I sit by my window. The trees are dark shapes against the night sky. The cicadas have sung themselves to sleep. The only sound is a breeze rustling the leaves. The only light comes from a streetlamp down the road.

A car drives past. Its headlights sweep across my ceiling and change all the shadows.

Mrs. Doyle’s black cat Pixy glides across the street like a shadow of itself. What’s it like to be a cat, I wonder, and prowl through the dark like you belong there?

After Pixy disappears into a neighbor’s shrubbery, I stay at the window. Everything looks different in the moonlight—mostly black and white blended together in blurry shapes. Sharp edges are gone. Shadows trick your eyes. It’s hard to see clearly.

I want to stop thinking, turn off my mind, go to sleep. Most of all, I want to wake up tomorrow in some other universe, where Skylar and I never rode our bikes down Marie Drive. We never found the tree house or spied on anyone. Ms. Sullivan isn’t dead. She’ll be my teacher in the fall.

I hold this thought in my head and crawl into bed. Skylar is still asleep, her face peaceful. For now she’s not thinking about murder and death. I match my breathing to hers. Deep, slow breaths. Gradually I drift into sleep.

8

While Skylar and I pick at the breakfast Mom fixed for us, an update from the police interrupts the morning weather report. A man with a serious face leans across the news desk and stares into the camera. “In a meeting with the press this morning,” he says, “the police chief has provided more details about the murder of Kristina Sullivan, a twenty-two-year-old art teacher at Everett Stone Middle School. Ms. Sullivan was assaulted and killed in the woods near Marie Drive. A thirteen-year-old boy found her body under a pile of branches and trash near the train tracks. So far the police have no suspects. They’re imploring persons with information about Kristina Sullivan or her car to contact the police at this number.”

I look at the phone number. I want to call and tell the police what we know, but I can’t do it. It’s too big, too scary. Maybe I should tell Mom everything. She’d call the police. She’d take Skylar and me to the police station.

Skylar catches my eye and shakes her head. She knows I’m about to break down and tell Mom about the SUV, the argument, Ms. Sullivan running into the woods. I take a deep breath and close my mind tightly around our secret. We’ll talk to Mr. Boyce. That’s what we agreed to do.

“Will you be all right by yourself today?” Mom asks me. “If you need me, I can call in sick.”

“Skylar’s here.” I sniffle. “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?”