“Which is it?” Vera says, frowning. “You don’t remember, or you weren’t there?” The rain begins to fall softly, little sprinkles from the sky. Tossing my cigarette out before I close the window, I look up through the moonroof and watch as rain hits the glass, as it obscures everything.

“I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“When did you arrive? After he’d been shot?” Vera’s voice is detached, clinical. She could be ordering a turkey sandwich, not asking about a fatal shooting.

“No.” I have to focus. I will my mind to focus. I feel untethered, swept into a storm of uncertain memories. I need the truth. I need something to hold on to. I try to rub the sleep from my eyes, and finally, the moments stop shuffling.

• • •

Here, again, is the truth.

We were arguing, the three of us, about the pranks. It always goes back to Elise’s pranks.

At that point, Jack and Elise were no longer pretending to be friends, not even for my sake. They couldn’t even stand in the same room without setting off an explosion. She was gunpowder and he, a lit match.

I acted as an intermediary, defending one to the other, keeping them apart. If you’d asked me Sunday morning, not twenty-four hours ago, I would’ve told you it was just a rough patch. A spat, a series of misunderstandings.

“It was harmless,” I told Jack over the phone on my way to Elise’s house.

“You know it wasn’t, Remy. It never is,” he said, and I could just picture him shaking his head sadly.

“No one got hurt.”

“That’s not the point, and you know that,” he said, sighing.

“It was an accident.” It was. “Fireworks can be dangerous.”

“Exactly,” he said. “They’re dangerous. And she knew that.”

Silence stretched tight between us.

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Remy—”

“I have to go,” I said, ending the call.

Elise was outside when I arrived at the Pink Mansion. “Did you talk to Jack?” she asked.

“I did.” We entered the foyer and I slipped my espadrilles off by the door.

“What’d he say?”

“He hasn’t changed his mind,” I said, not meeting her eyes. “But he will. I’ll explain and—” It was all just a big misunderstanding, I thought. If I could just get them to listen to each other.

“You told him it was an accident?”

“I did.” We walked out onto the balcony, the air thick with humidity and still warm from the day.

“Why did you even tell him?” she snapped at me. “If you’d only—” She saw the surprise hurt on my face and exhaled in frustration.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

She looked out at the water below. It’d been raining a lot recently, leaving the river swollen, its violent current a symphony filling the air.

“You’ve put me in an impossible position,” she said.

• • •

At a stoplight, Vera glances over at me. My fingers play with the lighter Elise gave me for my birthday, flipping the top open and closed. Heavy in my hand, the metal feels warm to the touch, and I am itching for another cigarette.