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long enough and better dedicate yourself.”
    Marla protests at the teacher’s accurate assessment of her love life, which makes me almost laugh because it’s hard to argue with that particular truth. I exchange a slight knowing look with Tremblay, who smiles widely and actually laughs. She waves her hand in a dismissive way at both of us. I’m still reminded of a black widow spider but attempt to smile back and push my general distrust of her way down. I shiver, and wince at the movement even as my sore ribs silently protest. I’ve overdone it on this day.
    “Okay. Yes. I want to train with you and return to New York.” I look over at Marla, and she’s nodding a more enthusiastically than me. “We both do. We want the chance of a lifetime. We won’t let you down.”
    Tremblay laughs again while Marla and I exchange these surprised glances. It appears she’s as pleased with herself as much as she is with the two of us. “Good. We will start tomorrow then. After school, every day, until we leave for New York mid-June. I don’t want to leave anything to chance. It’s your commitment to the program that I’m counting on from both of you.”
    I envision my father writing a gigantic check to Tremblay to pay for all these extra lessons, the apartment back east, and the tuition itself at SAB. I imagine his grief-stricken face as he blankly hands me the check while he vainly searches mine for any sign of Holly.
    Holly I can never be.
    We all know that.
    But I continue to try .
    * * * *

CHAPTER FOUR
    Tally ~ A conundrum
    T he incessant public gazing follows me down the hall as if they’re watching an accused witch march off to a wooden stake for burning. We’re studying the Salem Witch Trials in U.S. History, so I’m sure that’s why I’m feeling this particular persecution with such potency. I keep my head down and allow my eyes to study the various patterns in the linoleum as I make my way past all these jostling students and sympathetic stares. Nobody wants to be the dead twin’s sister. Nobody wants to be brought down by this tragic story. Including me.
    “Tally.” Marla’s voice reaches for me from the other end of the hallway. I skirt past a couple of additional voyeurs who mumble their words at me as I slash my way through the last of the fervent bodies of Paly high-schoolers.
    “Hey,” I say when I reach her locker. Marla’s presence represents a certain sanctuary, however temporary, and I almost smile.
    “Hey,” she says with meaning, scrutinizing me closely. “How are you holding up?”
    It’s been more than three months since the funeral, long after the debacle in the Caribbean with my parents and Tommy, where we did a lot of pretending that everything was normal even though it clearly wasn’t. We holed up in a five-star hotel room and blithely watched the ocean waves from our hotel suite most of the time, and no one said a word. Although after three days of this imposed confinement with what was left of my family, I did sneak off into the streets of St. Thomas and found a brief respite in the arms of one of the handsome locals. He didn’t know a word of English, and that suited me just fine. He seemed to like the fact that I chain-smoked one cigarette after another after we’d done the deed in all various ways possible at least a half-dozen times and I didn’t ask for money. Apparently, this was a refreshing change for him as well. At least, that’s what I was able to put together through his various hand gestures and his excited Spanish. He seemed to like the fact that I didn’t ask for anything except sex and silence.
    But the risk factor to both my body and soul was patently high, and I almost lost it with him completely at one point. The shock of what I’d done with a complete stranger in a foreign country resonated with me on an ever deeper almost visceral level. And, as much as I’d felt something, however lascivious it was, fucking a foreigner—a complete stranger from a