“Scottie, thank you—for being a friend!”

And then we both burst into song: “Traveled down a road and back again! Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidante! Thank you for being a friend!”

I could remember being eight years old, during the worst of it between my mother and father. I always thought of those years as the “Yellow Apartment Years” because we had moved into this extremely depressing complex that was painted a violent shade of marigold. And The Golden Girls would come on, two back-to-back episodes, on the Lifetime network, right when I got off school. Gabby and I would eat tortillas I microwaved with ketchup and Kraft Singles inside, and watch The Golden Girls, arguing about who was our favorite. She loved Blanche, but I loved Sophia. For her meanness. She didn’t seem to need any of the others. She was complete in herself.

“Do you think you could tell us any more about that night?” Detective Carmine asked.

“Right,” I said, snapping back into the present. And then I told them. It would have taken too much strange effort to refuse to tell them. And I did not wish to owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills in case I couldn’t get into Medi-Cal. That wasn’t justice, not justice for me. I did not, however, mention that I thought I had heard Jason’s voice. I had decided that his voice had been a hallucination, something I made up, possibly even after the fact.

“But,” I said, “I don’t want to press charges.”

“That’s something that happens on TV,” Detective Brown said. “You don’t press charges, the DA does, and it all depends on whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute.”

“Oh,” I said. It seemed wrong that I could be in a hospital for a crime there wasn’t enough evidence for, as though I were Schrödinger’s cat. I might be, but possibly was not, the victim of assault. Maybe four guys had gotten together and beaten the piss out of me, or maybe they hadn’t? Hell, who could say in this wacky world! It didn’t matter that I was bruised, peeing blood, that it hurt like fuck to laugh or sneeze because my ribs were broken. Just moments ago, when I had thought the choice was mine, I had wanted to make sure those boys would not be brought up on charges, but now that I knew I was powerless, I was furious that they might not be, and anxious about what it might mean in terms of my medical expenses.

“A social worker should be stopping by today or tomorrow to see you,” Detective Carmine said. I was released the next day, and Bunny drove me to her house in her red Jeep Cherokee, and I dimly saw through the darkened glass Jason watching from our kitchen as she led me, limping, up the path into her mansion.

Bunny devoted herself to taking care of me in a way I might not have expected. The next morning, she showed up in my room. They had installed me in the Madame Butterfly Suicide Sex Suite, a place teeming with memories of Anthony, so that any surface my mind attempted to land on became a knife that cut me. She was carrying a tray: peanut butter toast, a bruised banana, and a shot glass holding a bug-eaten rose from their front yard. I had been worried after the way I drunkenly insulted Ray that I would not be allowed to stay with them, but Bunny had told me he was extremely sorry and embarrassed about it, and indeed Ray himself had made a speech to that effect immediately upon my entering their home, and at the end had even gotten down on one knee and grasped my hands. “I am determined,” he said, “to become a better man.” I looked at him, understanding that he was already very drunk. The bruising on his cheeks was gone now, I had been in the hospital for so long, but there was a hot pink seam at his hairline that I couldn’t stop looking at. Really, all things considered, he did look much better, and it was amazing how completely the bags under his eyes were gone. He looked ten years younger. With his eyes open, you could no longer see where the stitches had been because they were right in the fold, but every time he blinked, you could see the hot red line where they were still healing. I did not believe he would become a better man, but I was very grateful he was letting me stay in his house. When I thought of the things I had said to him, especially about Allison, I felt like a dog that had pooped indoors.

“Oh my god,” I said, gesturing at the tray. “You’re so Judy!”

“Well, you deserve it. I’m not going into work today,” Bunny told me as I ate my peanut butter toast. She had thrown herself across the foot of the bed, having settled me with my tray, and was now examining her toes.

“I know I’m not allowed to mourn,” Bunny said. “But I—”

“For Ann Marie?”

“Yeah. I just, you know, and I never, I just can’t—” Her words were like a car that wouldn’t start, an engine that refused to turn over into a full sentence.

“I know,” I said. “Bunny, I know.” What had happened was so big, and we were so used to considering our lives as trivial. We almost didn’t know how to approach it. The largeness of what had happened, of what we had done.

“It was an accident,” Bunny said, her chin crumpling. “I never meant. I never, ever, ever meant to—”

“Of course you didn’t,” I said. “I know that.”

“I loved her. I mean, I hated her, but I also loved her.”

Those two girls growing up in that red sandbox. Those two ponytailed heads turning at the sound of the ice-cream truck. Ann Marie’s round ugly-cute face in goggles as they stared at each other underwater. They had braided each other’s hair. They had slept in the same sleeping bag. Ann Marie had known Allison, could remember meals Allison used to cook. She knew how their living room used to look before Ray redid it.

“And then sometimes,” Bunny said, “sometimes I’m just mad at her. Please don’t ever tell anyone this because it’s so bad that I even think these things, but like, of course Ann Marie would find the ultimate way to ruin my life with her crazy-fragile brain tissue. Like, how dare you die and pin all of this on me, and I even picture her, like, laughing in heaven or whatever. She was always so on about heaven. Who was getting in and who wasn’t. Who God loved and who he didn’t. And then I thought I saw her. At the Rite Aid.”

“What?”

“I just fully hallucinated that this other girl was her! She was in the skin-care aisle, and I was so convinced it was Ann Marie that I was, like, creepily walking up behind her, about to tap her on the shoulder. And I just thought, oh thank god, it’s all been a big mistake.” She stared at me. “Am I going insane? How could I think that? How could my mind—and I just keep remembering stuff. Stuff we did as kids. Like we loved the game Concentrate. Do you remember that game?”

“No,” I said.

“It was a really weird game, I don’t even know how we learned it, but it was like a rhyming game? Where you were supposed to be hypnotizing the person and kind of simulating these experiences for them? You would hammer on their back with your fists and say, ‘Concentrate, Concentrate, People are dying, Babies are crying, Concentrate.’ ”