Are you guys OK? she added.

And then, so he knew and didn’t have to wonder, I’m getting a ride home.

And finally, Sorry for not catching up.

Then Mrs. Green’s car pulled up. When she saw Annabelle, she said, “Oh, sweetie,” and made Jeremy help Annabelle into the back seat and then load her bike onto the rack when they stopped to get it.

As they drove back to their neighborhood, Mrs. Green kept glancing over at Jeremy and then checking on Annabelle in the rearview mirror, and Annabelle kept staring at her phone, waiting for a text that never came.

Chapter 20

At home, Mom and Mitch popped up from the living room couch as soon as they saw Annabelle.

“Oh, honey, what happened?” Mom said.

“I . . . I fell,” Annabelle said, blinking back tears and cradling her hand.

“On your bike?” Mom asked. “Where? Why didn’t you call? How did you get home?”

“Mrs. Green brought me,” Annabelle said. “It wasn’t on my bike. I fell in town.”

Dennis Martin’s house was in town, technically. She didn’t want to lie, because then everything would be even worse if Mrs. Green told Mom and Mitch where she and Jeremy had been. But she was hoping Mom and Mitch would assume she’d tripped on a loose cobblestone near the Creamery or something.

Mom took out the rubbing alcohol and Neosporin for the scrapes on Annabelle’s knee, arm, and hands, and Mitch wrapped an ice pack around her wrist.

“Maybe it won’t be quite so bad in the morning,” Mom said.

Maybe.

Maybe after Annabelle had iced her wrist and elevated it on a pillow all night, it would go back to its usual size. It’d be a little sore, but she could deal with soreness. Ever since she’d started swimming seriously, at least one part of her body had been sore at all times.

And maybe Connor would text her back any minute. Or call, even.

But he didn’t.

The next morning, she didn’t have a single new text or call. Her wrist and thumb were even bigger, and the tender skin was pink and purple, like the ugliest sunset imaginable. She couldn’t rotate her hand at all. She could barely even flex her fingers.

When she came down the stairs, she expected Mitch and Mom to scramble up to help her again—to make a fuss asking what they could get her to eat and holding out ice packs and ibuprofen.

But neither of them budged from their places at the kitchen table. Slowly and almost in unison, their heads turned toward her, and the expressions on their faces matched. If she were a word person like Jeremy, she’d know how to describe the way they looked at her. It was something worse than disappointed. Something bigger than mad.

Could there have been surveillance footage after all? Could somebody from the security company have called somehow? Or the police, even?

“I can explain.” She scrambled for a story, but how could she possibly explain what she was doing attempting to climb the fence outside some famous person’s yard? She could claim that Jordan had left something important there when he was mowing the lawn? His wallet, maybe. Or his phone. No, an inhaler. She’d been helping, because he needed it right away.