“Long-lost nephew.”

“Well, I’ll try not to feed them so much that they poop more than they already do, Shay Miller.”

We’d only been friends for a few short months when I’d given Kori the plush Badtz-Maru doll for her birthday. But, like dogs, teenage girls had their own calculations of time. Three months could be the equivalent to a whole year. And even as enigmatic and mysterious as Kori was, after three months of being best friends with her, I’d thought I had her pretty well figured out. I knew she’d like the gift, and was even more certain after she gave me the Charmmy Kitty. So I was a little shocked when she took her Swiss Army knife to its back and started pulling out the stuffing.

“Jesus, Kori! You don’t have to destroy it!”

She looked up and cocked her lip. “I’m not destroying it, kitten. Here, give me Charmmy.”

I reluctantly handed over my new gift, and with an efficient swipe of the knife, she initiated me into the world of secret keeping.

Now all of Kori’s secrets were sitting on my doorstep, boxed up courtesy of one of Mrs. Kitzler’s employees and handily delivered by Kori’s brother Kieren. I knew he was the one who had brought them, because Badtz-Maru was not boxed up. Instead the plush doll was set aside in a grocery sack, which for the Grove Market, where people who lived in neighborhoods like Aspen Grove and Bear Creek shopped, meant heavyweight, sand-colored glossy bags with an embossed logo of an aspen grove and stiff braided rope handles in hunter green. It was more suited for carrying clothes from one of the high-end stores in Denver’s posh Cherry Creek neighborhood than food. Kieren was the only other person, besides me, who Kori trusted with the stuffed animal’s very special contents. And I was grateful that he’d had the sense to keep those secrets safe from her parents.

After lugging the last of her boxes up to my room, I looked at them again. Judging from their number and weight, her mother had been true to my wishes and sent me everything that was truly Kori’s, i.e., anything that wouldn’t go with the new guestroom’s homage to roses and ruffles.

Looking at them, I felt oddly incomplete. I had since her death. Like half of me had been ripped away. I’d hoped having her things would’ve helped. But it only made it worse.

I pulled her Badtz-Maru doll from the sack and fished my fingers around inside the hidey-hole she’d made on the day I’d given it to her. I felt a sliver of plastic and pulled it out. Her fake ID.