Right. Like my having a total breakdown wouldn’t disrupt the unspoken truce Glenn, Cora, and I have developed over the past year. Cora cries behind closed doors. Glenn buries himself in work. I tiptoe in Sara’s shadow.

We’re constantly fine-tuning the arrangement, but it boils down to this: we all have grief—no need to share.

When the light turns green, Glenn turns left, which means he’s headed to the community center. The committee has spoken.

“Where is Cora, anyway?” I ask.

It’s not like Cora to miss a big “recovery moment.” I would’ve expected her to meet me at curbside pickup with pom-poms and a cheer about getting psyched for psychotherapy! Rah-rah, sis-boom-bah.

“She wanted to be here, but she got that second interview at Smith’s,” Glenn says, his voice artificially happy about the possibility of Cora managing a grocery store. I sink into my seat.

“Oh.”

Glenn’s fingers grip the steering well, his nail beds stained oil black from the auto body shop he owns. He’s been coming home later and later, and now Cora’s super pumped about this grocery gig because she says she “needs a new project.” I’m not buying it. Before I got here, Cora never worked and they still had plenty of money for vacations and dance camps and anything Sara wanted.

But nineteen surgeries put an end to that. A bunch of people from my old town even ran a big fund-raiser after the fire, but it’s clearly not enough. Through their closed bedroom door, they talk in low voices about depleted life insurance policies, and Cora argues on the phone about copays and deductibles.

Tragedy isn’t cheap.

Glenn puts his right hand in his lap when he catches me staring at his overworked nail beds.

“Oh, Cora says to tell you there’s a girl in the group from your school. Your age and everything.”

Classic Cora. As if finding a friend can make all my problems disappear. I agreed to move to this stupid town because I don’t want friends. I saw the way my old friends looked at me in the hospital, like they didn’t even know who I was. I kept waiting for Chloe’s deep belly laugh, or for Emma to gush about a new boy. But they all just kept staring at me, trying not to cry. I knew right then that our familiar flock would never be the same. I was too different, from them and from who I used to be.

They tried to contact me after I moved, Chloe especially, but I never responded. No one needed me around making them uncomfortable. It’s better this way—they don’t have to deal with me, and I don’t have to watch them try.

So I’m not in the market for replacement friends or a replacement life.