Just when I think I’m starting to get it, I realize Amy has told more lies. She said this was her room when it was Will’s. She said Evie was her best friend when they hardly spoke. She said Evie started the rumor about her dad.

“I don’t understand anything,” I say as much to myself as to Evie.

“What do you mean?”

“The rumor was that you got with Amy’s dad.”

“I know.”

“But there’s no reference to it online. Wouldn’t a story like that be everywhere?”

“You’ve been stalking me,” Evie says. It’s not a question, and she doesn’t sound angry. “Look, all I know is my dad came to me raging because someone told him I was doing Amy’s dad. It took me ages to convince him it was bullshit. He said he’d already taken care of it, and I didn’t ask what he meant because I was scared of the answer.

“No one outside my house ever talked about it. It wasn’t a rumor. I shot it down before it could fly. And then you started asking, and I thought it was happening again. But, if Amy is the one talking about it…either she started it or she knows who did.”

“Or she still believes it.”

57

Evie told me to call back if I had any more questions. She sounds like someone I could be friends with. The exact opposite of the girl Amy made her out to be.

I do have more questions, but Evie can’t answer them. I think only Amy can.

When Amy told me about her dad, she looked genuinely heartbroken. She believed what she was saying. I cling to that, because the alternative is too scary to accept.

What would she gain from lying? I didn’t know her father. I still don’t. He’s just an angry face and an awkward presence.

She opened up to me, and I promised to be there. Unless that was the trick. Did Amy make up a horror story so I’d feel sorry for her? Did she listen to me talk about the head-start line and invent her own tragedy?

Evie said Amy did a lot of strange things. And, knowing her, I can believe that. Some people get labels they can’t shake, and everything they do is the wrong side of right. There are kids like that at school.

At St. Gregory’s, Amy was the girl who hung out with the seventh graders. She haunted other people’s pictures. She changed enough for Nia to forget all about her. And yet she’s not hiding now. She’s taken center stage in my life, and I can’t shift the spotlight. When I close my eyes, I think of her, and, when I open them again, she’s there.