Penn is clearly ready to rip someone’s head off, but my mother looks … relieved. That takes me a second to understand.

Fletcher Anderson is fourteen years old. He’s in the eighth grade, with Landry. He and my sister made a huge, stupid mistake, but they’re just kids. They’re both just kids.

The alternative—Landry getting pregnant by someone who isn’t her age—would have been infinitely worse.

But it’s already pretty bad.

“Fletcher. But he was just over here the other day. Are you two still together?” I ask.

Landry gives me a teary head shake. “We were never really together. It just … happened. Then I felt bad, because Norah really likes him. I don’t really talk to him anymore. I didn’t know he was coming over the other day. She just invited him to join our project.”

Of course she did. Norah knew he was Lullaby Doe’s father, and she invited him to our house. Without even warning Landry!

“Okay, we’ll figure out what to tell Fletcher and his parents later. For now, just tell us what happened. You need to tell us everything. Norah wanted to have a baby too? Do you have any idea why she would want that?” Mom asks.

I wonder if this is how she sounds when she questions other people’s children. Calm and rational. As if her entire world isn’t falling apart around her.

“She said it was so I wouldn’t be doing this by myself. So that if people were mad, they’d have to be mad at both of us. She said it was for me. Because she’s my best friend.”

But that’s not it. Not really. Norah Weston needs attention like most people need food and air. If she wanted to have a baby, it was to keep Landry from getting all the attention. If she wanted that baby to be Fletcher Anderson’s, it was because she didn’t want Landry to have all of Fletcher’s attention.

Norah’s had a crush on him forever. It must have killed her to find out he liked Landry.

“I tried to talk her out of it,” my sister says. “I told her one baby would be hard enough. And finally she said she wouldn’t do it if I … If I let her help me raise my baby. She said it could be our secret. I mean, not forever, but for a little while, at least.”

I want to wring Norah Weston’s skinny little neck.