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far-end-of-the-table girls, Kirsten, had a mother who got us tickets to see an off-Broadway matinee called The Children’s Hour , which wasn’t anything like the title implied. Katherine and Dakota were speaking to each other again and it would be them, Zelda, Jodie, Kirsten, and me. We’d take the train to the city. Afterward Zelda’s father would take us someplace to eat.
    I assumed everyone was going to get dressed up for the trip. I had money from scooping ice cream and babysitting that I’dbeen saving for a better phone, but that could wait. I borrowed the car and went to the mall. It’s embarrassing to be seventeen and still shopping for clothes in the children’s department, but I managed to find a pretty green dress and shoes with heels. I used up almost all the money I’d saved.
    We met on the train platform and I was shocked. The other girls were wearing jeans, as if going to the city for a show and dinner was no big deal. And I guess for them it wasn’t. For a moment I felt awful. Like a real country hick who thought she had to get all fancied up for the trip to the big city. But Katherine and the other girls all rallied around me, saying how pretty I looked, how jealous they were, and how they now wished that they’d dressed up, too.
    By then the train was coming and there was no time for me to go back home and change. And even though I still felt uncomfortable and out of place, I told myself that I’d done nothing wrong and there was no reason I couldn’t still enjoy the outing.
    We went to the show and afterward, thanks to Zelda’s dad, there was a long black limo waiting for us. Everyone on the sidewalk stared as the driver held the door and we got in and rode to Whimsy, which was this incredible old-fashioned restaurant that served sliders and little plates of fries, followed by huge ice-cream sundaes with every topping imaginable.
    It was one of the best days ever, and all the girls, including Katherine, were super nice. Then, on the train going home, I thought about how hard it would be to go back to my house, back to my depressed mom and broken dad, and to scoopingice cream every day once school ended and babysitting bratty kids most evenings. And how Slade would be going away and the only fun I could imagine having that summer would be with Katherine and her friends. I looked at Katherine, maybe expecting to see her smile and nod as if she knew what I was thinking. But she was talking to Zelda and not even looking at me. And I realized … this time she didn’t have to look at me to know.

Chapter 10
    Sunday 1:47 A.M.
    IN THE TRUCK I nervously pick at the old duct tape that covers the split in the passenger seat and gaze at the EMS building. Slade’s still staring straight ahead. There’s one thing I have to say. It comes out in a whisper: “There was never, ever, anyone else, Slade. I need you to believe that.”
    A long breath rushes out of his lips and he bends forward until his forehead touches the steering wheel. “What are you going to do?”
    “I … have to figure out who the real killer is.”
    “How?”
    I think back to tonight’s events, beginning with the kegger. Mia had called and asked me to go with her. I didn’t want to. I was still a little mad at her for what had happened with the story we had written together for the school newspaper. And I thought I’d be really uncomfortable if I ran into Katherine. But Mia had practically insisted. “Don’t worry. Lots of people like you, Callie. And they’ll be there, too. I don’t even think Katherine is coming.”
    But of course Katherine was there.
    “Cal?” Slade says, bringing me back from these thoughts.
    “I’m just trying to figure it out. I’m wondering if it could have been a setup. If the whole thing could have been planned to make it look like I killed her.”
    “Or it just could have been some sicko passing through,” Slade says. “It was in the woods, in the middle of the night. It could have been