Kennedy let herself be pulled back toward our cabin, watching me with curious excitement the whole way. Frankie stayed with me, right behind me, literally having my back.

“Sorry for the noise,” I said to Jackie’s mom, not agreeing with Jackie that it was a misunderstanding—but I think she took it that way.

“Well,” Jackie’s mom said, pursing her lips like Jackie had earlier. They looked alike. Jackie’s mom tightened the belt on her robe and said to her daughter, “Hurry up and shut the door, then. You’re letting the air out.”

After she’d disappeared into the house, Jackie exhaled like she’d been holding her breath.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure her mom wasn’t there. It didn’t seem like they had a great relationship, and that made me feel a little bad for her.

I still didn’t forgive her for what she’d done to me.

“Do you still have the picture you took of Colette?” I asked coldly.

Jackie wiped under her eyes. “I think so.”

I told her my number; she put it in her phone. “Send it to me.”

And then me and my bodyguard walked away.

I’d only just sat down at the kitchen table with the sticky tablecloth and inedible lemon centerpiece when the text from Jackie came through.

She’d attached five pictures, all taken in the same outdoor location. I could imagine Colette telling Jackie to “take another one” as she moved through poses: Colette was serious in two, smiling in two, and making a silly face with her tongue sticking out in one. But in every picture, my friend pointed up at the sky, saying she was number one? That was my first thought.

Zooming in, I realized I was wrong.

It was an illusion picture, which I knew after the photography unit with Karly was really called forced perspective. It was like when Mia’s parents took her on vacation to France and she sent us a picture that made it look like she was holding the Eiffel Tower in her palm.

In these, taken on a field on the side of the highway, aiming toward town, Colette’s pictures made it look like she was balancing something on the tip of her finger. That’s what she wanted us to see.

Then.

And now.

That something was the bridge.

chapter 26

Frankie and I trudged along, cars, minvans, RVs, pickups, and semis zooming by on the two-lane highway to our left, houses set back from the road on our right. Some people had mowed their land like us, but others left the prairie grass long. It made my bare ankles itch, but our mom had made us promise not to walk on the shoulder.