My face is still on the screen. The photo on the TV is the one Sarah took on my very first day of school, the day I’d met her; and I have an awkward, uncomfortable look on my face. The right side of the screen is now filled with smaller photos of the five people we’re being accused of killing: three teachers, the men’s basketball coach, the school janitor. And then the screen changes yet again to images of the wrecked school—and it really is wrecked; the entire right side of the building is nothing more than a heap of rubble. Next come various interviews with Paradise residents, the last being Sam’s mom. When she comes on screen she’s crying, and looking straight into the camera she desperately pleads with the “kidnappers” to “please please please return my baby safely to me.” When Sam sees this interview, I can tell something inside of him shifts.

Scenes from the past week’s funerals and candlelight vigils come next. Sarah’s face flashes on the screen, and she’s holding a candle as tears stream down her cheeks. A lump forms in my throat. I’d give anything to hear her voice. It kills me to imagine what she must be dealing with. The video of us escaping Mark’s burning house—which is what started all of this—has blown up on the internet, and while I was blamed for starting that blaze as well, Mark stepped in and swore up and down that I had no part in it, even though using me as a scapegoat would have let him off the hook completely.

When we had left Ohio, the damage to the school had first been attributed to an out-of-season tornado; but then rescue crews filtered through the rubble, and in no time all five bodies had been found lying equal distances from each other—without a single mark on them—in a room untouched by the battle. Autopsies reported that they had died of natural causes, with no trace of drugs or trauma. Who knows how it really happened. When one of the reporters had heard the story of me jumping through the principal’s window and running away from the school, and then when Henri and I couldn’t be found, he’d run a story blaming us for everything; and the rest had been quick to follow. With the recent discovery of Henri’s forgery tools, along with a few of the fake documents he had left at the house, the public outrage has grown.

“We’re going to have to be very careful now,” Six says, sitting against the wall.

“More careful than staying inside a crummy motel room with the curtains drawn?” I ask.