‌I get up early Tuesday morning after the long weekend to run, same as always. When I get home, I shower, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and get dressed for school on autopilot. Oxford buttoned, tie knotted, navy blazer shrugged over my shoulders. The only difference from a typical day is this: I fill a flask with my father’s Jim Beam before I head out the door, and turn in the opposite direction from the road that takes me to Saint Ambrose.‌

I can’t face school. I call the main office as I walk, put on my father’s voice, and tell them I’m home, sick. Nobody will be surprised. Everyone knows what happened at Mr. Solomon’s on Saturday; my phone is full of messages from people I don’t want to talk to.

Including Brynn. Especially Brynn.

Who I’m not thinking about, now or ever again. She had the fucking nerve to call me a bad liar? She’s the worst liar of anyone, spying on the entire school for Motive. I hope she has an absolutely shit day of reckoning for that, and I’m almost sorry I won’t be there to see it.

Not sorry enough to show up, though.

I don’t know where I’m going, exactly, and it doesn’t help that I’ve finished almost half the Jim Beam before I’ve gone a mile. “Slow down,” I lecture myself after I stumble over a pothole on the side of the road. Although, that’s the town’s fault, really, for letting this pile of crap known as Sturgis keep falling apart. Still, it’s probably not a bad idea to get off the road, and that’s when it catches my eye: the arched stone entrance to Sturgis Cemetery. Maybe this is where I was headed all along. Where Mr. Solomon will be soon, and where Mr. Larkin was laid to rest four years ago even though he’s not from here.

It never occurred to me, until now, to wonder why he wasn’t buried someplace else.

I know where his grave is, sort of. It takes some wandering to find him, because it’s not like I come here all the time. Twice a year, maybe? I don’t bring flowers or anything when I do. I just stand beside the grave, like I am now, and read the inscription on his headstone. To unpathed waters, undreamed shores. It’s Shakespeare, Ms. Kelso told us at the funeral. I think she might’ve picked it.

Then I say the same thing I always say: “I’m sorry.”

I don’t usually follow that with a whiskey chaser, but I also don’t usually come here three days after finding a dead body, so—exceptions have to be made.

“I think I’m cursed,” I find myself saying. That’s new.

The wind picks up, tossing my hair into my eyes, and I push it back. I didn’t bring a coat, for no good reason except I didn’t feel like wearing one, and I should probably be cold. I’m not, though. I’m just numb.

“I don’t know when it started,” I tell Mr. Larkin’s tombstone. “Maybe with you, but maybe before. When Lisa Marie left. Or when two people who never should have gotten together in the first place had a kid they didn’t want.”

I drop heavily onto the grass. The ground is cold and hard beneath me, ridged with clumps of half-frozen dirt. When I set my flask down, it falls right over. Good thing I had the presence of mind to screw the cap back on.

“That’s not fair, though,” I tell Mr. Larkin’s grave. “My dad wanted me. He just didn’t know what to do once he had me.”

I’m pretty sure my father has never been more grateful for our opposite schedules than he was this weekend. He kept apologizing for sleeping through the hospital-slash-police-station portion of the day, but I could tell he was relieved too. Almost as much as I was. “You feeling better?” he asked when we were finally face to face on Saturday evening. “Need anything? To talk to someone, or…”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Less true words have rarely been spoken, but Dad just nodded. “Regina was probably a good person to have around,” he said.

He’s right; she was. And that scared me, because what am I supposed to do when I lose Regina? I will eventually, because that’s how it goes.

“Melodramatic,” I tell Mr. Larkin’s grave, and then I feel the need to clarify. “Me, not you. You’re not melodramatic. You’re just…”

Dead. Still. Always.

I shove myself to my feet unsteadily, clutching the flask in one hand, feeling sick and desperate to get away. But where am I supposed to go? I’m surrounded by nothing except gray stone and bare branches. Then my eye catches a spot of color—a familiar bright blue house, one I used to ride my bike past when my mother was in town because I thought she might see me and invite me inside. Valerie’s house, where Lisa Marie is now.

Lisa Marie. At least she’s up-front when she’s doing a television show about my dead teacher, unlike some people.

It seems like a really good idea, suddenly, to go see my mother. Which should probably be my first clue that I’m a lot drunker than I realized. The second clue is that when I get to Valerie’s front door, I can’t find the doorbell, so I just twist the knob, and it turns. I push the door open and step inside.

I don’t know much about Valerie, other than the fact that she went to high school with my mother, is divorced with no kids, and cuts hair at Mo’s Barber Shop. She’s always been friendly enough to me, calling me

“sweetheart” whenever I see her. Occasionally I wonder if that’s because she can’t remember my name, but it’s better than getting called “Trey.”

Her house is a split-level like mine, but it’s a lot nicer. There’s art hanging on the walls, a lot of brightly colored throw pillows, and a rug from this decade. It’s also quiet; the only thing I hear is the sound of a shower running. I’m sitting on Valerie’s plush couch, looking around me and wondering if it’s her or my mother getting ready, when I spot a distinctive floral phone case on the coffee table. I recognize it as Lisa Marie’s, and there’s a small flip phone beside it.

Unless Valerie prefers outdated technology, I’m pretty sure it’s a burner phone. “What are you up to?” I mutter, reaching for Lisa Marie’s iPhone first. When I lift it, the screen lights up with a text.

Gunnar: Love it. Can we try it with tears?

The last time Lisa Marie was in Sturgis, she made a big deal out of storing my face recognition in her security settings while we were out to lunch—“so I can have a little piece of you with me at all times,” she said. She was on her third beer by then, and apparently she hasn’t changed her settings since, because the phone unlocks when I tilt it toward me. The Try it with tears message is the latest in a long string between her and Gunnar Fox. It’s in response to a video she sent last night, and I click to launch it, and tap play. Lisa Marie pops up on-screen, seated at this very couch, wearing a demure floral blouse and a pained expression.

“I think I knew, from an early age, that Noah wasn’t like other kids,” she says. “I was always so afraid of his temper. It’s why I left. When I heard about his teacher, all I could think was—is this it? Did what I’ve been afraid of for so long finally happen?”

I pause the video. I think I knew, from an early age, that Noah wasn’t like other kids. Is this real? Is it true? Is this who I am and I just can’t see it? It fits, right? Maybe bad things keep happening not because I’m cursed but because I am a curse. Even my own mother thinks so.

I try to restart the video, but the phone slips in my hand and I end up back in the text string between Lisa Marie and Gunnar. There are lots of them, too many to read, so I start somewhere in the middle.

me.

Lisa Marie: He won’t do it. I’ve tried everything.

Gunnar: I need this, Lee.

Gunnar: I need to nail Shane Delgado before his father’s lawyer nails

Gunnar: Don’t Do the Crime could shut down for good if this keeps up.

Gunnar: The kid’s a fucking psycho, I know it. But they guard him like

a prince.

Lisa Marie: I don’t know what you expect me to do.

Lisa Marie: I tried my best.

Lisa Marie: My kid is a stubborn little shit.

Gunnar: What if we take another angle?

Lisa Marie: ???

Gunnar: All three of them in it together.

Gunnar: Noah isn’t the witness, you are.

Gunnar: He’s a bad seed who found a partner in crime with Delgado, and you can’t cover for him anymore.

Gunnar: I’ll pay you what I was going to pay him.

Bile rises in my throat, and I choke it down. The words start swimming in front of me, but not before I manage to screenshot them and text them to myself, along with the video. When I’m done, I pick up the burner phone. There’s no passcode on this one, and only a handful of outgoing texts. All of them are a single word: Murderer.

Two of the texts went to my number. I don’t know Shane’s and Charlotte’s numbers off the top of my head, but when I look them up in my phone, they match the other outgoing texts. Turns out Colin Jeffries didn’t send the Murderer texts after all. My mother did.

I’m so caught up in looking between the phones that I don’t hear when the shower stops running, or much of anything else until an outraged voice says, “What the hell are you doing here?” I look up to see Lisa Marie in a fuzzy blue bathrobe, a white towel wrapped around her head, and an incredulous scowl on her face. “Did you just break into Valerie’s house?” she demands.

“No,” I say. “It was open.” My words are thick and slurring, so I try to talk slowly, although I don’t think it’s helping much. “But I broke into your phones.”

“Give me those!” She’s on me in an instant, snatching both phones, and I don’t resist because I have what I need. Well, almost.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I say. “And mind you—I am a little drunk, which might be exasperating the issue.” That’s not the right word, but whatever. “I get that you were willing to lie about me being a murderer for money, after I wouldn’t lie about Shane being a murderer for money. What I don’t get, though, is why you sent the three of us texts calling us murderers before I’d even told you no. And how did you get Shane’s and Charlotte’s cell phone numbers?”

“My goodness,” Lisa Marie says, studying me. “You are wasted.” “That’s not an answer.”

She snorts. “You won’t even remember the answer, will you? Gunnar got the numbers. He has his ways. And those texts were just for color. Gunnar wanted to paint a picture of you being lumped in with the other two, to the point where you were being unfairly harassed. But you messed it all up.”

“So, just so I’m clear. You unfairly harassed me.”

“We were building a story line, Trey,” she says. “You would have come out of it smelling like a rose if you’d just listened to me.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say. She frowns. “What?”

“Don’t call me ‘Trey.’ It’s not my name. It’s not even my nickname.” “It’s my nickname for you.”

“Yeah, well.” I get unsteadily to my feet, wishing I were more clearheaded, because once I say what I have to say, I’m never going to speak to her again. “You lied on camera and said I’ve been a killer since the day I was born for ten thousand dollars, so guess what? You don’t get to call me anything. The only thing you get to do is fuck off.”

I head for the door with Lisa Marie at my heels. “All you had to do was listen to me!” she says. “I wanted to work with you, not against you.

But you have to be so stubborn, so goddamn high-and-mighty, like you actually belong at that snotty little school you go to. You never even asked why I needed the money. I have medical problems, Trey. And crappy insurance and maxed-out credit cards, and Junior is no help whatsoever. So maybe, before you run around guzzling booze and judging people, you could think about that.”

I thought I was done talking to her, but it turns out I have one more thing to say. I open the door, turn to brace myself against the frame, and face her one last time.

“Try it with tears,” I say before slamming the door.