I rode my bike into town. I’d obviously opted not to go to Harvest Hills. I couldn’t believe Jade was going, but she’d gotten someone to take her shift at the theater and everything. Mom asked me again in the morning but I’d said I had a headache. Sitting around pretending Blair was going to come home and everything would be perfect felt like a waste of time. I didn’t want to see her, sad and skinny, in a visitors’ area with a bunch of sick people. Blair belonged in a place where she could be dancing or drawing, under a spotlight with all eyes on her. Not in a place with depressed-looking brochures. On the Harvest Hills website, they had a huge picture of a girl with long blond hair and sad eyes looking out a window. It didn’t exactly make you want to spend a day there.

Once upon a time, Blair had been my favorite person in the world. But that was before Anna Rexia blindfolded her and kept her prisoner. Now, just thinking about her made my throat start to pinch shut. It was a lot easier to pretend Jade was my only sister, as terrible as I know that sounds.

You can judge me all you want. You live with someone who’s afraid of a cupcake and tell me how it feels. You let your best friend be kidnapped by a monster and act like everything’s fine. Family, love, support, blah blah blah—more brochure words. The truth is, sometimes you just want to eat a family dinner without someone bursting into tears.

I walked into Hank’s Hardware and More, waving to Joe, and found the metal detectors. Man, those things were expensive! I grabbed three and went up to the counter, playing it cool.

“Hey, Abby,” said Joe. “Going treasure hunting?”

“Extra credit project. Summer school,” I said. Hey, I was getting good at this. Apparently lying was like ballet: the more you practiced, the more graceful you became.

“Where are you taking these things? The shore?”

“Yup,” I said, nodding. I should really do that, I thought. Snap an Instagram. Make it look extra convincing. Not that Joe was perusing social media.

“You, Sophie, and Lex working together?”

“What?”

“Three of ’em,” he said as he rang them up.

“Oh. Yup. Group project.” Of course, now I had to be paranoid that he was going to run into them and ask them how the metal detectors were working. Lies—they grew and grew. You could drop a seed by accident and find yourself with a field full of weeds.

“Hey, by the way, how’s Blair? Georgia wanted me to ask.” Joe’s wife loved Blair. She even drove to Milwaukee once to see her in The Nutcracker. But really, everyone loved Blair. I could hardly walk down the street without someone asking about her.

“She’s good,” I said, forcing a smile. As if I knew. I hadn’t seen her in months. I knew about as much as Georgia did.