I frown at Jake, but he won’t look at me, so I turn back to his mother. “Then why …?” He said he was on lockdown. He snuck me in because— “It’s me, isn’t it? You told him to stay away from me.”

“It isn’t personal.” Mr. Mercer is talking to my mom, as if Jake and I aren’t even here. “I hate to say it, Julie, but we never had a moment of trouble out of our son before he started spending time at your house. And if we’d known about the issues Kyle was dealing with, we never would have—”

“Nick,” Brother Bill says softly. “That isn’t relevant.”

But Mr. Mercer doesn’t even look at the youth minister.

Hearing my dad’s name on Jake’s father’s tongue feels like a slap in the face. He’s wielding it like a weapon, and I am defenseless against this blow.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him.

But he doesn’t look embarrassed or ashamed of what he’s said. He looks … sympathetic.

I want to slap the sympathy off his face.

He turns back to my mother. “I’m as sorry as I can be about the loss you guys have suffered, Julie. I can’t imagine what you’re all going through. But we have to think about Jake’s college—”

“Dad,” Jake snaps.

His father holds out a hand, as if to reassure him. “The tire plant’s been good to me, but Jake’s the best high school pitcher in the state, and between baseball and his test scores, he’s got bigger things on the horizon. But these days, it isn’t only stats that recruiters look at. We just can’t have him associated with the kind of ugliness that’s going around on the internet right now. With this baby killer hashtag business.” Nick Mercer waves one hand at me in a vague gesture of disapproval.

Anger burns beneath my skin. I try to catch my breath, but oxygen only feeds the flames until I am a human torch, alight with my own indignation.

“You can’t be serious.” My mom blinks at him, incredulous.

Brother Bill steps forward, his hands out, palms down in a placating gesture. “I think what Nick is trying to say is that there’s a lot of mud being slung right now, and if any of that hits Jake, it could have a devastating effect on his scholarship potential. For instance, there was a football player out in Virginia last year who lost his scholarship over the language he used on his YouTube channel.”