By the time Abby’s funeral was only an hour away, Lia was trapped between a nausea-inducing dread and a sharp, stabbing fear in the back of her mind of facing the rest of her Lincoln. She had been avoiding the news and the internet. She didn’t want to know what was being said.

“Hey,” Gem said as they met up outside Abby’s church. “You okay?”

Everything felt muffled and distant, as if Lia were watching the procession alone and drowning beneath a thin veil of water. “Don’t leave me.”

“Never,” Gem said.

Lia managed a weak smile. Come May, everyone was leaving with plans and dreams. Everyone except Abby.

Lia sat in the back, Gem on one side and her parents on the other. People milled about, whispering to each other. The casket was closed, and Abby’s parents were sequestered behind the privacy of a sheer curtain that did nothing to block the sound of them crying. Omelet’s soft huffs peppered the proceedings.

Abby’s mom spoke, then Georgia, and one of Abby’s colleagues at the vet office where she volunteered.

Lia couldn’t cry. She stared at the dark wood of Abby’s coffin and kept a tight grip on Gem’s hand. Most of the school had come, and Lia could feel the stares.

“I wonder why it’s closed?” someone whispered behind Lia.

Someone chuckled. “I heard she cracked her head open. I bet they couldn’t fix that.”

“It’s stupid,” the other person muttered back. “A runner. Tripping. To death.”

A rushing sound filled her ears. Omelet’s ah-woo echoed through the room. Someone cracked their knuckles, bones snapping. Breaking. Like Abby’s.

It hadn’t been branches. It hadn’t been branches. None of the sounds she’d heard that morning had been branches.

Lia leapt to her feet and ran out of the church. Her hands shook as she pushed open the doors. Her feet thudded across the marble entry hall, and she shoved her way into the cold. Lia collapsed on the top step of the stairs leading down to the street and pressed her hands against her eyes. The dark behind her eyelids was the same dark in Abby’s dented head. The sunlight burned.

The door opened behind her. Two sets of footsteps stopped next to Lia. Devon and Gem.

“You’re breathing too fast,” Devon said. There was no judgment in his voice, and his fingers brushed her hands. “Try to control it.”

Lia drew a short, shuddering breath through her nose. “How can I control it when something as simple as tripping killed her?”

“Okay, don’t think about that part,” Devon said.

“I need a distraction,” Lia said. “I need to do something. I can’t sit still. I can’t stay home. I can’t just think because I’ll end up thinking about her. And what they’re saying. If they’re saying that stuff here, what are they saying at school? When they’re alone?”

“They’re saying they’re scared,” Gem told her. “They’re saying they’re sad. They’re saying the world doesn’t make sense. They’re saying the game is tainted because Abby was excited about playing it and now she can’t. They’re sobbing in the school bathroom and needing parents to come pick them up.”