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She turned and gave me a glassy stare. “Have you met any cops from Redson?”

Other than when one of them visited in 5thgrade with his partner McGruff the Crimedog, no. I shook my head.

“I have. They’re not exactly helpful.”

“What do you mean?”

“They haven’t started their investigation yet. I—when things happened—I wasn’t in a state to testify. They’ve called once a day since then, to see if I’m ready—but until I am, they’re ‘waiting on me’,” she said, doing an impersonation of a male voice.

“Fuckers,” I cursed. “You know what they’re doing, right? They’re being lazy assholes. They don’t want to do any work they don’t have to.” The humming of the powerlines seemed to pick up behind me.

“Yeah—but I know why. It’s me against him, Jessie. Whoever he is. They told me he wore a condom.” She shrugged helplessly again. “That was the first thing they told me—that they might never figure it out. They made it pretty clear they weren’t that interested in trying.”

I inhaled, pissed off at them,himand all of them—and the power-lines overhead took an alarming tone, like a plane was landing overhead, and suddenly I realized the connection. Oh God—I bit down on the next thing I was going to say—“They won’t if they don’t start doing their jobs!”—and tried to control my breathing while my heart raced.

“And my mom—she won’t stop crying,” Lacey said, then chewed the inside of her cheek contemplatively.

I thought of poor Ms. Harper crying—her mascara smearing each time she dabbed at her eyes—and the power-lines went back to their normal thrum.

“Dog butts I can take. But if word gets out—which it will if the cops start asking questions—I just—I don’t know.” Lacey ran her hand through the grass beside her hip and pulled up a few long blades to pick at with over-bitten nubs of fingernails. “I just want things to go back to normal. Back to the way things were.”

I didn’t know what to say to that—which didn’t stop me from talking. “But you’re different now, Lacey.”

She shrugged again, half-heartedly. “I know. But I don’t want to be.” She sighed, and fell back to lay on the ground behind us. I flopped back too and just lay beside her, watching cumulus clouds sweep overhead. The powerlines intersected our view of the sky. Quiet again, I could hear-feel-see the power travelling through them, their thrumming sound like spring cicadas, each line a streaming bolt of sunlight.

“You’ll love me no matter what I decide, right?” she asked beside me, her voice small.

My hand found hers in the grass. “Absolutely.”

We lay there quietly, listening to the power lines and the wind, until Lacey got up. “My mom’ll be home soon?—”

I got up and dusted myself off from laying in the dirt for the second time in a week. Lacey did the same, and we started walking back up the hill.

“I’m gonna just head out,” she said, veering off to one side to walk around my trailer, rather than get ambushed by Allie inside of it.

“That’s fine. You coming to school tomorrow?”

“Not sure yet.”

“K. I’ll wait by our lockers for you, just in case.”

“Thanks.”

She had a hard to read expression on her face, wistful, wise, and sad—and I realized she looked like my mother did, sometimes, smoking on the porch. I grabbed her into a fierce hug because I didn’t want that for her. No one should have to be that old this young.

She was startled, then hugged me back, just as tight. “Okay. See you soon, Jessie.”

“Always.” I waved, and watched her go, before heading back inside.

Allie looked around me and said, “Awwwww,” the second she realized Lacey had ditched her.

“You still have me,” I said.

The look she gave me then was withering.

We colored until Allie’s stomach rumbled. I glanced over my shoulder at the clock on the microwave. It was almost six-o-clock.

“Can it be dinner time already?”