We lingered for a while longer. Olivia was noticeably gentler with me as she said goodbye, and Mom talked to people who thought I couldn’t hear them. Hushed: Sydney seems like she’s taking it badly. Oblivious: I think Sydney should see a therapist. Of course. There would be books in Dad’s office that accused me of projection, of being so averse to the reality of the situation that I had made up some fanciful hypotheses about all the things that could have happened that didn’t include the word ‘accident’.

And when I pedalled away behind Mom, her trunk full of bouquets that would wilt and food we wouldn’t eat, I swore I saw June Copeland at the curve where the hill met the horizon, her black dress playing between the stones.

That night, I rolled the funeral over in my head once, twice, again.

Dad laid out on the slab. Dad underground.

It all felt so strange. If someone had told me it hadn’t actually happened, I probably would have believed them; when I tried to summon up the memory of it, it felt flimsy, like I couldn’t actually hold on to it, like my brain knew it was something too deleterious to keep.

But June Copeland. She was there.

What the hell had she been doing? National Honor Society president. The likely salutatorian to Heath’s likely valedictorian. I had never even spoken to her. Just admired from afar. Which makes me sound creepy, but we all did it. We were almost expected to. They were paraded around as Pleasant Hills’ golden children, as some sort of goal for us, the common folk, to aspire to. Made even more impressive by the fact that June had only moved to Pleasant Hills freshman year from somewhere in California; originally an outsider, she’d assimilated so successfully that she hadn’t just become an insider, but now ruled over them herself. Actually, Heath was the school president – maybe June was there as some sort of fucked-up first-lady responsibility? But why had she … looked at me like that? Half like I was pathetic, half like I was pitied, as if I’d been an ant she’d accidentally stepped on but at least respected enough to flick off her shoe.

But maybe it was more than that. The strangers, quiet, with their heads down – maybe it was a thank-you.

Most importantly, though: why did I care?

That’s when I got the text.

My nerves stood to attention. There was no name. There wasn’t even a number; it was only listed as ‘restricted’. And it was nearly three in the morning. Who that I didn’t know was texting me at three in the morning?

I typed back with heavy fingers.