Look at me, look at me, Summer thought, focusing all her energy at Sara’s head. It was like Sara could sense her there, because she twisted her body away from Summer, toward the wall. And then they were past Sara, and she focused her attention ahead.

It all happened in one ugly moment, the moment that would burn into her memory with a hot, shocking pain that throbbed through her already depleted body. The song, the flowers, the glossy box ahead. She didn’t believe it right away, or maybe she thought it was someone else—one of the elderly. But there was the photo, the name. She still looked through the faces frantically with every step forward they took; when she slowed down, she felt Dawn’s hands on her lower back, moving her forward.

“Walk,” she said into Summer’s ear. Before they reached the front row, the row where they meant for her to sit, she started screaming. The wails of “Mama” shrill above the singing. She looked back at the faces behind them. Maybe she was sick, too, maybe she had what Taured had, and she was hallucinating. But then they were at the front of the church, near the place where Taured addressed them, and she could see it all.

She was at her mother’s funeral.

She didn’t stop screaming until they removed her from the chapel, Bob and Marshall hauling her down the hall, her feet dragging. Her breaths were ragged gasps. A boy—Ginger—was in the hallway. He looked to be exiting the bathroom; when he saw them coming, he flattened himself against a wall until they had passed. It was like the last time, just with a few different players, except now, she didn’t care what they did to her; in fact, she wanted them to kill her—she wanted to die.

They took her to her mother’s room this time and locked the door. She curled up on her bed, on the quilt with the tiny, embroidered roses, and howled as loudly as her vocal cords would let her, the grief growing heavier by the second. Eventually, her voice gave out to a skinned, gravelly sound, and she was only able to sob. When she woke, she remembered, and the pain started again, fresh, a billowing wound that was all-encompassing. She lay in one spot, refusing food or drink until they sent Sara to comfort her. But she didn’t want to see Sara, who had betrayed her. In the end, they left her alone with her grief.

On the third day, Taured came to see her. He was dressed in his nice clothes: black pants and a blue oxford rolled to the elbows. In his hands was a tray with what she assumed was breakfast. He set it down on the little table where Summer sometimes did her homework and turned toward her with a brilliant smile.