‘When can we meet up again?’ I ask. ‘If there is some of Roxy’s stuff in the attic then it’s really important that we take a look at it together.’

‘There’s no way you can come over when my mom’s at home,’ he says. ‘She’d never let us go up there.’

‘When isn’t she home?’ Now, I think, remembering she’s at the bonfire, but I don’t want to suggest it lest Ellis thinks me too eager.

‘Well, she goes to the mainland to stock up on Saturday mornings.’

I shift. Saturday might as well be a veritable lifetime away.

‘I’m just really worried about her being suspicious,’ he says, having sensed my dissatisfaction with his answer. ‘You said we have to be careful, right? Well, I don’t want to risk anything. Next Saturday. That’s the only day I’ll do it.’

My impatience is unfounded, I figure; we have the whole summer. ‘All right. I can try to poke around and finagle some answers out of Mary Anne in the meantime.’

I look up and realize we’re here, the Willowwood looming in the moonlight.

‘Sounds good,’ he says.

We exchange numbers in case we need to get in touch.

I watch Ellis leave. Once he reaches the front door he waves, a smile stretching across the whole of his face despite the heaviness of everything that had just transpired, despite all of it. There he is, headed into the house full of secrets that’ll save us. Him, me, Sandown, Roxy.

This has all gone so well so far that I feel an inexplicable sense of rightness – that I’m meant to be here, in this spot, doing this. My cells are utterly aligned. I am Mona and maybe the only thing I’m meant to do in this life is be here. Ellis – I can’t explain it – doesn’t seem real. He at once seems younger than he is but wiser than he lets on. So much hurt and still so gentle. Maybe even gentler than he would have been otherwise.

This gargantuan shadow of the investigation shrinks into something manageable. I’m light on my feet. Nothing like the police station break-in will happen again; everything will be under control from this moment on.

Celeste doesn’t deserve anything less.

I turn and head back towards my dorm, my footsteps barely a suggestion over the sizzle of waves from every direction dying against the rocks.

PART TWO: Take the Bullet Out

Part Two

TAKE THE BULLET OUT

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

MONDAY 31 MAY

There’s a shadow in me that doesn’t waver.

The eternal tar-dripped facet of my personhood. I could make myself whatever I wanted to be, were it not for the trauma – a chameleon always outed by the shadow, marked by the same dark matter.