EIGHT YEARS EARLIER

Jade’s house is a lot different from mine.

I barely noticed the differences when I was a kid. In fact, I used to think of Jade’s house as the “fun house.” Because in my house, there

were so many rules. You had to put away your toys after playing with them. Dishes had to go right in the dishwasher after use. You had to brush your teeth before bed.

Jade’s house didn’t have those rules. As far as I could tell, she didn’t have any rules.

I haven’t been to Jade’s house in a few months, but today she has invited me over to study together. Well, I’m hoping we’ll study. Jade will undoubtedly try to distract me by talking about cute boys in our class or how she could get us fake IDs. But I’m determined to keep her on track, even though it’s gotten a lot harder lately.

As I follow Jade down the walkway to her ranch-style house, I can’t help but notice how desperately in need of repairs it is. The house was a mess back when we were kids, but now it looks like a wolf could easily huff and puff and blow it all down. The four steps to get to the front door have nearly disintegrated after several years of snow storms chipping away at them, and when I grab onto the railing so I don’t fall, a large splinter lodges itself in my index finger.

“Ouch!” I cry.

Jade whips her head around to look at me. “What now?”

She’s already in a bad mood. Maybe the study session isn’t a great idea. But I need help for the midterm, and Jade has always been my saving grace.

“I have a splinter.”

“Well, who told you to touch the railing?”

Apparently, there is a rule for Jade’s house now. Do not touch the railing, because you will be impaled by a giant splinter.

“Let me see.” Jade grabs my injured left hand. She squints down at the shard of wood. She plucks it out with her long fingernails as I let out another cry. “Got it! God, you’re such a baby, Amy.”

A drop of blood oozes out of my fingertip, and I suck on it. I wonder if Jade has any Band-Aids at her house.

The screen door is barely hanging on by its hinges, but it doesn’t matter since the screen has been ripped in half. Jade unlocks her front door and the two of us stumble into her living room.

What hits me first is the smell.

Not that Jade’s house ever smelled good exactly. It’s always stunk of a combination of cigarette smoke and Mrs. Carpenter’s perfume. And it definitely smells like those two things today, but there’s something else. Like something rotting, but there’s also a sickeningly sweet undertone to the odor. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to focus on math with that stench in the air. I’ll have to breathe through my mouth the whole time.

“What?” Jade says. “Nothing.”

“You’re making a face.”

It’s hard to hide my reaction. But I can’t very well tell my best friend that her house smells like a big old pile of garbage. “No, I’m not.”

Jade tosses her backpack onto the floor, but I’m hesitant to put my own down. Every spot on the floor is occupied by clothes or books or other junk. I start to put it next to the sofa, but a little pile of dishes is already there. And the top dish still has some old food caked on it. I wonder if Jade will want to bring the dishes to the sink, but she doesn’t seem at all concerned.

Finally, I bring my backpack with me to the sofa, which is the same one that they have had ever since I have known her, and I rest it protectively on my lap. Of course, to sit down, I have to push away a bunch of jackets that are stacked on the sofa. I glance over at the coffee table, which has five ashtrays on it, all of which are stuffed with multiple cigarette butts.

Jade’s house was never exactly clean, but this is another level. It almost feels like I’m sitting in the middle of a garbage dump. In the back of my

head, I wonder if I should say something to my mother. Jade would kill me, but it can’t be okay to live like this.

Can it?

“Let’s get started.” Jade tugs the backpack out of my hands. “You have your notes from today?”

She puts my backpack on the coffee table, and I cringe when it lands in a circle of what looks like some old juice or soda that never got cleaned up. I inhale sharply, and Jade turns to frown at me.

“What?” she says. “Nothing.”

“Why are you being so weird, Amy?”

“It’s just…” I point at the mystery sticky spot on the coffee table. “I don’t want my bag to get all dirty, you know?”

“Oh my God.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “I’m so sorry, your majesty. I didn’t realize I had to clean for your arrival. Would you like to grab some cleaning fluid and a rag and give the table a once over?”

She’s being sarcastic, but the truth is, I would. I’ve never been a huge sucker for cleanliness, but there’s something about this house that makes me want to grab a vacuum and a mop and just go to town. Just sitting here makes a creeping crawling sensation go up the back of my neck.

And then a fruit fly buzzes past my ear. Then a second one. I wonder if the creeping crawling sensation in my neck is not entirely my imagination.

Before this conversation can escalate into something worse, the front door creaks open and then slams shut, hard enough that the entire foundation of the house seems to shake. I glance up at the ceiling, wondering what the chances are that the roof could collapse on me. Probably not too likely.

“Jade!” It’s Mrs. Carpenter’s raspy voice. “Jade! Where are you?” Jade swears under her breath. “I’m in here, Mom!”

Mrs. Carpenter stumbles into the living room. Much like the house, she looks worse for wear from the last time I saw her. She has always kept her hair platinum blond, but now she’s got about two inches of dark roots showing. She’s always worn a lot of makeup, especially compared to my own mother, but what she’s wearing now is next level. The mascara is caked on her eyelashes, and her eyelids are shaded with dark blue. The lipstick she’s wearing is meant to make her lips seem fuller, but really, it

looks like her lips got painted by a kindergartener who didn’t know how to stay within the lines.

Mrs. Carpenter does a quick double take when she sees me sitting on the couch, and her painted lips set into an angry line. “Jade, who told you you were allowed to invite your friends over to steal my stuff?”

Jade folds her skinny arms across her chest. “Nobody wants your crappy stuff, Mom.”

“Oh yeah?” She comes around the couch and stands over us, teetering on her startlingly high heels. “So where are my pills, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Jade says, although she is not looking at her mother. “You keep everything locked up anyway.”

“I know you know how to get into all my stuff. Don’t lie to my face, Jade.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Yeah, right. Give me my pills right now.” “I don’t have them!”

“Bullshit!” Mrs. Carpenter grabs one of the ashtrays off the coffee table, and before I even know what’s happening, she has hurled it at the wall, where it shatters into a hundred little pieces, scattering ceramic shards and cigarette butts all over the floor. “You’re a lying little thief!”

Jade’s eyes widen a couple of millimeters, but she doesn’t react. I, on the other hand, feel like my heart is about to explode out of my chest. I grab the strap of my backpack and snatch it off the coffee table. “I better go,” I mumble.

I hurry out the front door as quickly as I can. I don’t know what to do at this point. I feel like I should tell my mom what is going on at the Carpenter household. Mrs. Carpenter has always seemed different from other mothers but in a fun kind of way. She was the kind of mom that let you eat cake batter, even though it has raw eggs in it. Or she let you stay up as long as you wanted at sleepovers. And when she drove us around, she used to try to hit potholes on purpose, because it was fun when the car bounced. And she had this really loud, infectious laugh that made you want to laugh too.

I barely get to the end of the driveway when I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around just in time to see Jade standing behind me, breathing rapidly, her face slightly pink.

“Hey,” she says. “Sorry about my mom acting weird.” “Yeah,” I mumble. “It’s okay. I should go.”

“Okay, but…” She scratches the back of her neck. “You’re not going to tell anyone about all this, right? I mean, it sounds worse than it was. She’s just cranky because she was working late last night at the diner.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jade’s gaze crawls over my face. “Amy. You can’t go telling everyone that my mom is a crazy person. Our neighbor called child protective services, so we’ve already got one strike against us. I’m going to, like, end up in foster care. And it will be all your fault.”

I dig the fingernails of my left hand into my palm, and my index finger smarts where the splinter had been lodged. I don’t want to tell on Jade’s mother. I don’t want my best friend to end up in foster care—she doesn’t have anyone else to live with.

She reaches for my arm. “Promise you won’t say anything?” “What pills was she talking about?”

She lifts a shoulder. “Who knows? She takes some medicine for her blood pressure or something. She probably just lost them.”

Except why would Mrs. Carpenter accuse Jade of stealing blood pressure medication? That doesn’t make any sense.

“Please, Amy?” She squeezes my arm. “That wasn’t a big deal at all. Like, she’s already probably asleep in the bedroom by now. Like I said, she was working super late last night. Anyone would get crabby.”

My gut is telling me that I should at least tell my mom what happened. My mom always knows what to do. But Jade is my best friend, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. And she’s asking me to promise. How can I say no?

“Okay,” I say, “I won’t tell.”