I watch from the sidelines, sitting closest to Hazel, my phone balanced on my knee. As if Bree hasn’t banished me, I’m just deeply engaged in a rousing game of Toy Blast.

Maybe not banished. But whenever I look up, Bree’s giving me her sharp shoulder or her profile or her back, and there’s so much unacknowledged tension among all of us that I’m surprised the park isn’t crackling like a power station. Everybody obviously knows about me and Kincaid and Bree; nobody’s letting on what they think. Nobody’s talked directly to me yet since I showed up at the park after school—except for Trace’s “Sweet,” when I returned the key—and it’s ridiculous, how much it matters, how I’m dissecting every movement and word for meaning, wondering if people will start taking sides. He’s here, Kincaid, following the circuit, off in his own world again.

I didn’t go back to school for eighth period. Instead, I killed time wandering the side streets until school let out, lost in thought, sitting on the curb for a while, watching fallen leaves blow around yards and storm drains. I used to fantasize about cutting class all the time, wondering what it would be like, spending all day out in the world, free. But maybe there’s a point where freedom just becomes loneliness, living without a compass, lost in your own life. That’s what I saw today, watching Kincaid. It haunts me, the way that gray woman on Lorimer peered out her door at the world, maybe waiting for him, maybe not. Never once calling his name.

“Makes no sense.” Sage shakes her head as she watches the torture of Deacon Posey without really seeing it, her eyes swollen from tears. “I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I just kept thinking about it. Why would she have gone back out there?” Ivy’s on everybody’s mind, and I’m ashamed of worrying about my stupid drama, particularly the nagging thought that, thanks to skipping, my backpack is now trapped in my locker all weekend, my homework with it.

“She wouldn’t.” Bree stands with arms folded, obviously avoiding looking at Kincaid. I never meant to make her feel like she couldn’t look. It’s crazy how much I want to tell her what I learned today, about the little brown chalet house, how Kincaid snuck in and out like a thief. “I guess . . . when they find her, they can test her blood and everything, see how drunk she was. But even then.”

“She only bought one little bottle from me.” Trace, his tone sharp. “Same as always. Nobody’s getting drunk off that. And if she was acting wasted, wouldn’t her parents have told the cops that?”

“People think the Mumbler got her.”