Kaye locked the door. She got out her paints and turned on a “nature sounds” playlist. The first song was a recording of ocean waves; she chose a breast with a vast white patch that looked like a desert island, and she started to paint.

9

NOVEMBER 14

Jillian’s father stabbed a tiny potato and held his fork up like a king holding his scepter. “I got four signatures last night,” he said.

Jillian and her mother made encouraging sounds. They talked about the petition every night at dinner.

“And guess what?” he said.

“Four trees were down?” her mother said.

“A maple sapling. Down by the creek.” From his expression, you’d have thought he’d run over a dog.

“That’s how many by the creek, eleven?” her mother said.

“Easiest place not to get caught. He’s such a coward.”

“We don’t know it’s him,” her mother said, cutting her salmon.

“The town ought to hire a dick to follow him.”

She and her mother both looked up.

“A dick?” Jillian said.

“It’s a term for a detective,” her father said.

Jillian nodded. It was a term for something else too. She lined her string beans up in a row. They looked like the planks of a raft. Or the posts of a picket fence. That was it. A fence. She slipped them under the table one by one, to Candy’s waiting mouth. Candy kept sniffing her leg. She probably smelled Rex. It was lucky her parents’ sense of smell wasn’t as good as the dog’s.

Her mother looked at Jillian’s plate. “Not hungry, Jill?”

“I had a late snack,” she said. Lindy had candy bars stashed in the White Elephant fort, Twixes and peanut butter cups among them, Jillian’s favorites. She and Lindy had been going up there every afternoon all week. That was what she did after school now. She didn’t go to clubs. To heck with clubs. The fort was a wonderland with lemon candles from Lucy’s (“Did you steal them?” “I borrowed them.”), a big beach towel, throw pillows, and sugar. There was a Ouija board and Gypsy Witch tarot cards, which they used to learn their fates. “Does Mark Strauss love me?” they asked the Ouija board. Y-E-S the board said, and it didn’t feel like Lindy was pushing it. Lindy kept it all in a box she stashed in the rafters, transforming the room from construction site to magic fort in a few short minutes.

“Did you like those new rice cakes?” Jillian’s mother said.

“What?”

“The ones I packed. They’re a new kind.”

“Mm-hm,” Jillian said.

“Club went late today, didn’t it?”

“I didn’t go,” Jillian said, not thinking.

“What?” Her parents paused midbite to look at her.