It feels intimate—wrong—to be in her bedroom when she’s not home. The duvet is rucked up to expose the wrinkled corner of a sheet. The pretend-gold bracelet I bought her sits coiled at the back of her nightstand, no longer inseparable from her wrist. It looks cheap in this light, childish and flimsy, and my skin prickles with shame.

I turn on the spot, eyes roaming over photos and furniture that seem newly alien, knowing yet not knowing what I’m looking for. This room feels like a foreign country now. Out of bounds. I remember when there were no borders between her space and mine.

Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?

Guilt stirs as I slide open the bedside drawer to see a black hairbrush, a packet of aspirin, an out-of-date magazine. Turning to the wardrobe, I glide my fingers over the dresses and pretty skirts she never wears anymore. I nose the soft fabrics, her scent trapped in them, like a memory.

Just as I’m about to retreat, my gaze falls on something at the bottom of the wardrobe. A wad of light blue fabric scrunched into the shadows of the back corner. I reach down to pick it up, but as it unfurls, shock makes me fling it away. It hits the mirror and drops to the floor, and I see it again: a dark lake of red encrusted on the front of one of her T-shirts.

I stand dazed. Heart thumping, I spread out the top on the carpet and stare at the dried blood, trailing my fingertips across the stain. Vomit surges into my throat as my thoughts scatter, crazy and panicked. My mummy, my mummy, my mummy.

—

Now I know I have to act. I stuff the top into my schoolbag and charge out. I’d feel braver if Becca was with me but I can’t waste any time, don’t want my nerve to fail.

I ask four different strangers before I find someone who knows where the police station is. Reciting the directions over and over, I stumble through the streets until I reach the gray building with one-way windows. I hate going into any place I don’t know: I’m never sure how to introduce myself, what I’m meant to do. I remember my first day at secondary school, when I accidentally walked into the staffroom and a dozen teachers’ heads swiveled toward me.

Pushing through the front doors, I stand for a moment in the foyer. My vision is full of bright spirals and I’m burning hot from the rush to get here. To my left is a waiting area where two people sit in tired silence. One has a plaster cast on her wrist and the other is aggressively chewing—I can’t tell if it’s gum or the insides of his cheeks.