‌I have screwed up on all possible fronts.‌

With my parents, who are livid that I didn’t tell them about being punched or having a gun pulled on me. All of that came out while I was talking to the police, so I needed to come clean with them too. With Uncle Nick, who’s suffering their wrath for keeping my secret. With Carly, who told me very specifically not to return to Mr. Solomon’s and is catching hell from Ramon d’Arturo for, as he put it, “letting a kid lead you into a potential PR nightmare.” With Nadia and Mason, who are hurt that I didn’t tell them about the Motive internship.

And with Tripp, I’m guessing. But I don’t know, since he hasn’t returned any of my calls or texts. I tried stopping by Brightside Bakery this morning after church, but only Regina was there, and she shook her head when I approached the cash register. “Tripp’s not here, hon,” she said. Al thumped his tail but didn’t get up, like even he’s disappointed in me.

“Is he okay?” I asked. “Physically, he’s fine.”

“What about everything else?”

“I’ll let him tell you that himself,” Regina said. Kindly, but firmly.

The only person who doesn’t hate me is Ellie, so that’s who I’m hanging out with in my room while my parents are on the phone with Carly, discussing whether and how I should be allowed to keep working with Motive. Ellie brought in her old magic kit, like she’s ten years old, and she’s poking through its contents while I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

“On the plus side,” she says, “this makes the dick pics look like nothing.”

“Too soon,” I grumble, turning onto my side so I can stare out my window instead.

I expect another flip remark from Ellie, because that’s her go-to when she’s trying to cheer someone up, but instead she exhales a soft sigh. “I know,” she says. “It’s okay to just feel crappy for a while. I do. Poor Mr. Solomon.”

The lump in my throat gets bigger, and tears sting my eyes. “He had a hole in his sock,” I say, and that does it. The tears spill over. I don’t know why that small detail in particular makes me feel so sad, but every time I think of it, my chest aches. Ellie’s arms steal around me as I curl into the fetal position, sobbing so hard that the rest of me hurts too.

“At least he had a long life, you know?” Ellie sniffs, stroking my hair. “And a good one. I think he was happy. Maybe it was even a kindness, before he got more confused and couldn’t live on his own. I don’t think he ever would have wanted to leave that house.”

“What if he was scared?” I choke out. “At the end? And he was all alone, and…” I trail off, crying harder. It’s been twenty-four hours since we found Mr. Solomon, and I can’t seem to stop crying for more than a couple of hours at a time. Finally I understand how Tripp must have felt in the woods four years ago.

“He wasn’t alone,” Ellie says. “You were with him.” She’s not right in any meaningful sense, because Mr. Solomon was long gone when we got there. But I held on to his hand while I waited for the EMTs to arrive, my other arm extended so I could grasp Tripp’s knee, which was the only part

of him I could reach. It felt ridiculous, but I couldn’t let either of them be without human contact.

I sit up, wipe my face, and take a couple of deep, shuddering breaths. “I messed up so badly. You were right, Ellie,” I say. “I should have told people what I was doing with Motive from the start.”

My sister screws up her face. “I’d like to take credit, but I don’t think I ever actually said that. I’m pretty sure I aided and abetted you on all fronts.” She shrugs and brushes a stray lock of hair from my face. “It’ll be okay. People just need time.”

“I hope so,” I sigh, and pick my phone up from my bedside table. My last text is from Nadia, in response to the string of apologies I sent: I guess I just don’t understand why you’d hide something like that.

I don’t have a good answer. What can I say? I wasn’t planning on getting invested in our friendship again—my bad! I came back to Sturgis with a chip on my shoulder, treating the five months I had to spend at Saint Ambrose like an unwelcome bridge to someplace better. I didn’t realize how much that attitude had seeped into my interactions with people until I found myself in my bedroom with only my sister for company.

“Tripp still won’t talk to me,” I say.

“I think you’re going to have to be patient on that one,” Ellie says. “After what happened with his mom, this probably feels like Gunnar Fox all over again.” She must see my face crumple, because she quickly adds, “I’m not saying it is like that. I’m just saying it might possibly feel like that.” She picks at a stray thread on one of my pillowcases and adds, “I don’t know if it’s the worst thing in the world to get some distance from him, though. If things with Mr. Larkin’s death aren’t what they seem, well, Tripp was front and center to all that, wasn’t he? And you have to admit, he acted weird at Mr. Solomon’s house. I know it was traumatizing and all, but didn’t he say something like, ‘What did you do?’ ”

“Yeah,” I say. “And he told me to stop screaming, even though I wasn’t. It felt like he thought he was looking at Mr. Larkin, not Mr. Solomon.”

“What did Tripp say to you at Charlotte’s party, again?” Ellie flops onto her stomach with my pillow under her arms. “Something like, I needed you to hate me?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But he was talking about what he said in gym class.

That happened before Mr. Larkin died.”

“Hmmm.” Ellie squints. “Okay. So what’s your theory?”

“About what? What happened to Mr. Solomon, or what happened to Mr. Larkin?”

“Both. Either.”

“I don’t have one yet. I’m still gathering information.”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “Weak sauce, Brynn. You need to be more like that Ellery girl.”

A few days ago, Ellie walked in on me while I was watching a YouTube interview with Ellery Corcoran, the girl who helped solve the Echo Ridge murders that Tucker, one of the producers at Motive, wanted to cover. Carly deemed the story old news, but I was interested enough to look it up.

“At first I suspected the dead girl’s boyfriend, because it’s always the boyfriend, right?” Ellery said on video as Ellie walked in. “Then I thought it might be my mother’s old boyfriend. Two of them, actually. Or my neighbor, or my friend’s sister, or a couple of different classmates…”

“Wow,” Ellie said. “She’s thorough.”

“She’s all over the place,” I said, but I couldn’t help liking Ellery. She was filled with what Carly talked about in our interview: passion. Meanwhile here I am, carefully documenting bits and pieces of data without ever reaching a conclusion. True-crime journalism really is different from anything I’ve done before; the stakes feel impossibly high. And I’m a little afraid of what I might learn—about Mr. Larkin, or Tripp, or somebody who’s not even on my radar yet.

All I say to Ellie, though, is “I’m working on it.”

“Well, whatever’s going on, you have to admit that Tripp is sketchy.” She’s right, obviously—I’ve known it all along, even while I keep getting

closer to Tripp—but I can’t help frowning, and Ellie smirks a little. “Sorry for thinking your boyfriend is sketchy.”

I toss a pillow at her head in response, and when she ducks, it hits the cover of her magic kit. “Why do you have that, again?” I ask. “Revisiting your childhood?”

She sits up, brightening. “Oh, no. That’s for a project.” “What project?” I ask.

“Not telling,” she says in a singsong voice. “I need to work alone for this one.”

“Work alone?” I repeat. “What are you—”

My phone rings, cutting me off, and I grab it, hoping for Tripp, Nadia, or Mason. But it’s a Providence number. I briefly consider sending it to voicemail, but since that’s where the Eliot School is located, curiosity gets the better of me and I answer. “This is Brynn.”

“Brynn, hi. My name is Paul Goldstein. I’m an English teacher at the Eliot School in Providence. Headmaster Bartley-Reed gave me your number. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling on a weekend?”

“Yeah, of course,” I say, edging back on my bed until I’m propped against the headboard. Ellie mouths, Who is it? and I wave her away. “Thanks for getting back to me.”

“No problem. I understand you’re doing some kind of memorial for Will Larkin? And you’re looking for input on…” He pauses, like he’s checking notes. “Flowers?”

“Um, yes and no.” After everything that happened with Mr. Solomon, I couldn’t care less about plants. “I mean, if you happen to be aware of any that he liked, that would be nice to know, but mostly I was hoping you could share some memories. What it was like working with him, that kind of thing.”

“Sure,” Paul Goldstein says. He sounds like Mr. Larkin; the kind of teacher who gamely rolls with something anytime a student seems to be showing initiative. “Well, first off, Will was a brilliant English teacher. He knew the classics inside and out, but he was big on bringing modern authors into the classroom too.” Paul goes on for a while, describing Mr. Larkin’s

teaching style, and all I can think about is Ramon d’Arturo’s words: The man was a void. Paul Goldstein couldn’t be nicer, taking time out of his Sunday to share recollections, but he’s not telling me anything I don’t already know.

“That’s so helpful, thank you,” I say when he pauses for a breath. “I loved having him for a teacher, so what you’re saying really resonates. I was wondering, also, what kind of stuff he liked to do outside of class? As students, we never got to see that side of him.”

“Well, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell you,” Paul says. “Will kept to himself. He rode his bicycle to school, so I know he was an avid cyclist.”

I pinch the space between my eyes. An avid cyclist. Fascinating. I can practically see Ramon d’Arturo falling asleep in his chair as we speak. “Did he talk much about his family?”

“No, I can’t say that he ever did,” Paul says, and I feel a sharp stab of disappointment until he adds, “Well, just once.”

“Oh?” I sit up straighter. “When was that?” Ellie, who’s been watching me this whole time, perks up at my expression. She leans close to me, listening in.

Paul chuckles. “Staff party. When everyone is a little more forthcoming than usual, thanks to the liquid refreshments. Don’t mention that part,” he adds hastily.

“I won’t,” I promise.

“Will had taken the Saint Ambrose job by then, so he was leaving in a few weeks. I asked him what the attraction there was, because, you know…” He hesitates. “No insult meant to Saint Ambrose or Sturgis or anything, but it’s not quite, well, the setting—”

“It’s a dump,” I say, hoping my impatience doesn’t show in my voice. “It’s okay, you can say it. We all know it.”

“No, no,” Paul says, but he chuckles again. “It’s just that Eliot is considered a plum assignment in private-teaching circles, so I was curious why someone would choose to leave a job like that so early in their career. I asked Will, ‘What drew you to Saint Ambrose?’ ”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“Well, at first he said all the typical stuff about a progressive educational environment, students from diverse walks of life, what have you. Then somebody bought another round—again, don’t mention that, please. I don’t want to give the impression that teachers at Eliot are a bunch of lushes. After he’d finished his drink, Will leaned over to me and said, ‘You want to know the real reason I’m going to Saint Ambrose, Paul?’ ”

“What was the real reason?” I ask as Ellie mimes biting her knuckles. “He said, ‘I want to be at the same school as my brother.’ ”