Mom scoops Mia into her arms as she pouts. “Come on. You can help me make lunch. We can cut our sandwiches into hearts.”

“Yay!”

I shake my head. “If only our problems could be solved by cutting our sandwiches into hearts.”

“Raegan, you can’t hide in here forever. Take a shower and come downstairs for lunch. You’ll feel better once you’re clean and fed.”

“What am I, a dog?” I stand and slide my mattress back onto the frame. “Nothing’s going to make this better.”

Becca sighs while I flop onto the bed and burrow under my covers. I hear the click of the door closing and release a breath. Finally, alone again.

Several minutes later, the doorbell rings. Then I hear voices in the hall.

My bedroom door bursts open, Kerry’s voice booming. “All right, ladies. Mary, Sammi, you two take her legs. Becca and Andrea, you’re gonna have to help me get her arms.”

“Be careful,” Mary says. “She’s scrappy.”

Before I can make a run for it, my friends seize my limbs. I’m helpless as they lift me off the bed and carry me out into the hall.

“Get off me! Are you crazy?” I squirm, trying to free myself from their grasps.

“Watch her head,” Andrea shouts.

“This might actually be easier if we knock her unconscious,” Kerry whispers.

The girls wrangle me into the bathroom and toss me into the tub. They hold me down while Becca twists the knobs to the faucet. Ice cold water rains down on me.

“It’s freezing!” I scream. “Get me out of here.”

“You’ll come out when you don’t smell like a barnyard animal.” Kerry squeezes shampoo into her palm and begins scrubbing my head.

“You’re getting soap in my eyes, you asshole!”

“This ain’t a picnic for us either.”

I don’t know if it’s the suds stinging my eyes, or if I’m finally giving up the fight, but hot tears spill over my lids. My head hangs down as the sobs rip through me.

Becca climbs into the tub beside me and wraps her arms around my shoulders. One by one, my friends huddle around me, getting soaked by the spray of the shower head.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sammi says.

I cover my face with my hands. “I didn’t think it would hurt this bad, taking the fall for something I didn’t do.”

Andrea squeezes my knee. “You were trying to do the right thing by Jaxon and his family.”

Mia appears in the doorway. Her mouth drops open when she sees all six of us crammed on top of each other, fully clothed, in the tub.

I open my arms for her and she crawls onto my lap, ducking under the stream of the water. “Are you sad, Aunt Rae?”

“I am.”