“So, she really only cares about what people are saying?” I ask. In a weird way, I almost want Molly to take it back, or soften it, I guess. I don’t think I want to believe Rose is like that.

“Yeah. And to be fair, people are saying a lot.”

“I know,” I say grimly. “I saw some of it.”

Being publicly turned on en masse by people who have never met me, like what seems to be happening to Rose right now? I don’t think I could cope. Like, I legitimately think I would crumble.

“Didn’t they get in trouble?” I ask. “I mean, underage drinking, pills…”

From the look on Molly’s face, you’d think I told the best joke she’d ever heard. “When you’ve got enough family money, these things tend to go away,” she says. “Rose has had it the worst of all of them, really. Even if the law lets her get off scot-free, the papers never will.”

From the look on her face, she doesn’t think the trial-by-media Rose is going through really cuts it as a punishment. And even if I do feel bad for Rose after reading some of those articles, I don’t exactly disagree. Not when I know for a fact that if I or any of my classmates back home got caught doing drugs like that we’d probably end up in juvie.

Molly chews on the inside of her cheek until a fold forms by her mouth. She concentrates on her phone for a few seconds, and then she passes it to me. “This was Oscar,” she says, and I realize I’m looking at his private personal page.

Oscar, a thin guy with pale, red-cheeked skin and bright blond hair, wasn’t a huge social media user—he only has about twenty photos on there. But in all of them, he’s smiling from ear to ear. There’s him with a shorter-haired Molly, and him holding a stretched-out ragdoll cat, and him stroking a horse’s neck.

“He loved animals,” Molly says, looking at the screen over my shoulder. “That was his horse, Nutmeg. I don’t actually know what happened to her. I might ask his mom.”

Something about the look on her face—sad and bitter and happy and fond all swirled up together—tells me she wants to talk about him. I mean, he hasn’t come up before. Maybe she and her friends avoid talking about him. Maybe she isn’t sure if she can.

So, I keep flipping through his photos, and say, “He looks like a great person.”

“He was.”

“Tell me more about him,” I say, and in one hit, the sadness and bitterness fade by half, and she smiles almost as big as Oscar did in the photos.

And she does.

EIGHT ROSE