“This isn’t fifth grade, Fletcher,” Landry points out. “We aren’t going to get many bonus points for something a ten-year-old can do.”

Fletcher’s expression collapses like one of those controlled-demolition-implosion videos, where the buildings just kind of fold in on themselves, instead of exploding.

“Fine,” he says. “But I am not building a potato clock.”

When I realize I’m not going to get rid of them, I head into the kitchen and unplug our old iPad from its charger. Penn’s earbuds are lying on top of it, so I plug them in and pull up the Clifford PD’s Twitter page just in time to click the link for the live video feed.

I watch from one of the kitchen bar stools as my mother stands in front of the media in a small room at the police department. She says she’s going to read an official statement, but that she will not be taking questions, and neither will anyone else from the Clifford Police Department. Then she reads a single paragraph acknowledging that she is the investigator in charge of the Clifford Baby case and insisting that it was just small-town coincidence that her daughter found the baby. And she says, very clearly, that her daughter is not the baby’s mother.

The Crimson Cryer retweets the video of her statement, and I go to bed Sunday night hoping that when I wake up, my life will be back to normal.

People stare at me as I walk down the school’s main hallway. That isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, but before, they’d at least wait until I passed by to start whispering about me. They’d look away when I challenged them with eye contact.

Evidently “left dead baby in a duffel bag” trumps “father killed himself right in front of her.” Even if neither of those is true.

There’s no way anyone at school could possibly have missed my mother’s statement. The Crimson Cryer’s retweet of it got more than a thousand comments debating its accuracy in twelve hours. But no one here seems to believe a word my mom said.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the rumor mill is deemed more trustworthy than an official police statement. But that is definitely the case at school.

“She wasn’t in class on Friday.” The whisper comes from behind me, but I can’t tell who’s talking. “She could totally have spent all day in labor in the locker room, then pretended to find her own baby during seventh period.”

“—really think she killed it?”

“Why didn’t she just call 911? The poor thing might have lived if it was born in a hospital.”

When I can’t stand any more of the stares and whispers, I stop in the middle of the hall and take a deep breath.

“Don’t,” someone whispers as an arm links through mine.