laid a soft hand on her arm.

“I’ll go find her,” she said softly.

Olivia was sitting on the bottom stair, balancing a paper plate heaped with untouched ham and a congealing macaroni salad of some sort on her lap. She was holding a biscuit in her hand, tearing absently at it, the crumbs littering her plate, her pinched-together knees.

“Olivia?” Sawyer was surprised when the girl looked up at her. She had grown into her freckles and big ears and was nearly the spitting image of her older sister. She had Maggie’s eyes, the gentle sweep of her nose. Her hair was a slightly paler version of her sister’s, worn in the same long, layered style.

“Sawyer?” There was a faint shimmer of light in Olivia’s eyes, and she dropped the hunk of bread she was holding and reached out to hug Sawyer. “What are you doing here?”

Sawyer sat down next to the girl. “Maggie was my friend.”

Olivia started working the biscuit again. “She hated you.”

It wasn’t a surprise or a shock, but Sawyer still felt the sting of Olivia’s words.

“After the whole Kevin thing,” she finished.

Sawyer nodded. “It was a big misunderstanding. I wish Maggie knew—could have known—that. I just wanted to pay my respects.”

Olivia nodded without answering, staring at the blank white wall in front of her. “I found her, you know.”

“What?”

“Maggie. I found her in the closet. We were fighting the day before. I was wearing a pair of her jeans. She swore at me, told me never to touch her stuff. I was going in to put the jeans back…and there she was.” Tears pooled on Olivia’s bottom lashes. “There she was. Only, she wasn’t.”

Sawyer began to tremble, tears rimming her eyes. “My God, Olivia, I’m so sorry.”

“I thought she was just being silly. She used to say if I kept taking her stuff without asking, bad things would happen.” Olivia shook her head. “I thought she meant to me.”

“Oh, Olivia, no.” Sawyer slid an arm around the girl’s shoulders and pulled her into her.

“How could she do that?”

“I—I—” Sawyer stammered, then felt the question burning her lips. “Was there a note?”

Olivia turned to look at her, her eyes glossy. “You mean like a suicide note?”

“Yeah.”

Olivia swallowed and shook her head slowly. “No, nothing. And the weird thing is, she seemed fine—totally fine that day, that week.” The girl shrugged, a fresh torrent of tears wobbling over her pink cheeks. “She never seemed like anything was bothering her.”

“What is she doing here?”

Sawyer’s head snapped up as the nasally voice cut through the din in the room.

“You, her!” Sawyer looked up to see Libby, one of Maggie’s henchmen, pointing right at her. Libby’s eyes were as tear-drowned as everyone else’s, but anger bloomed a bright red on her cheeks. Sawyer blinked at her, at the crowd that was craning to see.