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“Yeah, Rachel, wake up!” Allie shouted, two never-had-a-pack-a-day-habit octaves higher. I reached out and planted my hand over her mouth, and then we unfurled the tarp together.

Barbara cut Allie’s hair while Allie danced in her seat, animating cartoons she’d seen that morning for Barbara with her dolls. She was definitely a moving target, but her hair was wavy enough to forgive a few inches here and there. Mine,however, was still sprayed and teased from prom. Barbara sent me to the shower to wash it out as she finished up on Allie.

I did what I always did when I was in the bathroom now—I turned to look at my naked back. The lightning lines were definitely fading. But it was easy while I was in there to remember what it felt like when Darius had touched them for the first time—and against last night?—

“Jessica?” Barbara shouted. I quickly returned to the living room with my hair in a towel-turban over my head.

“Don’t do that, it’s bad for your hair—stresses the strands.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, while tugging the towel off. She tapped the seat and I sat down. Within seconds, she was pulling a comb through and finding all the tangles that I’d missed.

“Your mom told me all about prom,” Barbara said, scissors snipping by my ear. “You and Liam Lewis! Who would’ve thought!”

“Not me,” I admitted.

“I feel so bad about what happened though,” she went on. “That poor—” she began, and the moment stretched out as she measured my hair. I imagined all the right things she could say, before she didn’t with a snip. “…boy. I mean, just think. Everyone in town—how is he going to hold his head up high anymore? Doesn’t matter how good he is at baseball now, after that. Everyone’s going to be thinking things when they see him, from here on out.”

“Yeah, they are,” I agreed, because I hoped that it’d be true.

CHAPTER 44

My mother got up, took a shower, and had her turn in the chair. She wanted every eye-witness detail from me, and I gave her what I could. I claimed not to have any photos of Liam or myself, I said we’d been in the photo line when the ‘hacker’ ruined it, and she was surprisingly cool with that, instead going out of her way to pity me, and rail against the circumstances that’d led to prom’s quick end.

Then Barbara left and my mother retreated back into her bedroom and her own TV, leaving Allie and I to do homework while cartoons blared in the background—and every time anyone updated ZB I jumped.

“Are you okay?” Allie asked, squinting at me.

“Yeah.”

Her lips twisted like she didn’t believe me—just like mine did sometimes, it was like I was looking in a tiny mirror—and then went back to coloring.

That night, I texted Lacey again.

Still okay?

Yep.

You’ve checked ZB and everything?

Yep. Why? What’s happening with you?

I’m a whore. Death threats.

The usual.

Ugh.

She inserted a string of angry and then outrageously sympathetic emojis, ones with tears streaming down their tiny faces.

I am so so sorry, Jessie.

Me too.

Try to ignore them?

I am. But it’s hard.

I know. Believe me, I know.