“Just do it,” says Jezz so firmly that I stop asking questions. I just do it. As I put the car in reverse, I notice that the girl in the road has disappeared. She’s not on the shoulder. She’s not anywhere in sight. I blink hard. Then I focus my eyes on the rearview mirror.

I drive backward up the slope of our driveway. Patrick and Jezz bump up after me. By the time they’re climbing down from the cab, I’m out of the car, waiting, my arms crossed tight enough across my chest that they might be able to hold down my pounding heart.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I say.

Patrick doesn’t answer. He just walks past me and crouches next to the driver’s side wheel. He touches one of the bolts. I can see it spin in his fingers. It’s loose, almost falling off.

“Better get a wrench,” he says, without looking at me.

I pull a wrench down from the pegboard in the garage. I hand it to Patrick. He tightens the bolts, fast, one after the other. When he’s done, he stands up and hands the wrench back to me. He still doesn’t meet my eyes. His face is like cement.

I don’t know what to say. Thanks is too small. And awful as I know this is, I’m still so furious at Patrick for destroying Last Things that I’m not sure I can say it even now, when he might have just saved my life.

Instead I say, “How did you know?”

Patrick folds his arms, too. He looks past me, toward the empty road. “Somebody left a note in my locker.”

“Saying what?”

“Saying somebody was going to mess with your wheel.”

“Somebody? Who?”

Patrick shrugs.

We’re all quiet for a second.

“I guess it could have been Sasha or Carson,” I say.

Jezz gives a little nod. “Carson is a jackass, but this has to be illegal or something.”

I turn the wrench over in my hands. “They think I did something to Frankie. I get it. I’d suspect me, too. I’ve been expecting the angry villagers to show up with their torches and pitchforks anytime now.”

Jezz lets out a breath. “Yeah, that’s the other reason we’re here.”

I throw him a look. “Where’s your pitchfork? In your pocket?”

Jezz nods, faux serious. “It’s small. It’s a pitchspork, actually. More versatile.”

When I don’t laugh, he says, “We know you, dude. We know you didn’t have anything to do with Frankie disappearing. And we just wanted to tell you, maybe other people are saying bad things about you, but we’re not. And we’re not buying any of it. We know that if there’s anybody who’s upset about all this, it’s you.” He smacks Patrick lightly on the arm. “Right?”

“Right,” says Patrick softly.

“So.” Jezz shuffles his Converse shoes in the gravel. “That’s why we’re here. Moral support or whatever. We were talking about coming out here even before Patrick got the note, but then—yeah. Then we were sure.”