A flurry of movement to my left draws my attention. One of the reporters is frantically directing her cameraman to zoom in on something. She’s found the bullhorn. But she’s only a few seconds ahead of the rest of us, because suddenly the crowd starts moving. It splits, people bouncing off one another in the chaos like bumper cars, trying to figure out where they belong, until finally a group of around twenty men and women wearing pink shirts stand on the left. Holding up signs.

Their signs have drawings of a dead baby. And calls for the #babykiller to be arrested, or otherwise—and ominously—“held responsible.”

Across from the pink shirt wearers, facing them down from the other side of the divide that has split the crowd in half, is another group of protesters. They don’t have matching shirts, but they do have signs of their own, and I don’t recognize a single one of their faces.

None of these protesters are from Clifford.

I catch Penn’s eye and toss my head toward the street, telling him to take Landry home. He nods and starts ushering our sister and his girlfriend away from the crowd.

“Go protest a clinic!” the woman in front of the right-hand protesters yells at the people in pink shirts. “This is a memorial. You don’t belong here.”

“We’re here for Lullaby Doe!” a man in a pink shirt shouts. “She didn’t have to die. The baby killer should pay!”

“The baby was stillborn!” someone from the other side shouts.

“She didn’t have to be!” that same man yells back.

The woman behind him shoves her sign into the air. “Fetal neglect is child abuse!”

“The only thing criminal going on around here is the criminal lack of quality sex education classes and the availability of birth control,” a woman from the other side returns. “Ignorance is a disease—”

“Moral decay is an epidemic!”

And suddenly everyone’s shouting.

My mother appears out of nowhere, with Doug Chalmers and John Trent, the patrol supervisor, at her side. “Okay, everybody, let’s just—”

“We have a right to peaceably assemble!” one of the ladies in pink shouts.

“Yes. With emphasis on the word ‘peaceably,’ ” my mother tells her. “So I want to make sure everyone understands—”

“Do your job!” one of the pink-clad men yells. “Arrest the mother for child neglect.”

“For manslaughter!” another voice calls. “Where is she? Where’s the baby killer? Is she here?”

“Come on.” Amira tugs on my arm, pulling me out of the shock that has frozen me in place. “Beckett, come on,” she whispers. “They’re looking for you. It’s going to turn into a mob.”

I lurch after her, numb. As I stumble away from the crowd, the light from the streetlamps streaks across my vision, and on my left, one of the television cameras swings my way.