IN SCHOOL I TRIED TO HIDE. GIRLS’ RESTROOM, FARTHEST STALL. Hoping to disguise my limp. (My left knee was swollen like something grotesque—like a tumorous grapefruit. Up and down my leg, nerves felt as if they were buzzing and short-circuiting.) Girls who were friends of mine, or who’d used to be friends of mine, were keeping their distance. Others, who knew the rumors about Jerome Jr. and Lionel, stared at me pityingly. Only Geraldine approached me to ask what was wrong, had I hurt my forehead, and my knee; and I told her it was nothing —“Nothing. Just fell down icy steps.” For that was true, in fact. I had fallen down icy steps and struck my head.

Blinking away tears. Trying not to cry. It was so touching to me, that Geraldine cared.

We were not friends now. No longer. Since my mother had scolded me, and said such shocking things to me about the families on Highgate Avenue, and her life before she’d met my father, I had withdrawn from Geraldine.

She no longer invited me to have dinner with her, for I had declined invitations several times. And so abruptly I’d ceased being a guest in the beautiful white brick house on Highgate Street—this was my gift to my mother, who (I hoped) would understand the choice I’d made without needing to speak of it. But at school, in those days after Hadrian Johnson’s death, Geraldine approached me as you might approach an invalid, sympathetically but warily.

“Did you see a doctor, Violet? What if your knee is broken?”

“My knee isn’t broken. No.”

I laughed, to suggest what a silly notion. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I had banged a knee.

I could not tell Geraldine what I was thinking of, obsessively—my brothers, Hadrian Johnson, the baseball bat. I could not tell her how I’d come to be injured, and how frightened I was of my brother Lionel. Of what he might do to me, when he had the chance.

Nor could I tell Ms. Micaela. I would not.

Seeing how agitated I was, and not in any condition to hobble off to my first class, Ms. Micaela brought me instead to the school infirmary adjacent to the administrative offices. Took my hand, walked with me along the (fortunately) empty hallways as if I were a little kid and not twelve years old. Encouraged me to lean on her, if my knee was hurting. (It was.) Turning me over to the nurse whose name was Ms. Donovan with the explanation that I seemed to have a fever, and had had “some kind of accident at home.”

Immediately Ms. Donovan peered at me, and exclaimed at my swollen eyes. A bacterial infection? How long had I had this?