Alexa progressed to the third room, which was clearly Katie’s. It was messy in the way that Morgan’s room was messy, with scattered bottles of nail polish on the floor, probably not closed all the way, and a paperback open on the bed. The dresser drawers were closed only partially, with pieces of T-shirts and pajama bottoms sticking out of them. On the pillow—the pillow! This was so something Morgan would do—was an uncapped marker, and Alexa reached for it. She saw the cap on the nightstand, which was on the far side of the bed, and as she was reaching for it she put her hand on top of the pillow to steady herself. There was something hard under the pillow (Morgan would do that too, leave something weird under the pillow—a contraband snack, maybe, or a copy of The Fault in Our Stars, which she’d been told she was too young to read until at least seventh grade) and before she could even think about what she was doing Alexa slid the object out.

It wasn’t a snack. It wasn’t a copy of The Fault in Our Stars. It was a composition notebook with a black-and-white marbled cover, very similar to the “grief journals” her mom had bought for Morgan. Don’t open it, Alexa told herself as she was opening it. Don’t you dare open it, you know that bad things happen when you stick your nose places it doesn’t belong. In eighth grade, for example, she sneaked on to Google Docs and read Mia Rosenberg’s narrative nonfiction draft and found out it was all about how angry she was at Alexa for stealing her boyfriend, Elijah Connor. In fairness, Elijah Connor had never cared that much about Mia, and everybody knew it, and anyway Alexa only dated him for two weeks because he turned out to be really, really boring.

And it was not like it was a diary, for Heaven’s sake! It was probably full of math equations. Diaries of eleven-year-old girls were typically pink and hardbound and closed with those tiny padlocks with keys that went missing all the time. This was just a notebook. Alexa would prove it, by taking a small peek inside.

The first line on the first page said, “I’m not supposed to write any of this down. I’m not even supposed to talk about it.”

“Alexa!” Katie called from downstairs. “Where’d you go? Alexa! They’re going to announce the winner!”