She popped the smaller knuckles on her left hand. ‘Apparently, I –’ click – ‘get sort of hyper –’ click – ‘or something –’ click – ‘when I’m nervous.’ Click. The last one practically echoed, bouncing off the bookshelves and the picture of the ghosts at Niagara Falls and Dad’s desk and my chest. I doubted every word and movement, worried that my sleepy frontal lobe had created them for me. ‘And I think that makes me seem rude. I’m really not rude, I don’t think, but if I seem rude then I guess that’s the same thing as being rude. Shit. I’m so sorry. If I –’

‘No, that’s fine, I just … why are you here?’ I lowered myself into Dad’s leather chair, opposite June.

She shifted, and threw her legs over the arm of the couch. I straightened my spine. ‘I was just bored, I guess. Wanted someone to talk to.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you have, like, friends?’ It sounded meaner than intended, so I doubled back. ‘Heath?’

‘Honestly, I thought you might like some company too. We hadn’t talked in like, what, a month? I wanted to see how you were doing.’

I shifted. Felt like I was being dissected.

‘I didn’t know if you’d even be here,’ she continued, ‘but I remembered that you mentioned not, like, sleeping, and I had a hunch.’

It wasn’t really the unexpected visit that cemented my belief that something was strange about June Copeland, it was this. Her replies. I wondered if she did it on purpose – a bunch of little mysteries, protecting her like armour.

‘You couldn’t have just come up to me at school, or something? Like a normal person?’ I said this next part under my breath, aware there wouldn’t be much truth to it but driven by curiosity as to what she’d say. ‘I guess you wouldn’t want to be seen with me.’

June searched for words, then scoffed, seeming to struggle to find them. ‘I swear to God, I’m not, like, whatever Regina George piece of trash you think I am. I promise. OK?’ I hadn’t seen Mean Girls. But I knew what she was implying. I folded in on myself, embarrassed I had even had the nerve to say that. Maybe that was what I’d thought before. Not now.

A new sound: the soft hiss of her breath, and I listened as she inhaled for five seconds, then exhaled for five more. I couldn’t help it; I matched the rhythm once, then again, until the room itself seemed like it took a breath too. June’s shoulders relaxed, and I watched her become the girl from the cemetery, sincere and light.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘I lied. I just lied to you.’

‘About what?’