Her dad made the whole book up, I said. That’s what I heard. It’s not even her real diary.

Doesn’t surprise me, she said, doesn’t surprise me at all. I like the other one better. It’s more true. You know, she said, wiping her nose, the one with the tea party and the tunnels and Eat Me. Yeah, man, I like that one. It’s more true. My mom named me after the girl in that fairy tale.

Since I’d arrived, cabbing it down here with the money my father left me for food, China had been confessing to me like a madman.

Maybe it was because I showed up in a beige raincoat which once belonged to Everly. I couldn’t handle wearing my father’s flannel shirts, and besides, I was tired of looking like an unsexy hick. Since I didn’t have leather pants or a fur coat, I thought I should at least try to look elegant. My mother’s trench coat was plaid inside, and the words on the worn-out label were London Fog. I don’t know why Seamus held on to her coat because he generally tried to erase Everly as if she was a wife of chalk. China said the coat made me look like a private detective.

Maybe that’s why she kept confessing.

She told me a lot of things which aren’t really anybody’s business, and I would never repeat them, but they were enough to make me hate the world. The world is just a fucked-up place. I really hated the world.

You’ve probably figured out that what Braun said about her was true.

Big surprise.

It was to me.

When she told me that she was what he said she was, I’d shivered as if the rain was suddenly falling inside of me.

The whole room looked different to me.

It was like when you get your eyes checked and they slide those magnifying glasses right in front of your eyes. Some things blur, some things are so clear you can’t even see.

I saw the smashed bottles, the slash in her sheets, the place on the wall where she’d scrawled, No one here gets out alive.

But I didn’t let on; I hid my surprise. The last thing I wanted was for a friend of Justine’s to think I was naive. It was funny, though, because right after she confessed, she asked me if I would help her with this man. Please, she said, I need your help. So I can get out of here and go to Penticton. I’m ready to get clean. My mother’s there. I think she’s still alive.

How could I say no?

Especially because she’d also confessed that as soon as she saw me, she knew. I was the one. Other girls, she’d begged before, but they all said no way.