It came to me matter-of-factly, and then once the thought was in my head, I couldn’t shake it out. Why would Laura drug me?

Why had she possibly drugged Lily? To make her sick. I shook my head—I mean, To make her healthy again.

Like Agatha, right?

I tried to picture myself living here a hundred years ago, impossibly rich and surrounded by luxury. The servants’ hall would have been packed with maids and butlers eager to fulfill my every whim, and my closet would have held a rainbow of fine gowns and priceless jewelry.

I wandered to my closet. Fancy, I thought. I’m fancy.

But none of my clothes were remotely fancy enough. Sweaters. Jeans. Bah.

Then I caught sight of Agatha’s shoebox. The one with the Polaroid picture of a pair of blue stilettos.

Fancy.

I pulled the box over to the bed and sat down next to it, misjudging the height of the mattress and free-falling the last couple of inches.

“Whoops,” I whispered, and a giggle bubbled out of me.

I tried to be careful as I lifted the lid off the shoebox . . .

And then I deflated.

There were no shoes in this box.

Stupid box. All it held was a . . . I reached down and grabbed the small black rectangle.

A phone?

A new-looking smartphone. It had a charging cable wrapped around it, and slid between the cable and the phone’s screen was a handwritten note.

I unfolded it.

Please call me if you need anything, I programmed a bunch of numbers into the phone already (mine, B’s, Sofie’s). I am SO WORRIED about you. I’ll try to visit over spring break or summer. Get well SOON PLEASE! I miss you so much!

XOXO Kiley

Well, this was weird. Was this one of the friends who had supposedly abandoned Agatha? If this note was real, then that wasn’t true at all.

But . . . why would Kiley have sent Agatha a phone? Surely she would have had her own. And why would Agatha have hidden it for so long, then brought it to me? That made me remember the tiny bag of items I’d found for her in Lily’s room. The key, the weird vial . . .

I stared at the wall. There was an answer here somewhere. But my brain wasn’t capable of staying on one subject long enough to parse out this riddle. Images and thoughts and memories slid together like the mixed-up colors of a preschooler’s painting.

Quickly, I tucked the phone into the back pocket of my pajama pants and shoved the shoebox under the bed. The second I did so, I went from feeling relaxed and dreamy to feeling scared. I shouldn’t have a phone. Laura wouldn’t like it. Not one little bit.

If she wanted you to have a phone, she wouldn’t have destroyed your old one.

Right . . . Laura was mad at me. Laura hated me.