But people might talk to me, crazy Lynette Taggert’s daughter. I was one of them. Had grown up here and still hadn’t managed to claw my way up or out. So, yeah, they might talk. If I could figure out who to corner and the right questions to ask. I thought back to that night at the funeral home, the things Land had said. Asking us if the girls had been acting any different lately, if we’d noticed a change. I truly hadn’t. But that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. Junie and I had been close, closer than most mothers and daughters. But I wasn’t stupid in the ways of teenage girls. I’d been one myself not all that long ago, and I knew the secrets they squirreled away, the crazy, self-destructive things they sometimes did in the mistaken belief that they were too young for anything really terrible to actually touch them. Hell, I’d been as wild as they come at Junie’s age. Had already smoked my first cigarette and nursed my first hangover by twelve. Had lost my virginity at thirteen to one of my mom’s boyfriends. Not rape, exactly. More of a lazy kind of coercion—come on, baby, you know you want to, I’ll make it good—where it’s easier to go along and get it over with than put up a fight. At least then you can lie to yourself after and say it had been partly your own idea. I knew more than I wanted to about the secret lives of teenage girls.

I sat up on Junie’s bed, remembering the notebook I’d seen her writing in sometimes. She always said it was for her poetry. Read to me from the wrinkled pages. But whenever I got too close, she hunched over, hugging it to her body, where I couldn’t get more than a glimpse of the words written there. At the time, I’d pictured hastily scrawled notes about boys she thought were cute. Maybe even harsh words aimed at me on the rare occasions when we fought, usually about something stupid like her wearing her coat to school or not staying up too late on school nights. But what if there was something more? Part of me didn’t want to look for fear I would find another way to punish myself after the fact. But I couldn’t let it go, either.

The cops had already given her room a perfunctory search, but hadn’t found anything as far as I knew. They were looking for some big smoking gun that I could have told them wasn’t there before they ever set foot inside. I was on the hunt for something less obvious. I let my eyes wander around the room, the small space bereft of many hiding places. A quick rummage through her dresser drawers yielded nothing more exciting than a pack of gum and a few loose marbles from a set Cal had given her years ago. I thought back to my own childhood, the places I stashed money or secrets in hopes my mama wouldn’t find either. I slid my hand between Junie’s mattress and box spring and hit pay dirt, pulling out the notebook with Property of Junie scrawled in gold marker across the navy blue cover.