Flinging the car all over the road, and them all over the car, while they were being chased was hardly what being in control should feel like, though.

Marcelline had baited her with the idea that all of it could fill in the gaps that had been blown into Carly’s life after the thing. And Carly had taken in every bit of it. Every weird thing to see about Marcelline would have been buried under the obviously weird thing that Carly had done by voluntarily laying out her whole life for Marcelline’s approval.

Carly’s own shadow had gotten in the way. A surge of embarrassed tears burned her eyes, but faded. She wouldn’t get caught out again.

“Why did he think you were dead?” Carly looked at the scar as if it would suddenly be an obvious story that Marcelline didn’t have to say out loud.

Marcelline cleared her throat. “Not all of this is worth going into right now.”

“Right. Not that I deserve an explanation or anything. You just don’t want to tell me.”

“I don’t want to tell you everything, no.” Marcelline cast a hopeful, sad smile at Carly.

But she didn’t lie. Not even about the hard stuff. And she didn’t hold back that she was holding back. It didn’t fix everything, but it was something. Carly didn’t feel like crying anymore right now, but that made her feel as weird as everyone else.

Marcelline steered around another bend with a little extra pepper on it. Carly didn’t feel much of anything more than wide-awake. “How do you know him? Was it from a long time ago? From before he and my mom got together?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Ooooh, boy. Whew. Okay. Where to start?” Marcelline was watching the road and her own past, too. “It will make more sense to start in the middle, but you have to understand, none of this is your fault.”

“My fault?”

“What happened to you when you were attacked, I don’t want you to think that anything attached to it after the fact—anything—makes what happened to you less of a big deal. Everything in life ends up being part of a bigger story, but it’s not more important than you. Or what you did. You were amazing. I don’t want this to upset you.”

“What do you mean?” None of the puzzle-piece edges matched. The zombie apocalypse might actually end up making sense.

“The video. It kicked off something more than just what happened to you that day.”

“Pffft. Tell me about it.”

“Now, what do you mean?”

“It changed everything. Just seeing it. I got to see what I did. I got to see how I beat him. It was just weird. Nobody gets to do that.”

“That must have been very strange.”

“It was kinda great.”

Marcelline looked over at Carly, checking for a joke.