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twists. “It was like, I lost myself, trying to make her better, and I never got me back. I can’t do that again, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
    Other girls would speak up now; reassure me that my mom does notice me, love me. That everything will be okay. But Elise doesn’t.
    “Then we should do something,” she tells me at last. “Just for you. So you can remember yourself this time.”
    “Like what?”
    Elise slowly smiles. “Do you trust me?”
    I shrug.
    “Come on, Anna. Do you trust me?”
    I want to laugh it off, but there’s something in herexpression that keeps me standing there in the middle of the busy sidewalk: determination. Enough to make me believe what she’s saying, that I don’t have to be lost again. And God, I want it so, so much.
    I can’t go through that again.
    So I nod.
    “I trust you.”
    •  •  •
    The pink streak is two inches wide, hidden behind my ear on the left-hand side. Elise had one done too, matching, in deep peacock blue. They’re invisible, until we pull our hair back, and then there they are: bold, bright. Brave.
    You wouldn’t think a lock of dyed hair could make a difference, but it does. I look at it every night at home, as the chemo gets under way and my mom fades back into that pale stranger, drinking juice through a sippy cup and sleeping through my days. I stare in the mirror, and remind myself: I’m here, I exist.
    I’ll be okay.

NOW
    Everyone is trying to make like it’s my fault. Prosecutors, her parents, reporters, TV. They say I led Elise astray; that I took a sweet, innocent straight-As girl and dragged her down to my level. That I coerced her into skipping school, and staying out too late, and drinking dollar shots in dive bars until she screwed strange guys in the bathrooms of clubs that should never have let us in.
    That I made her this way.
    It sounds bad, I know, but the truth is, we made each other, like we learned about in science class. Symbiosis. I was the partner-in-crime she’d been waiting for: a hand to hold as she ran, laughing, away from the ivy-covered gates she’d been gazing over her entire life. And Elise . . . She was my catalyst.The glint in my eye, the giddy thrill in my stomach, the voice urging me to be louder, bolder, to blend into the background no more.
    We were both responsible for what we became, which I guess means we both have to share the blame. If Elise is the cause of everything that’s happened to me, then I’m to blame for her fate too. It’s both of our faults, equally.
    Except she’s gone, and I’m all alone again. And so the blame—the great weight of it, the months of media speculation and fury and bitter, seething outrage—falls entirely on me. Some days, it’s like I’m drowning in it, like I’ll never see the surface again. She was always the one to pull me up, my hand to hold when it felt like I was going under. She saved me, and now she’s gone.
    How am I supposed to get by on my own?

THE NIGHT
    The first round of questioning is simple: “When did you last see Elise?” “What were you doing that day?” “Did you see anyone suspicious near the house?”
    They take us one by one into the interview room, while the rest of the group slouches, tired and weepy on yellow plastic chairs in the lobby of the police station as people mill about us in a state of barely disguised panic. We’ve called our parents, stuttered through the terrible news, and now there’s nothing left to do but wait. Chelsea’s eyes are red and tired. She sits, frozen, clutching Lamar’s hand with both of hers, staring at the bloodstains on her jeans. Melanie huddles her small body into a ball, her arms hugging her knees, her voice raw from sobbing. I can hardly bear to look at them. Everypart of my body feels wired with a terrible rush of shock and adrenaline, as if my atoms are about to break apart and spin out into the world.
    I leap up. “Mel, you got any quarters?”
    She blinks at me from behind