Even though I knew I needed to stop pushing it with him, I couldn’t. I needed himneeded someoneto believe me. It wasn’t like I’d imagined these things. It all seemed obvious to me, but they were his family. On a daily basis, I basically accused the people he trusted and loved most of murder.

I didn’t even know why we bothered eating lunch together, because we argued then, too, but by Wednesday, Phoebe and Gabe joined us. It was almost like they’d sensed their presence had been needed. Either that, or Hayden had asked them to.

Phoebe struggled with lunch. Even I could see that. So I did try to cut back on my frustration when she was around. I don’t know why I bothered. It didn’t make her any nicer to me and it sure as hell didn’t help things with Hayden. Our lunches usually ended with Hayden whisking off a pale, shaken Phoebe.

We tried practicing Monday night in the cabin, but that had ended in a spectacular disaster. Somehow a ceramic pot had crashed to the floor. We didn’t attempt anything Tuesday or Wednesday night.

As if things weren’t bad enough, I found spoiled chunks of hamburger meat in my locker Thursday morning. I started crying right then and there in the hallway, like a babbling idiot. Hayden had already disappeared, and I had to knock the globs of meat off my books and salvage what I could. My copy of Catcher in the Rye was ruined and my math book smelled like decayed butt. I had to tell someone, because it needed to be cleaned up.

I spent first half of the morning in the girls’ bathroom by the gym. No one ever used it except the smokers. It smelled, but not as bad as my locker did. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried that hard, and it wasn’t till the beginning of third before I got up enough courage to find a janitor.

I found Mr. Theo instead.

“Ember, why weren’t youare you okay?”

“Yes. No.” I wiped under my eyes with the sleeves of my hoodie. “I need to find a janitor.”

His brows furrowed and his glasses slipped, and I thought of Adam, and then I started crying again. After that, I ended up in the principal’s office. It was like a snowball rolling down a hill. Things just spiraled out of control from that point.

Principal Hawkes seemed like a nice lady, and Mr. Theo had been right. She didn’t tolerate bullying of any kind, and when he told her about the other things in my locker, she called the guardian listed on my paperwork.

Jonathan Cromwell.