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after the party. Does that mean they think someone at the party killed Wendy?
    No, Rain, it means Wendy was killed after she was seen at the party. That’s why they want to know what happened afterward.
    I click on some of the other stories. The details are all the same. I find pictures, Alcott, Wendy’s house, Central Park. A recent picture of Wendy smiling. Captured, blown up. Screaming words crowded around her image.
    Wendy Geller Wendy Geller Geller, Wendy Wendy Geller Wendy Geller. The image starts to blur, the name becomes a meaningless sound. The more I look, the more Wendy fades. I try to get a fix on her laugh, the way her eyes narrowed as she smiled when she was about to make a not-nice joke, the way she suddenly giggled at herself when she’d done something dumb.
    I’m losing her.
    Quickly, I go to her Facebook page. I see she has a new photo since the last time I visited. Her picture used to be a close-up of her and her cat, curled up on her bed. Now it’s some shot taken in a crowded restaurant. She’s dressed in a short, spangled thing, wearing tons of makeup and laughing her head off.
    I think, Personally, I liked the cat picture, Wen.
    Already, the front page is filled with sympathy messages. All the stale, overused phrases people use when they don’t know what to say:
My condolences to the family. So sad! Always in our hearts
. I think of writing something.
    I miss you, Wendy. I’ll always miss you. You were so …
    I can’t think of the right word. So … what? Sweet? Great? Amazing? I imagine people reading it and thinking, God, she couldn’t come up with anything better than that?
    Then I notice Videos. There are seven, which means I can actually see Wendy, hear her talk again. I click on the link, hit the first one in the row.
    Wendy’s face fills the screen. Then she pulls the phone back from her face and I can see she’s in her bedroom. I hear something muffled from offscreen. Wendy turns and says, “I am, I swear to God!” The person off camera—a girl—laughs.
    Then Wendy looks straight at the camera, composes herself. “Okay, here we go. Ready? Ready? Okay.”
    Clearing her throat, she says, “This is a message from Wendy Geller to Nico Phelps. Nico, you best be listening. Because two days from now at Karina Burroughs’s party, I am going to get you. I am going to get you and you are going to love every moment.”
    She draws out the word
m-o-o-ment
, then does a big kiss to the camera. The person off camera shrieks, “Oh my God!” and starts clapping. Giggling, Wendy says, “Stay tuned for further details!”
    Then black.
    Further details, I think numbly. There are a lot of further details I would like to know, Wendy.

DAY TWO
    It’s Monday. The blast of coffee commercial on the radio tells me Get up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head. I smack at it and it goes quiet.
    I pull the covers over my head, hide in the warm dark.
    Ten minutes later, the radio blares back to life. Sound pummels me through the quilt. “Police identified the body of a young girl found in Central Park …”
    I burrow deeper.
    “… strangled …”
    “… assaulted …”
    “… one witness claims …”
    “… this latest attack …”
    I throw off the covers, grab the radio with both hands. And howl. Long and hard and fierce. My ears hum, my throat starts to sting. But I can’t hear the babble. I’m drowning it, killing it.
    Then my mom’s arms around me. The radio pulled from my hands.
    “Shhh,” she says, rocking me. “No more.”
    *   *   *
    Last night on the phone, Taylor and I tried for about five minutes to actually talk about it. But then she said, “This needs to be face to face.”
    Now we’re face to face in the Athens Diner on Broadway, where we always go because it’s a few blocks from school, and we still don’t know what to say.
    Which is not like Taylor at all. Taylor is tiny: four feet eight, including her explosion of curls. She weighs maybe a