I felt so shaky, like maybe the rest of my life would be tracking people down and telling them this secret. Or, no, that’s what the article would do for me. What I was doing now was a kind of gift for myself, to tell the people I loved, to prepare them, to give them time to forgive me. After the article, the rest of my life would be awkwardly running into people I once knew and then watching them silently consider how deeply disturbed I was.

“Sweetie?” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“You know the panic?” I asked. “The reporter is writing about it.”

“Oh dear,” my mom said, tugging on the sleeves of her camo tracksuit, “oh my.”

“Yeah, and, so, she’s been talking to me about it.”

“Talking to you?” my mom asked. “Just you?”

“Well, I guess maybe lots of people,” I amended, “but mostly me.”

“Okay. So, she’s writing about the panic. And that was, you know, more than twenty years ago, but okay.”

“And, she’s talking to me, because I was the one who did it,” I said. I needed to just say it. After Aaron, who thought his mom was dead, I realized I needed to be pretty forthright about this thing.

“Frankie?” she said, looking at me, her eyes watering.

“I made the poster,” I told her. “I wrote those words. I made it up.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, and she looked so sad for me, like she was in pain to see me in pain, and then she said, “I knew that already.”

“What now?” I said. She wasn’t in pain, I realized. She was embarrassed for me.

“Frankie? I know. I knew then. I’ve always known. Well, I mean, not always, not at the beginning, but I’ve known for a really long time.”

“But you didn’t know,” I said. “You had no idea. You thought it was the triplets.”

“At first, yeah, of course, but then I figured it out. You were so strange that summer; I mean, even before you tried to kill yourself in the car—”

“That’s not what happe—”

“Okay, well, I mean, you were so strange, more than usual, and I figured it out. Honey, how would I not have known? It was you.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. It was me.”

“I know.”

“Oh god, Mom,” I said.

“It was you and that boy that you had a crush on. It was . . . oh my god, the name just flew out of my head. His mom played the violin. I went to school with her. Jesus, I don’t remember her name, either.”

“His name was Zeke,” I said. “It was me and Zeke.”

“Yes, I know.”