They felt obligated to figure out what Marley had done—or what I had done, depending on how they saw it—but chose to pursue it. And these people, the kids I’d known my entire life, chose to stay long past knowing it was a bad, or at least a very complicated, idea. They chose me and my version of the story. Even chose to let me lead us to its ending, knowing any choice would’ve been correct, but I needed it most.

I did. That was the truth. I needed to see I could be the youngest and still go toe-to-toe with the rest of them.

I stepped beneath the triangle of lights. All around me, our Marley was in pieces. While I’d slept, Aidy must’ve given Harrison everything we’d already found, because at the bottom of the pile there was the trophy head, and Marley’s school picture, and the red notebook, and the wooden box. All three parts of Marley’s leather journal. The two I hadn’t yet rediscovered were stained with dirt, dug up from where I’d buried them. Everything else was illuminated by the resting firefly bulbs: a broken tiara, Officer Bricket’s old badge, Ms. DeVeau’s pearl necklace, a family photo from Marley’s eighth grade graduation. One dead iPod. All the letters I’d hidden in my bedroom.

I was Houdini, standing before a rapt audience awaiting my final trick. But it was always Marley who told me how to perform. The last version of me that existed without her was Little Ollie, shrieking and crying for someone to fix the terrible mess she’d made. She flashed in front of me, examining the wreckage on her—Marley’s blood, already dried. Little Ollie held a wet towel, rubbing the blood into her skin. Painting herself with it until her mother called her name, telling her the shower was ready. I needed to accept that she would have to be where I began again.

So I took Little Ollie’s hand and washed her skin clean of the blood.

She was me.

She always would be.

The middle section of Marley’s journal sat highest on the pile. Holding it stopped my hands from shaking. The pages were familiar and still surprising, like remembering details of a movie I hadn’t seen in years. They told the story of a girl with a mother who expected a beauty queen at all times. A father who expected a level of respect no one could achieve. Sometimes Marley tried. Sometimes she rebelled. The real problem was, her father loved her, but he did not love her mother, at least not in the way married mothers and fathers were expected to love one another. But Ms. DeVeau loved images.

And Marley loved adventures.