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“You should cross-stitch that on a pillow,” Mom shoots back. “Market a whole line called Pessimistic Wisdom Products.”

“Is this my signal to change the subject?” I ask.

“Yes,” Mom says, reaching for her wine again. “Especially if you want me to contact Bailey Foxglove for you.”

“That’d be great,” I say, shifting easily. “Her dad had her taking all the emergency calls the day after the tornado. I thought she’d make for a great interview.”

“Probably,” Mom agrees. “I don’t remember her well, but she was the president of the FFA and had all the clout and speaking skills attached to that.”

Mom’s not being facetious, either. Being the president of the FFA in Henley is like being the president of the United States to the rest of the world.

“If you could check up on that I’d really appreciate it.”

“Yep,” Mom says. “Anything else I can do?”

I hesitate for a second, remembering the conversation at the dinner table the night before. Mom and Dad hadn’t had anything nice to say about the Jamisons, and I’m not sure that I want to give Bristal’s uncle too much airtime. But there had been a certain bootstrap quality to Dover that spoke of grassroots determination, something I imagine I have a dose of myself.

“What about Dover Jamison?” I ask. “Do you remember him?”

“Do I remember Dover?” Mom’s mouth is half buried in another wineglass, and her eyes are directed downward, her mumble less of a trick of physics and more of a hedge for time. The blush rising in her cheeks can’t only be from the wine, and I briefly wonder if the muscles I’d spotted under his tank had captured her attention back in the day.

“I knew Dover the same way you know the kids in your class,” she goes on. “I could pick him out of a lineup, but that’s about it.”

“And you’d have to,” I tell her. “He’s in prison.”

“Mmmmmm . . . ,” Mom says, mouth finding the glass again.

She’s not giving me real answers, and while she’d lifted her brows as high as Botox will allow, I don’t think there was any real shock in her expression when I informed her of Dover’s current whereabouts. I recall the sly smile the eighteen-year-old kid had tried out on an adult reporter—and remember that it worked.

“Do you know what he did?” I ask.

“Oh, look. Your dad’s home,” Mom says as headlights swim across the walls, bent by the colors of the stained glass picture window.

“Good timing,” I observe. “But you better hide that candy wrapper. And the empty bottle of wine.”

“And you’d be smart not to mention Dover Jamison,” Mom says, tipping her glass toward me. I’m not sure if she’s covering my ass or hers, but I take the point—as well the edge she just gave me.

“You’ll get a hold of Bailey Foxglove?”

She purses her lips at my continued jockeying but gives me a nod. “And I ordered some of that soundproof material for the upstairs closet,” she adds.

“Nice,” I say, already mentally assessing how long it will take to empty the linen shelves.

“Where are my girls?” Dad’s voice floats up the stairs, and Mom and I exchange a glance.

“Up here,” we sing out at the same time, our tones carefree and light, as she balls her candy wrapper into her fist, rolls the bottle under the couch, and I slip my notes—with a doodle of a boy with an alluring smile and a head bandage—into my backpack.

Eight

Things get dicey real fast when the organizer of the blood drive doesn’t show up on time.

The organizer in question would be me, and the dicey part is manifold—I just received my first tardy ever, and I should probably take Mrs. Nathans, the senior class adviser, off the list of people I was considering asking for a letter of recommendation. She’d met me in the foyer, arms crossed, lips thin, with the look of someone who just woke up next to the wrong person in the morning.

Or, in my case, a different version of the person she’d expected.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, rushing alongside her to the gym, tardy slip in hand. “I got sidetracked last night and—”

She waves me off, and I’m secretly glad I don’t have to tell her that I stayed up until one in the morning, following link after link that Bristal sent me. Most of the clips had covered one or the other of the tragedies from the long stretch, but she’d slipped in a demonstration on how to use a dildo with the accompanying message—this one is a must! Great descriptions and some good shots! A trusting fool, I’d clicked on it. And now my suggestions algorithm is seriously skewed.