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“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Like, why would she even say that to me?”

“I don’t know. But it’s fucked up.”

“Maybe—” Darius began slowly. “Because it was easier than admitting she made a mistake?”

“How so?” I said, my voice urging caution.

“Maybe your mom thought she was making a perfect run. Like in a game, when you’re doing everything right, the first time through, like those people who can play the first forty-levels of Alien Atrocity blindfolded. Your mom was playing the game, doing what she thought was right, and then the right things didn’t happen and it can’t be her fault so it has to be yours.”

Lacey nodded. “That makes sense. Twisted, shitty, sense.” Then she turned to me. “I’m supposed to be the kid though, Jessie.”

“I know.” I brushed her bangs back off of her face. Shit like this was why we parented ourselves. “So what happened?”

“She took too many of her sleeping pills. I mean…I just think she took a pill and it didn’t work. So she took another, and then that one didn’t work, and then maybe she took a third and then a fourth, just in case.” Lacey shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think she wanted to die? I think it was just the easiest way for her to make it all about her again.”

My mother was bad but Lacey’s mom had taken it to a whole new level. “This must be exhausting.”

“It has been. It is.” She sighed and rubbed a hand across her face. “And then there’s this.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, holding it out to me.

“I’m gonna see everything once I touch it. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” she said and nodded, and so I took it from her hands.

Everything new on Lacey’s phone raced through up to me—all the images from her ZB that I hadn’t seen on mine earlier today flew into my mind like bats, it was hard not to swipe them away.

But it wasn’t the pictures that were the problem—it was the words.

Things focused in my mind and then --

Do you have a prom date?

MysteriousAzzhole’s icon sat by the words. Lacey was smart enough not to respond.

Because you’d better get one.

You’re going to want to watch the slideshow.

“Oh, no,” I said aloud.

“What?” Darius asked.

“It’s someone threatening to show pictures of me at prom,” Lacey said.

“What…kind of pictures?” Darius asked with hesitation.

“Those kind,” I confirmed, and his expression went dark.

“What do I do, Jessie?” Lacey just looked at me. “I mean, what the fuck can I do?”

I pushed back into the couch. “I’m not sure that you can do anything. But—I can—I just have to touch his phone.”

“Who’s phone?”

“Mason Green.”