Arlene Burns pokes her head in. Eyes flitting from Chris to Shane and back to Atlanta. “I didn’t know you had friends here, ’Lanta.”

“Mama, nobody invited you in here.”

For a moment, a mopey look crosses Mama’s face, but then it’s gone again, dark clouds pushed aside. “You kids want anything? I can make you some snacks, maybe. I got cocktail weenies and croissant dough—”

“Mama!” Atlanta barks. “Jeez.”

“Hi,” she says to the boys. “I’m Atlanta’s mother?”

Chris and Shane introduce themselves.

“It’s nice to see my girl have some friends—”

Atlanta steps up, doesn’t say anything else, just plants her hand on her mother’s face like a spider squatting on a beach ball. She gives a gentle shove and then closes the door.

Then she sits back down in a huff.

“That was cuckoopants,” Chris says.

“Yeah,” Shane asks. “What’s up with that? Your mom sleeps in the garage and you two are not . . . friendly. What’s the deal?”

“There’s no deal with my mom,” she says. “She sleeps in the garage.”

“That’s weird.”

“Not weird. Just her choice is all.”

Shane frowns. “You get the run of the house?”

“I guess I do.”

Chris—lying on his stomach on her bed, yearbook splayed out in front of him—doesn’t look up when he says, “You should cut her some slack. Let her back in. Figuratively and literally. We look at our parents like they’re supposed to somehow be impervious to stupidity, but the reality is, they make mistakes. They’re people like anybody else, and, sister, people are dumb as a box of Frisbees.”

“I said, it’s her choice,” Atlanta hisses through clenched teeth. “Now hunker down over that yearbook before I break it over your darn head.”

“Okay, okay. Here,” he says, stabbing his finger on a picture nestled amongst last year’s junior class. Dude in the picture looks like a real skinhead type. Long, lean, hound-dog face with hard cheekbones. Hair shorn, showing the black ghost of a widow’s peak. The collar of a gray jacket and a white T-shirt underneath.

John Elvis Baumgartner. Full name listed.

“I’ve heard of him,” she says. “Skinhead, right? Always thought his name made him sound like a serial killer. Don’t serial killers always have three names?”

“Yeah, but if you want to see the one that really looks like a serial killer . . .” He flips a few more pages, taps another picture. “There.”

Mitchell Erickson. A real pretty-boy. Firm jaw like the swing on a swing set. Blond hair, well-coiffed. Big smile with white, shiny teeth. Atlanta knows him, too. Or of him. He’s on student council. And on the morning announcements. And a pitcher on the baseball team.

He’s one of them. One of the popular kids.