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was so important that I couldn’t watch my baby brother for five minutes while my mom took a shower. I was probably just messing around on my phone or texting Emma about how far I’d gone with Jason McGinty.
    I should have been keeping an eye on Dylan. My mom told me to. She asked me to keep an eye on him, and I didn’t.
    He got taken, and it was all my fault.
    The thought makes me sick like it always does. I go into my closet to find that teeny, tiny bag of weed I got from Jason. If I smoke with the door shut and a sock under it and blow the smoke out of the window, my parents will never know. If they even bother to check up on me.
    But one pin joint later and I don’t feel better. Only fuzzy and sweaty and my heart is beating too fast again. Maybe I should stop smoking pot.
    Dylan. Dill Pickle. Sweet little baby brother, what happened to you? What did that bastard do to you?
    Shit. I hate it when my brain goes to this place. Months later and I still can’t stop wondering.
    I get up off the floor and shut the window, then crawl up into my bed. I take a breath and close my eyes, trying to ground myself.
    I can feel a ball of tears dying to expand inside my throat, but I’ve gotten good at stopping myself from tearing up when I don’t want to.
    I’m not the best student anymore, but I’ve always been a good big sister. That’s the one thing I’ve always managed to pull off. And now I’m not that. Not even close. In fact, I’m probably the worst big sister in the entire world.
    Through our paper thin walls I can hear my mother walking Dylan to his bedroom to go to bed.
    â€œDamn, damn, piece of cake,” he repeats, over and over.
    Maybe it’s Jason McGinty’s weed or my own desperate, clawing attempt to try to do something to help Dylan, but I get an idea. The beginning of one, anyway. Something hazy and weird and probably screwed up.
    As the idea swims through my skull, I hear loud noises between my mother and Dylan as she tries to settle him down for bed. I feel the weight of the idea sink on me along with the painful awareness that I’m the only one in my family who seems to want to face the fact that something awful happened to Dylan. From down the hall I hear another one of Dylan’s shrieks. I close my eyes and try to wish away whatever demons keep coming for my sweet baby brother.

 
    ETHAN—146 DAYS AFTERWARD
    Since I’ve been back, I’ve mostly only been around my parents, the therapists, and my mom’s parents who came to visit me right after I got back. The only person I’ve seen a lot who is around my age is Jesse. We’ve hung out like six or seven times in the past few months, and each time he’s stayed a little bit longer than the last, and this has made me happy. I guess he’s the one friend from before who decided all the television news cameras and the interview with Carlotta King and the weirdness in general weren’t going to keep him from spending time with me. He didn’t just come over right away, though. His mom called my mom first. I know because about a week after I came back, I overheard my mother on the phone in her bedroom with her door almost all the way shut. She didn’t know it, but I’d seen the name Lisa Taylor on the caller ID, and I knew it was Jesse’s mom calling our house. My parents never let me answer the house phone in case it’s a reporter who has managed to get our number, and that’s fine by me. I don’t want to answer it.
    I’d stood outside my parents’ bedroom door that morning after my mom picked up the phone. And I’d listened in on what she was telling Jesse’s mother.
    â€œI think it would be good for Jesse and Ethan to see each other. My gut is telling me it would be good for his healing process. But let me call Ethan’s therapist and get back to you on specifics, all right?”
    I acted like I didn’t know anything,