In the bathroom, the women look at her, disapproving. She leans against the white-tiled wall. Over the roar of the hand dryers, she tries to understand what has happened. It is impossible. She retches briefly into a basin, and earns herself more disapproval from the line. I have to tell someone, she thinks, and the thought is cold and numbing.

She pictures the expression her mother’s face will wear as she tells her parents. Tries to imagine the tone of her father’s voice as he tries to forgive her.

The little voice says, If you tell, there will be no Pacific ballet school. Even through her fear for Lulu, Dee feels the molten creep of fury. They have always loved Lulu best, ever since she was born. Dee has always known it. It is so unfair. She didn’t do anything wrong, not really. This is real life, not one of those old books where a girl makes out with a boy and then someone has to die because it’s so sinful. She knows, deep down, that making out with the boy wasn’t what she did wrong.

What can she tell them, anyway? Dee does not have any real information. She couldn’t even see the car through the dust. Was there a car? She is not sure, now. Maybe Lulu’s body floated away in the lake. Or it was taken away by an animal. Like, a bear. Maybe Lulu woke up and went back to Mom and Dad. Yes, Dee thinks with a rush of relief. That’s it. Dee will go back to her family and Lulu will be sitting on the blanket playing with pebbles. She will greet Dee with an affronted look, because Dee left her alone, to do boring big-kid stuff. But Dee will tickle her and Lulu will forgive her in the end. So there really is no point in telling.

A fresh snail of watery blood crawls out of Dee’s shorts, down her leg. “Does anyone have a sanitary towel?” Dee tries to sound pissed off instead of scared, which she is. She takes her shorts off in the bathroom in front of all the women and rinses them at the basin. She makes a big deal out of it, so they will remember her later. Dee was here, and nowhere else. She doesn’t ask herself why this is necessary, if Lulu is waiting with Mom and Dad. The word alibi drifts through her mind. She banishes it, firmly.

Her period, she tells herself over and over. That is where the blood comes from. It is like rehearsing a dance—putting a story into the steps. Can she make herself believe it? She constructs, carefully in her mind, a day where the yellow-haired boy stood her up for ice cream, where Lulu never followed her into the woods.