I get into bed and check the messages on my phone. No new ones, not even from Skylar. I think maybe I should text her and ask how things went at her house, but then I remember that she dropped her phone in the water. I’m so tired. Too much has happened today. I can’t make sense of any of it. I want to sleep for a hundred years and wake up with no memory.

I’ll see Skylar tomorrow. We’ll talk then.

13

The next morning, Mom and I watch the news while we eat breakfast. So far, she hasn’t had much to say. The silent treatment is her way of telling me she’s mad. And disappointed. I’ve gone way beyond the limits this time.

A solemn-faced anchorman appears on the screen. “Police have charged Paul Blake, a local drug dealer, with the murder of Kristina Sullivan, a popular teacher at Everett Stone Middle School. He was taken into custody last night and charged with murder in the first degree, assault, operating a meth lab, drug trafficking, car theft, and a host of lesser offenses.”

A picture of Ms. Sullivan appears briefly on the screen, followed by a clip of Paul being pulled out of a police car, his head down, his hands cuffed behind his back.

“Isn’t that the man Greg knows?” Mom asks. “The one we saw at the DQ?”

“It looks like him.” I’m trying not to scratch my poison ivy. If Mom sees it, she’ll ask me where I got it.

“More details tonight,” the newsman promises. Mom clicks the remote and the screen goes blank.

I scratch while Mom’s not looking, but she notices anyway. Eyes in the back of her head, as they say.

“Is that poison ivy?”

“I guess so.” I stare at the ugly, oozing rash as if I’d never seen it before. “I don’t know how I got it. I’m so careful.”

“Somewhere around that tree house, most likely.” She takes our dishes to the sink and manages to make a lot of disapproving noises by turning the water on full blast and spraying plates, cups, and glasses like she’s pressure washing them.

I know what she’s thinking: Serves you right. If you’d stayed where you belong, you would not have poison ivy.

I start to leave, but before I’m half out of my chair, she says, “Sit down. I have something to say to you.”

Uh-oh. Here it comes. I sit down and brace myself. She stands at the sink with a plate in her hand.

“Greg and I were talking after you went to bed last night. We decided it might be a good idea if you didn’t see Skylar for a while.”

I don’t expect this. “Skylar’s my best friend. She lives right across the street. You can’t keep us apart.”