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The next day after school, Paige drove Jodi back to the hospital to visit Julian. Lucy and Zack had gone that morning, apparently. Jodi felt stupid for thinking it had anything to do with them avoiding her, but she couldn’t help it.

“I didn’t go looking for a deal, like the news says,” Jodi said to Paige on the way there.

“Of course! I didn’t think you did.” Paige smiled at her.

When they were allowed back to see Julian, he looked pale and exhausted. His dark-rimmed eyes flitted over the two of them as they entered. Paige hugged him, but Jodi hung back.

“Oh, my god. You were literally dead for, like, three minutes or something, right?” Paige asked.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I guess.” His eyes found Jodi again. She awkwardly took a seat in the chair next to the bed. “They’re discharging me tomorrow though.”

“So, I don’t know if you, like, remember or anything,” Paige started, “but when we were at the medium yesterday trying to talk to Emily, I think she sensed your presence.” Paige’s eyes were glittering. “Isn’t that weird?”

There was a pause. Julian stared at Paige, and then his lips quirked. “Weird.”

“She had to stop and everything. Like she wasn’t allowed to tell us you were dead. I just think it’s so creepy…”

Jodi let Paige’s voice wash over her as she watched Julian. His gaze drifted from Paige, slowly dragging over to Jodi. His hazel eyes were on her for barely a second before they flitted over her shoulder and stayed there.

Paige continued, “You didn’t, like, feel anything, right? You don’t remember seeing us through the medium?”

There was an infinitesimal pause before Julian shook his head. “Nope.”

As Paige and Jodi got ready to leave, Jodi couldn’t help but feel like there was something she should say. She’d let Paige talk the whole time, and Julian had barely looked at her.

Jodi decided to just give him a friendly wave goodbye and follow Paige out the door.

“Dillon.”

She turned back. Julian’s gaze was on her finally. She waited in the doorway, watching his open mouth fail to form words.

“Yeah?”

He ran a hand through his hair and pressed his eyes closed, like a migraine was coming on. “Can I have your notes? From class?”

Jodi blinked at him. “Oh, sure. Yeah, I’ll… yeah.”

He nodded, and it seemed he was back to not looking at her. Jodi swallowed.

“Glad you’re not dead,” she said quickly and spun on her heel, hurrying out the door and shaking her head in panic. “Glad you’re not dead,” she whispered to herself. “Great job, Jodi.”

She scurried to catch up with Paige.

The school play was in two weeks, and the theater classroom was a minefield of stressed actresses, costume fittings, and Mrs. Calloway’s short fuse.

For Jodi and Oliver, this was the final week to finish the backdrop and set building. Oliver had used a beautiful wood stain on the planks of a porch that matched Jodi’s paint perfectly. By that Saturday, when they loaded the set pieces into the theater, Jodi got to watch as Doug laced the backdrop to a pole and raised it up, revealing the clouds, then treetops, then shingle roofs. Jodi saw flaws and things she wished she could redo, but Mrs. Calloway cried when she walked into the theater on Sunday morning.

Jodi spent the next week learning the show, preparing to be Nikita’s “wardrobe assistant” to help with her costume changes. Oliver got to be in charge of opening and closing the curtain, putting a smug expression on his face, and Jodi thought she’d ask for that position next time—before she even realized she was planning for a next time.

Opening night went off with only a few hitches. The lead boy forgot half his lines for a scene and ended up skipping three pages of dialogue when he got them back on track, but all in all, it was exhilarating to hear three hundred people behind the theater wall, listening and chuckling and sniffling. Jodi waited for Oliver to finish mopping the stage, standing near the backstage door as Nikita and the rest of the cast came out to greet their family and friends.

Jodi had left tickets for her friends at the box office. She hadn’t really expected any of them to come, but now, standing alone while everyone else had someone to support them, looking at them with admiration, she thought she should have told Zack how proud she was of her backdrop. After news about her subpoena came out, it would have felt good to have Paige or Lucy here, to show they still cared about her.

“So she just dies? That’s the moral of the story?”

Jodi spun at the familiar voice. Julian looked like a fish out of water as he stood in a sea of stage makeup and rowdy drama kids.

“I guess…” Jodi tilted her head, trying to come up with an explanation for his presence. She followed his gaze down to what he was reading in his hands. A program for Our Town . She blinked. “Did you—You sat through the whole thing?”

“Yeah. You could have mentioned it was three hours, Dillon.” He leaned back on the wall next to them. “That’s a serious time commitment to see some trees and rooftops you painted.”

Jodi’s brows drew together. She looked past him, searching for Zack, or Lucy, or Paige.

“They were nice though,” he added, flipping the page in the program. “The trees. And it was cool how the houses in your painting matched the house that was onstage. Did they send you up on a ladder to paint the top?”

“I… No, I painted it on the ground, and then it was hung.”

“Right. That makes more sense.” He stared down at the program like it had brand-new information for him. She watched pinpricks of color bloom on his cheekbones.

Someone called her name down the hall, and she looked up to see Oliver nodding toward the parking lot.

“I have to go. They go to a diner after every show. Apparently it’s the worst food in existence, but the staff doesn’t kick them out unless they start food fights…”

She was rambling. Julian nodded and stood from the wall.

“Do you think you wanna do this?” he said.

“What?”

“Do artwork for theater. Like can you make a career in it?”

She looked back and forth between his eyes, searching for sarcasm, derision, condescension. She found none.

“I think you can. I’m not sure it’s what I want to do , but I may take theater again next semester.”

“Cool. Yeah, you’re good at it. Anyway. See you Monday.”

Before she could blink, he was slipping away through the stream of the crowd. If she’d ever seen Julian Hollister in a socially awkward moment, she would have said this was one of them. It wasn’t until she was chowing down on mozzarella sticks and sharing a strawberry milkshake with Nikita that she realized she hadn’t thanked him for coming.

Our Town played its final performance the following Saturday evening. It was apparently a tradition that the cast and crew break down the set together on the Sunday morning—completely hungover from the night before. Oliver drove her over to one of the actor’s houses.

“I make bank at these cast parties,” he said as they parked in front of the house. He stopped by his trunk and grabbed his backpack, patting the filled pockets lovingly. “Do you wanna make a quick hundred tonight?”

She tore her eyes from his backpack. “Make…?”

“I’ll let you keep twenty-five percent if you wanna push. Just go up to people, start talking about Zack Thrasher, and then ask if they wanna smoke a joint with you.”

Jodi felt her neck flush. “No, I don’t—I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

Oliver shrugged. “That’s fine. If you change your mind, let me know. You’d be surprised how many people would want to talk about the investigation while Jodi Dillon smoked weed with them.”

He started up the pathway through the lawn, heading toward the side door of the house. Jodi stared after him, feeling like she’d just failed some kind of test. Or maybe aced it.

Nikita stumbled over to her, ranting about the local theater awards and the judge that had been at the performance that evening. Jodi’s eyes caught on a girl with dark brown skin on the patio, assessing her. Jodi looked away. She’d been stared at plenty of times, especially now that the news was covering the Thrashers weekly. When she glanced at the patio again, the girl was talking to Oliver, her dark eyes darting to Jodi.

She tried to focus on what Nikita was saying, but her gaze stuck on someone else on the patio.

“What is Reagan Matthews doing here?” Jodi said.

Nikita turned to look. “Her brother is in the cast. He played the mailman.”

Jodi narrowed her eyes. Reagan looked so out of place with her beach waves and perfect skin next to all the techie kids with acne and graphic tees.

Later, when Jodi was exiting the bathroom, she found Reagan leaning against the wall staring down at her phone. Reagan looked up, swooping hair out of her eyes, and a slow smirk spread across her face.

“Jodi,” she greeted. “Did you finally get thrown out with the trash?”

Jodi glared back. “What?”

“I haven’t seen you with the Thrashers at all.” Reagan pushed past her into the bathroom, then turned. “It was smart of you to give them up and take a deal.”

“That’s not what happened—”

“ Please , Jodi. Your friends are going to juvie, and you weren’t even charged.”

“Believe what you want. I didn’t sell them out.” Jodi crossed her arms. “And nobody’s going to juvie.”

Reagan’s eyes glittered. “That’s cute. That they’re still keeping things from you.”

The door started to close. Jodi felt her skin pulled taut. Her arm shot out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Reagan looked her up and down. “Ask Lucy who the eyewitness is in her assault charges.” She lifted a perfectly defined brow and shut the door.

Jodi felt like there was water in her ears. She stared at the closed door.

Lucy hadn’t told her there was an eyewitness. Lucy hadn’t told her much about anything lately. Jodi still didn’t know what the assault even was , but Reagan was claiming to have seen it?

Jodi felt her heart thundering as she headed out back, needing some air. Oliver tried to pass her a joint on the patio, and she declined. She needed to think, not forget.

Sitting on a bench at the side of the house, Jodi had barely gotten ten minutes to herself before footsteps came toward her, crunching in the unraked leaves. She looked up, and the girl who had been talking to Oliver appeared in front of her.

“Are you Jodi Dillon?” she asked. Jodi nodded. “I’m Vanessa. I go to Sac High.”

“Hi.” Jodi waited for her to explain herself.

Vanessa took a deep breath and pushed her long braids over her shoulder. “I knew Emily from freshman year.”

Jodi blinked at her. “Oh.” Her throat tightened, and she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Did Vanessa think Jodi “bullied her to death” like so many others did? Jodi braced herself for an argument, glancing at the people in the yard and realizing she and Vanessa were secluded in this corner.

Vanessa stared at her. “Emily never told you about me?”

“Sorry, no…” Jodi stood. “What would she have told me?”

“Look, I know you probably can’t talk about any of this because of your friends’ charges, but I just needed to make sure someone knew…”

“Knew what?” Jodi felt her arms tingling.

“Why she left Sac High,” Vanessa said. “Someone’s lawyer should do some digging. That’s all.”

Jodi’s pulse slowed as she realized Vanessa didn’t want to yell at her, but before she could ask her what she meant, Vanessa turned back for the party. Jodi called after her, but Vanessa made her way back inside, almost running. She pushed through the crowd and was gone.

The cast and crew of Our Town took the set apart on Sunday. Jodi took pictures of the backdrop to include in college applications. She was still thinking about what Julian said about “making a career in it.”

But Sunday night, Jodi sat in her bedroom with a Sac High ’22/’23 yearbook she’d gotten from one of the actors who had a sister there. She found Emily in the freshman Ms , and after ten minutes of searching, she found Vanessa Jones—also a freshman. She wasn’t sure what else she could get from this yearbook, but she flipped through every page anyway.

She turned to page twenty-three, the Sac High Homecoming Rally of 2022. There, in purple and white face paint, Emily and Vanessa smiled at the camera, their cheeks pressed together as they hugged each other close.

Jodi stared down at the picture. They looked happy. She found three other pictures of Emily and Vanessa throughout the yearbook—sometimes just the two of them, sometimes in a group. Finally, a picture taken around May of that year showed Emily leaning her head on Vanessa’s shoulder in PE class. Vanessa was leaned away from her, a distant look on her face.