“Mom … ,” I say, unable to finish.

Evie’s voice calls out as she jogs up behind me, “Stop! Wait. I was only kidding, cuz. Come back—you don’t have to, uh, get my lunch. We can take a break together when Anna clocks in and takes over the register.”

Heart racing, I glance at her, then out the window, where the Karrases are driving away. Oh God. I wish Evie wouldn’t have stopped me … and I’m so thankful she did.

Coward. Liar. Wimp.

I’m a mess. I’m a great big ball of anxiety and anguish. This is all so screwed up.

Mom doesn’t seem to notice. Her face softens as she says, “Evie’s right. The town will be talking about the broken window, and even if you didn’t do it, you were there. Rumors are going to fly about you and Lucky, so maybe it’s best you stick around the shop and lay low. Just for a couple of days, until this whole thing dies down.”

“Will it die down?”

“Sure,” Evie says.

“Absolutely,” Mom agrees, nodding enthusiastically.

So why don’t I believe them?

Chapter 6

NICK’S BOATYARD: A hand-painted warehouse sign hangs over the office doors of a harbor-front business. The two-story brick building was once a historical dry dock to repair cargo ships sailing from Canada and Europe in the early 1800s. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)

Chapter 6

Evie and Mom have severely underestimated this town’s interest in a broken window, because the hubbub over my crime doesn’t quote, unquote die down.

In fact, it’s all anyone talks about online for several days.

Photos of the broken window are posted to the Town Crier, Beauty’s social media account for town-related activities, tourism, and community-interest items—which this is, apparently. The pictures are recaptioned and spread around by a bunch of kids from Beauty High, and next thing I know, it’s being memed and used as ammunition against the Goldens from the private academy, then volleyed back and forth as both a symbol of smashing privilege on one side and proof of blue-collar delinquency on the other, and now I’ve somehow started a low-key class war?

Only, I’m not in the middle of it.

Lucky is.

This is going to send me to an early grave. I’m bad at lying, bad at secrets, and I’m dying to know what happened with Lucky and the arraignment. So after several queasy, restless nights of no sleep—and Evie being no help whatsoever, telling me over and over that it’s too late to confess—I make up my mind to sneak away from the bookshop and talk to Lucky about this whole sordid debacle.