I told her that no one does sleepovers anymore but she just gave me a look that said, Yeah, right. The truth is, I haven’t been on a sleepover in a long time. Not since before Ellie moved away. And that was only two times and even then we just watched movies and ate ice cream. Once we rode our bikes to the park but we never went down to the railroad tracks. I’ve always hated the sound of trains—like an old woman screaming in a thunderstorm.

Besides, when I was in first grade, two boys were playing chicken on the tracks and one of them didn’t jump off them fast enough and ended up getting hit by the train. I have bad dreams about that sometimes—standing on the tracks and not being able to move. The engineer blows the whistle over and over but I still can’t move my legs. When I have this nightmare I end up falling out of bed and waking up on the floor with my mom, dad and Kendall standing over me. It’s embarrassing.

I think the boy’s name was Charlie and that his family moved away pretty soon after the funeral. I didn’t want to ask Kendall to tell me about Joseph Wither and why kids went down to the railroad tracks on overnights but my curiosity got the best of me and I didn’t want to sound like I didn’t know anything (even though I don’t) when Violet, Jordyn and I worked on the project the next day.

Kendall kept teasing me about not knowing who Joseph Wither was; she liked holding this over my head. She loved it when she could rub my nose in stuff.

I wanted to just ignore her and pretend it didn’t matter to me but it did so I ended up promising to do her chores for a week. Kendall even invited me into her bedroom, which is a miracle—she never lets me in there. We sat on her bed just like we did when we were little. She told me that Joseph Wither lived in Pitch about a million years ago in a house on Hickory Street, which is the same street where Violet lives. I asked Kendall if she knew which house it was.

She told me to just shut up and listen, that he lived in a house on Hickory Street with his mom and dad and two little sisters. Joseph Wither was seventeen years old at the time and was in love with the fifteen-year-old girl who lived in the house across the street.

I asked if she loved him back and then clapped my hand over my mouth when Kendall glared at me.