“It doesn’t work like that.” I can hear the impatience in Cora’s voice. “It’s important to follow the correct steps.”

“Okay, okay,” I say. I settle back on the branch.

“Should we sit spine-to-spine?”

I glance down at the ground. The leaves look impossibly tiny. “Do you think that’s a good idea? We don’t want to lose our balance.”

“Come on,” Cora insists. “We have to do everything we can.”

“You really think it will make a difference?”

She considers this. After a few beats of silence, she says, “Yeah. I do.”

“Okay.” I slowly turn my back to her. I use my hands to grip the branch below me, almost as though it were a horse’s saddle. The only time I’ve ever ridden a horse in my whole life was when I visited Gammie and Papa in North Carolina. Parker rode along beside me. “You’re holding on, right?”

“Yeah, Quinn. I’m holding on.” Cora makes a clicking sound with her tongue.

“What’s that?” I say.

“Shhh. I’m resetting our environment so it’s clear that we’re starting our summoning ritual.”

Summoning ritual. Those words float around in my head. I like the way they sound—official. And magical. I hold my breath and suck in all the belief I can muster. This will work, this will work, this will work. The chant pounds inside of me.

“Okay,” Cora says slowly. “We’re both going to visualize that morning.” She’s quiet, and I think it’s time to start, but then she adds, “The science classroom.”

I close my eyes and try to draw up the pictures from the news articles that I wasn’t supposed to read. I always thought that was such a ridiculous rule. My brother had done this horrifying thing, but Mom and Dad thought that reading about it was what was going to cause problems.

I struggle to hold an image of the science classroom. The long lab tables with their black laminate tops and metal sinks, the unlit Bunsen burners in the center, the milk crate filled with freshly polished glass instruments. Usually my mind is good at drawing pictures. It’s like the only thing it’s good at, but for some reason, I’m not able to do it right now.

I see the science classroom, but then it flickers away, and I’m in the narrow upstairs hallway of my house, where the walls are painted a runny-yolk yellow. I’m inside the memory of a specific afternoon.

Mom and Dad were both at work. When I heard Parker’s footsteps, I came out of my room to see what he was doing. Those days it was rare for him to leave his room, and I’d stupidly thought that maybe he was coming to talk to me.

But he wasn’t.

Without any effort at all, my mind flashes to an image of Parker’s back, his curved shoulders and loose-fitting jeans with the brand label on the waistband tag. He stomped toward my parents’ bedroom and I quietly tiptoed after him. I willed him to turn around and see me, but he didn’t.