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“Maybe next time,” he said, and backed down the driveway. He didn’t pull over until there were miles between us and Mason’s. “I take it it worked?” he asked, twisting in his seat after he did.

“Yes and no. I got his photos of her.” I’d managed to wipe Lacey out of Mason’s phone—but who was gonna wipe her from my mind—or from anyone else’s? I put my head against my knees. “He’d already sent them out.”

“Oh no?—”

“I got those too. But—all of those people saw already. And—there were other girls there too.” I hadn’t gotten their pictures. I didn’t have time. I pressed down, waiting for the strange lights that lived behind my eyelids to overtake the shiningness of everything else, the Corolla’s idling engine, the bright sun, my pain.

“You gonna be okay?” His voice sound distant.

“I don’t know.”

He decided to turn the car completely off, and once the engine died I could hear cicada song outside. I wished they would sing louder, so they could help block everything out. “How can I help?”

“Not sure.” I worked a hand up inside my me-ball to wipe my nose with the back of it.

“Is it okay if I touch you?”

I didn’t want to let him in. I didn’t want to let anyone else in, I wanted to keep everything alone, unhurt, pure. But life wasn’tlike that, it was stupid and messy and unfair and cruel and all the pictures I’d seen—I started getting that over-full sensation in my mouth again, of too much spit, and bawled.

“Oh, Jessie—” he said, with just the right sound of sympathetic pain, and his hand chastely touched my back as I unspooled toward him, sitting half on the center console and half on him not caring, pressing my face against the safety of his neck, weeping.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, holding me awkwardly as I sobbed. “I really am. I’m so sorry.”

I nodded into him. “Me too.”

When I could breathe right again, I pushed back, but didn’t look up. “I—I got overwhelmed.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said, as I migrated back to my side of his car. I was an ugly crier. I knew it. Oh well. “But concentrate on the good stuff, Jessie. It worked. You did it.”

I shook my head, rattling my already aching brain. “No, I didn’t. It’s not like I can wipe their minds—all of them already saw her.”

“But now there’s no proof. And with no proof, there’s no danger at prom. The gossip’ll suck, but it’s bound to die out eventually, if this stops here.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” he said. I wanted to believe him, even though I was pretty sure we both knew he was lying. “Want to go home now?”

“More than anything.”

Darius dropped me off down the street from my trailer. We did this awkward look-at-each-other-no-contact-bye thing with a wave. I sniffed my jeans, arm, hair, and didn’t smell pot, but didn’t know if my snot-filled nose could currently be trusted.Worrying about that, I was halfway up the driveway when I realized the Buick was gone.

Oh no. Was my mother off at school, looking for me? I ran into the trailer, called for Allie and got no answer. Had she taken Allie with her?

Or had something happened to Allie?

I was dialing my mom before my phone was in my hand. I danced the phone around as I stripped my clothes off and threw them in the wash then pulled new and definitely pot-free clothing on by the time I got to my mother’s voicemail.

“Mom?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice, not after Mason’s. “Where are you? Where’s Allie?”

Seconds after I hung up, the Buick pulled into the driveway and I ran out.

“Where were you?” I asked, before she could ask it of me.

She and Allie stepped out of the car with grocery bags and a brown paper bag from the sewing store. “We went shopping for groceries.”

My heart’s thundering slowed. “Oh.”

“What’re you all worried about?” she asked.