Then again, everything after Marley’s death had a way of resonating.

Aidy and Harrison rode over the ledge and onto the wood chips. Harrison treated my bike as a motorcycle, bending his elbows and leaning forward like he might speed off when the light turned green. Aidy stayed at attention. Parks closed at dusk. She didn’t want to be breaking rules. Yet here I was—her little sister, sticking her hand in the cookie jar again.

I cleared my throat. “We found a few Marley things.”

“Where? Why? How?” Harrison asked for Aidy, who’d already trained her eyes on the legs of the swing set, zoned out on the HARRISON + AIDY FOREVER she’d scribbled there so many years ago.

The first thing Marley ever taught me was that it never mattered what I said, but how I said it. In a solemn tone, I reminded the group, “It’s been five years,” using the same reasoning I’d sighed over only hours before.

Matters concerning Marley needed no real preface anyway. That’s why they all came, on bikes no less, leaving the memorial in the chaos of my speech’s aftermath. Even after five years, the promise of knowing more about Marley Bricket was always enough to do anything.

“We didn’t want to keep going alone,” Nick added.

“Now you two don’t want to go do things on your own? That’s funny,” Teeny said. “Guess someone has to die for you to learn your lesson.”

A tiny bubble of old Ollie popped up inside me. My fists tightened and my stance widened. I bit down on my cheek until the urge to overreact passed. In stony silence, I filtered through many reactions until I settled upon the one that never failed me. “I’m sorry,” I said to her.

She didn’t respond, which was as good a stalemate as any.

“There’s a notebook, a folder, and a box,” Nick told the group. Everyone, except for Ruby, stared at him like he was an even greater mystery than what we’d found. EXILED GROUP MEMBER REAPPEARS AFTER FIVE-YEAR ABSENCE.

Aidy folded her arms. “How did you get all of this stuff?”

The tides stood to turn with every sentence. Keeping the group united hinged upon revealing just enough to keep everyone interested without upsetting anyone’s moral compass. Aidy would leave if she knew I broke into Marley’s house. The rest of the older kids would do whatever Aidy did.

I pulled out one of my stronger tricks: a related statement that could be interpreted as a direct answer. “Everything’s in the sewage tunnel,” I said. Like magic, they all followed me without further comment toward the how of it all.

“Remember this place?” Harrison asked Aidy as we crept downhill. He seemed to be unable to keep the quiet she wished of him. “I kissed you here for the first time.”