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hundred pounds. But that’s just the physical. In terms of energy, Taylor is ten tons of sheer volume—as any school administrator who’s ever tried to stop her from getting the real story knows. Cafeteria muffins not certified organic? Unequal funding for girls’ and boys’ basketball? School’s stock investments support criminal regimes? Taylor’s on it.
    I order my second muffin—stress does not kill my appetite. Taylor asks for a refill on coffee.
    Fingers over her mouth, Taylor says, “I wish I’d liked her more.”
    “She didn’t die ’cause you didn’t like her, Tay.”
    “No, I know.” She picks up her coffee. “My mom’s like, ‘See, I told you, I told you there were crazy people out there. You think you’re so tough, but it can happen to you.’ I said, ‘Mom, I’m not an idiot who goes into the park drunk in the middle of the night.’ ”
    I look at her. Because Wendy didn’t die because she was an idiot either. Wendy died because …
    Those hands again, the ones I imagined last night. But no face. No reason. Just craziness tearing at you. Which makes me crazy. Not knowing why feels like staring into a bottomless pit; you feel dizzy, disoriented. Nothing makes sense and you could fall any second.
    Taylor sighs. “I can’t get close to the reality of it. That we’ll go to school and she won’t be there and the reason she won’t be there is …” She frowns. “See?”
    “The reason Wendy won’t be there,” I say, because Taylor didn’t use her name, “is that she’s dead. Wendy’s dead.”
    The words still sound empty to me. They don’t make any sense. I think of how long Wendy’s been dead. What she’s already missed. She missed that incredibly beautiful day yesterday. She didn’t see a minute of it. Because she died before it got light. She died …
    I feel Taylor’s hand tight over mine. “Hey, baby.”
    I swallow. Shake my head.
    “I can wait,” says Taylor. “Actually, I’d be seriously grateful if you made me miss first period, because it’s trig and guess who didn’t do the homework?”
    My throat eases up. I say, “I’m okay.”
    “Why should you be okay?”
    To distract myself, I examine Taylor’s bag. It’s black, battered leather. On the strap, a small round pin. Black and gold, with a single letter:
E
. Alcott gives out four E pins every year to those who have excelled, exceeded, whatever
E
word you want to use. The school usually gets it right: people who get them have become judges and senators, won Oscars, Pulitzer Prizes. The real trick is wearing it without looking like a snob. Some kids even make a point of not showing them in public, they think it’s obnoxious.
    Taylor got hers last year, and I think she handles it just right. It runs in the family; her brother got one too. I’ve never gotten one—too shy. Wendy used to joke that the things she excelled at, they didn’t give out E pins for.
    “Tay?”
    “Um, hm?”
    “What happened? At the party Saturday. How did Wendy end up in the middle of Central Park at night?” Maybe, I think, if I know the whole story of Wendy’s last night, what happened to her will make some kind of sense.
    Taylor rolls her eyes:
Where to start?
“She was drunk, of course. I mean, sorry to speak ill of the hm, hm, but she was.”
    “She didn’t seem
that
bad when I saw her,” I say. “I mean, not so trashed that she’d go stumbling into the park in the middle of the night.”
    “She had on her little happy high.” Taylor puts on a manic smile, bugs out her eyes. “The look that announces to anyone with half a brain that mayhem is about to ensue. And …” She stops.
    “And what?”
    Taylor shrugs, uncomfortable. “And also Nico was there and what else do you need to know? Wendy took one look at him and what working brain she had went
pop
.”
    Now it’s my turn to sit back. When Ms. Geller asked me if I had Nico Phelps’s number, I almost said, Yes, it’s right here, next to Satan’s.
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