The ringing of my cell phone cuts him off, and we both instinctively glance over and see the call is coming from my mom. “I haven’t been able to connect with my parents for more than a text all weekend, so I should probably take this,” I say apologetically, grabbing it from my nightstand. “But we’ll talk tomorrow?”

He nods. “Yeah, okay. G’night, Skeevy.”

I answer the phone as I watch him go, but wait to speak until the door closes behind him. “Hey, Mom.”

“Evie.” She sighs, and I want to remind her that she called me, and I haven’t said nearly enough to exhaust her yet. “I’m sorry, again, that we couldn’t make it this weekend. We’re … we’re with your sister.”

“Of course you are,” I say before I can stop myself. “Of course Sierra’s the reason you’re not here. What is it now? Meeting with Principal Myers? Angry parent? Did she get another bootleg tattoo?”

There’s a long silence, and I worry that maybe I’ve gone too far, until she speaks again. “We’re in a rehab facility in Vermont, Everett. Your sister’s checking in.”

Chapter Fifteen

TURNS OUT, SLEEPING IS REALLY challenging when you find out your sister’s popularity has been partially due to her being the school’s go-to for pills. There’s a whole legal mess my mom clearly doesn’t want to dig into and “thank God she’s a minor” comes up about a hundred times, but the tl;dr is there was a deal on the table for Sierra to attend rehab and it was now or never. Which I guess does kind of put them not attending Parents’ Weekend in perspective.

But it still feels like ass.

The worst part is that I actually want to talk to Sierra now, to find out what the hell was going through her mind, and how exactly this fit into everything she did to me. Did Craig know? Did Claire? Were either of them using with her? I would be 0 percent shocked to find out Craig’s loser gamer friends were customers.

My brain is bursting with questions and expletives and more questions, and I break my rule again and look through Sierra’s posts, and Claire’s, and Sierra’s friends’, and I see nothing, except then I realize I do see one change, which is that I don’t see pictures of Sierra at all. Pictures I know existed on her friends’ pages are gone. Plausible deniability, I think, and I almost feel bad for her.