He jogs away. His legs are straight and muscled, just like Skylar’s. The sun lights his hair, making it blonder. He glances over his shoulder, grins, and waves. Then he turns the corner and disappears behind Mr. Schuman’s hedge.

I hope Rob’s right. I know why Skylar’s mad at him, but I don’t know what I did to offend her. Maybe she’s mad at the whole world and taking it out on me.

I walk my bike into the garage. The tires are flat, the wheels are muddy, and weeds are tangled in the spokes. I’ll never ride it again. Maybe I should put it on the curb for the garbage collectors.

Just as Rob predicted, Skylar gets over being mad the next day. She even apologizes for what she said about my poison ivy. Zombie legs become something to laugh about. I threaten to rub my legs against hers so she’ll be a zombie too.

When I try to talk about what happened in the woods, Skylar says, “I’m done with that. It happened, it’s over. We should’ve spent the summer at the pool. That tree house was a dumb kid idea.”

I need to understand why it happened, what we did, how she feels about it, but she’s locking her memories in a secret Skylar room. Done. Over. Finished. Maybe she thinks the whole thing will shrink into the past, like something that happened long ago when we were too young to know better.

I’d like to be done with it, too, only what happened to us is always with me like an itch under my skin that I can’t scratch. I live it over and over in nightmares. Even when I’m awake, I see flashes of Ms. Sullivan running into the woods and Mr. Boyce sitting in the SUV, doing nothing to stop her. I smell the dead deer and the polluted water of the Paint Branch. I’m terrified Paul will get out of jail and kill Skylar and me.

If only we could go back to the way we were before—two halves of the same apple, sharing everything, no secrets.

Skylar’s new phone beeps. She picks it up and starts texting.

“Who’s that?” I lean toward her to see but she moves away, shielding the phone.

I shrug like she hasn’t hurt my feelings and turn to my phone. I can’t think of anyone to text, so I scroll through my email, which doesn’t take much time. Skylar is so rude.

Finally, she stops texting and turns to me with a big grin. “That was Jonathon. He got my number from Erica. He asked me why I haven’t been at the pool. He misses me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I was tired of the pool. I wasn’t about to tell him I’m grounded.”