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I’d believed them, since I couldn’t remember a thing from the months leading up to my incarceration. But they’d actually sent me there to have my memories wiped. To have James and everything we’d seen and done together plucked from my consciousness.
    I would never trust a grief counselor again.

9
    C.P. stood at the end
of the line outside Mr. Thibodaux’s office as I walked right by my classmates toward the side door. Harry was the only one missing, so I could only assume he was already pouring his guts out to the shrink. There weren’t many things Harry loved to do more than talk about his feelings.
    “Tandy? Where’re you going?” C.P. asked me. She was wearing a zebra-print coat over a black dress, her short blond hair pushed forward over her forehead and her blue eyes wide.
    “Outside,” I said. “I don’t need grief counseling.” I clenched my fists inside my pockets. “By the way, have the cops interviewed you about Adele?”
    C.P.’s brow knit. “No.”
    I looked down the line of students. “Have the cops interviewed any of you?” I called out to my classmates. They all stared at me, then at one another, blankly.
    I sighed and turned to C.P. “Send them each out to me when they finish in the office, okay?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “This was what you meant yesterday when you said
we
, isn’t it?”
    “Someone’s gotta find out what happened to her. And clearly it’s not gonna be the NYPD.”
    I waited on a teak bench in the courtyard between the church and the apartment building next door. It was one of those oddly warm winter days, and the sun felt good on my face. Harry was the first to come out, but he didn’t even look in my direction. He just ducked his head and took off for the street, probably planning to go home or to the rehearsal rooms at Lincoln Center to take out his emotions on an unsuspecting piano.
    Cliff Anderson was the next to emerge. He was a tall, square-shouldered son of a Wall Street tycoon with an ego bigger than Manhattan. He eyed me warily as he approached.
    “C.P. said I’m supposed to talk to you…?”
    “Have a seat.”
    He did, sitting as far away from me on the bench as possible without hitting the ground.
    “I’m working with the NYPD on solving Adele’s murder,” I began.
    “Seriously?” I’d piqued his interest. “That’s… kinda cool.”
    “So, where were you when Adele was shot?” I asked him.
    Cliff’s jaw dropped. “You think I did it?”
    “It’s a standard question,” I replied.
    He glowered. “I was with my girlfriend at Dylan’s Candy Bar.”
    I jotted that down.
    “And your girlfriend’s name?”
    He gave it, the school she attended, and her phone number.
    “Did you notice anything off about Adele lately?” I asked. “Was she worried about anything? Fighting with anyone?”
    “She was depressed, actually,” Cliff said, gripping the bench with both hands. “Her brother moved out to go to BU last semester, and the two of them were really close. Adele didn’t exactly love her parents, you know? I think it was like the two of them against Mom and Dad, so once she was alone…”
    I could imagine how much that would suck. If Malcolm and Maud had still been alive and all my brothershad moved out… wow. I wasn’t sure I could have survived that.
    “Thanks, Cliff.”
    Next up was Kendra Preston. She had transferred to All Saints this year, and I knew she still had friends at the Doyle School across town. I asked about her alibi, then got down to business.
    “Do you know anyone who might want to do something like this to Adele?” I asked her.
    “No, but did you know that two other girls our age have been shot to death in the last month?” she replied.
    “What?” I gasped.
    “Yeah.” Her eyes were wide. “Scary, right? This friend of a friend from Doyle, Lena Watkins, died just outside her apartment a couple of weeks ago. They said it was suicide because she’d been depressed about a breakup, but everyone she