She took the cigarette from my hand and lit it for me before passing it back. “People react differently to things,” she said, shrugging.

“Are you defending him?”

“No,” she said, but I wasn’t convinced. She didn’t know Christian like I did. When she looked at him, she saw what everyone else saw—student council president, valedictorian, star athlete, loved by all for his sly smile and self-deprecating jokes, the future leader of men. She saw who he was to everyone who wasn’t me.

“We were close when we were little. We used to hide in the closet together when things got bad. We used to—” We used to be a team, he and I. Before the lines were drawn, it was the two of us. At least until he began to believe Mom’s bullshit about how special he was, how he was so much better than me. “Christian doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” I said. He never stood up to Mom for me, never looked for me after a fight to tell me she was wrong or that he was sorry.

“Yeah, but maybe he’s sad and just doesn’t want to show it. Maybe—”

“Stop defending him!” I said, cutting her off. “Not you too. I don’t think I could stand it coming from you.”

“What?” she said, looking startled. “I’m not defending him.”

“I just want someone to be on my side,” I said, beginning to tear up.

“Hey, I am on your side, come here.” She pulled me in for a long hug. “I’ll always be on your side.” When Elise dropped me off at my house, she placed a light hand on my forearm. “I meant that. I’ll always be on your side, okay?”

We shared a small smile, and I thought: It’ll be all right as long as I have her.

FRIDAY // DECEMBER 9 // DAY 91

18.

By the end of her first semester here, Elise had cemented her reputation around school as something of a badass. She didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her, and she had this effortless beauty that drew other people toward her—long, glossy hair, thick lashes, startling blue eyes. The combination gave her a strange sort of invincibility, like she was untouchable, and she knew it.

But Elise only ever wielded her power for good, sticking up for people who needed it. She saw herself as a protector of the downtrodden, an everyday heroine.

There was a girl in math, Jane, who was frequently tortured because her mother was in prison for embezzlement.

“Hey, Jane,” Ethan, an obnoxious meathead, would say. “If your parents got divorced, who’d you rather live with?”

“It’s a tough choice,” his friend George would join in. “I mean, on one hand, you’ve got boring old Lyndens Creek, and on the other, you’ve got prison. It’s a tough call.” They’d crack up, give each other self-congratulatory high fives.

Or the time they made a show of opening a copy of the school paper issued that day. “Look,” George said innocently. “The school raised almost ten thousand dollars for the Red Cross. It’s a record. Hey, Jane, didn’t your mom used to organize that fundraiser?”