“It’s not a trap,” I say. “Jane is really, really good at this. She came to our house for dinner. She tricked Mum and Jay. And she brought us here because she thinks we can be broken like Amy and Logan were. But they’re not as broken as she thinks.”

“Or she’s completely brainwashed them.”

“No. Amy’s right. If we want to win, we need the right people on our side.”

Something surges inside me—a mixture of excitement and panic—as I say, “We need to tell our parents.”

“Dad will go ballistic,” Nia says. “He’ll knock their bloody door down.”

“Not if we do it right. We tell them everything, and we make sure they listen. Jane thinks her family is untouchable because of what she’s done to them. But she’s never met ours.”

“Yeah!” Zak says. “Sorry. But that was a pretty good speech.”

Nia laughs. Then we drive home to the people who have no idea what we’re about to tell them.

I think of Amy the whole way, kicking myself for not seeing it sooner. I pushed and pushed, asking her questions she was too afraid to answer. I forced her to remember a brother she could never get back and another who wasn’t real.

The best times were when I stopped asking.

Nia catches my eye in the mirror and says, “I’ll back you up.”

It feels good to hear, because, for so long, I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I didn’t know what was worth worrying about and what was just creepy coincidence.

Now we’re all in this together.

90

“Tom has something to tell you,” Nia says, “and you need to listen to all of it before you freak out.”

Everyone’s in the living room, even Zak, who walked in without a word and is making his most serious face.

When I’m done, Mum grips my hand and Jay stares in silence. He looks at each of us in turn then, finally, he says, “They took Aaron?”

“Logan took him. But Jane made him do it. It was a warning.”

“And there’s a grave?”

“No,” I say. “I think it’s a shrine or something. It’s where Jane goes to remember, but…”

Mum glances at the dirt in my fingernails and I don’t have to finish the sentence.

What would we have done if there was a body? If I close my eyes, I can imagine what we might have seen, and I have to open them again before my insides shatter.

“And Amy…” Mum says.

“She was coming to warn us. And now she has a plan.”

“I don’t like it,” Jay says. “It puts you all at risk. Why won’t she just tell the police?”