“Nice try baiting me into a confession; it isn’t going to happen.” She stands up and one of the guards begins to approach the table.

“Tell me the truth or I bury you,” I growl back at her, but she refuses to look at me. “Pamela!” The guard comes over and reapplies her handcuffs, guiding her away from me as I stand there, shaking and panting and probably crying again. “Mom!”

With a snarl, I hit the table with the heel of my hand so hard that I actually cry out, cradling it against my chest as I shove up to my feet and storm over to the exit.

Sara Young is waiting just past the metal detectors, leaning against a wall and smiling sympathetically back at me.

“Did you get anything out of that?” she asks me, but I’m sure she can already tell, based on the wetness glistening on my cheeks, or the way I’m cradling my hand against a chest full of broken, ugly things.

“You mean did I get the closure I was so desperately seeking?” I choke out with a harsh laugh. It isn’t fair. I’m supposed to get some sort of closure. That’s what the list is about. That’s how books work. Movies. Comics. The hero confronts the villain and gets all the answers. But … real life makes no narrative sense. “No.”

I start to head for the door, but Sara reaches out, capturing my upper arm.

“What did you come here for, Bernadette?” she asks, and even though I know I should just yank my arm away and storm out of the building, her brown gaze is clement and indulgent. In her own way, Sara cares about me.

I stare down at her hand on my arm and she very carefully pulls it away, still watching me, dressed in a black cap, jeans, and a Polo shirt. Now that she isn’t playing the doe-eyed police girl, her outfits have changed. I was getting played much harder than I thought by sweet little Sara Young.

“I wanted to know if she really did it,” I say, my voice a hollow echo of its usual self. My eyes narrow and the corners of my lips turn down in an exaggerated frown. “I think that by avoiding coming here, I thought I could avoid the reality of it. But I just … can’t anymore.” I look back up at Sara’s face, dark with a melancholic sort of sympathy. “Pamela murdered Penelope for the crime of … what? Being a victim? Being abused and ignored and cast aside. I don’t understand it.”

“People like you and me will never understand people like Pamela Pence.” Sara stands up straight and turns to face me, like we need to be on level ground in order for this conversation to happen. “Someone who fights against their own self-interest, who believes in something that’s corrupt and broken. Bernadette, I know you said your mother seemed upset over that video with Neil and Penelope, but … I don’t think it was for the reasons you wanted it to be.”

Yeah, how ironic is it that Pamela fucked up so badly that even a lie intended to get her charged with murder turned out to be impossible to keep. Like, she couldn’t even maintain the façade that she might’ve been a decent person.

“How did she do it?” I ask, my voice breaking. “How did you know?”

Sara’s mouth purses into a thin line, but she doesn’t shy away from the question. All around us, people move in groups, talking and smoking, the mood somber and subdued. It’s hard to get excited, in a cage for people. Some of the ones who are in it deserve much, much worse than this but most are just drug addicts who need rehab, not cells. It’s just so goddamn fucking sad.

“Your sister kept a wireless security camera in her room, Bernadette. It was in the box of items we seized from you.”

A … security camera? I have to blink several times to clear my head.

I know cameras are cheap; you can easily get one for like eighty bucks online. And that amount of money … it’d be easy to say, sell one of Pam’s stolen designer dresses and get a camera instead. Bet ya Pamela didn’t even notice it, that when she packed up Pen’s room, she just shoved the camera in the box without considering that it might’ve been recording. I’d ask Sara, but … Police Girl is too straitlaced to give anything else away.

“I should go.” I start toward the exit and she follows me out. As I pass the maroon colored Subaru, I make sure to wave to Constantine. And then flip him off. The boys watch me from across the lot, frozen into postures of indifference—slouches, lounges, leans. They’re all boneless kings, made of shadows and dark things.

And they’re all waiting on me.

I pause in front of the Camaro, the Eldorado, and Vic’s bike, all lined up in a neat row in the center of the massive parking lot. It’s like, big enough for a fucking Black Friday sale or some shit. “I don’t feel very good,” I explain as all five of them continue to watch me, waiting to see what it is that I’ll do. Gauging my mood, that’s what they’re doing right now.

“What do you need?” Aaron asks, the first one to slide off the hood of the Camaro and move over to stand in front of me. He offers me his cigarette, and I take it, inhaling and doing my very best not to cry. Well, not to cry anymore. I was crying in there even though I didn’t want to, even though Pamela didn’t deserve to see how much she affected me with what she did.

She took Penelope away from me, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened in my life, that probably will ever happen in my life. If Penelope were here, and I had Heather and Kara and Ashley, if I had Havoc … life would be perfect. But it can only ever be beautifully flawed because my sister—a soul mate of a different sort than the boys—is gone and she’s never coming back. She won’t get to see how much I’ve changed, how much I’ve grown, all the wonderful and crazy things that I’m going to do with my life.

“Let’s go home,” I say, because as much as I dislike Oak Valley, as trapped as I feel there sometimes, anywhere that has the Havoc Boys is home to me. The guys exchange looks with one another, but they don’t argue, not even when I climb onto the back of Vic’s bike instead of into the driver’s seat of the Eldorado.

Somebody else will drive it home for me: Aaron, most likely. But back here, on Victor’s Harley, this is where I feel the safest, where I’ve always felt the safest. I can hold him, touch him, feel the breeze in my hair … but also, nobody can see me cry.

Once we get back to campus and ride the elevator to the eleventh floor, I can feel my body starting to sag with exhaustion. Mostly, it’s with the heavy mantle of reality wrapped around my shoulders. Pamela did it. There’s no denying that. Sara Young confirmed it. Pamela might as well have. Her lack of denial was more than enough to convince me.

“Bernie,” Cal starts as I take off into the apartment, heading down the hall to our bedroom. Our bedroom. That thought should fill me with joy. Instead, I’m so twisted up in rage and hate and melancholy that I can’t even appreciate it.

As tired as I am, I feel like I have to keep moving, like if I don’t, the reality of what I’ve been avoiding since the day after the school shooting will come crashing into me like a tsunami. With ice-cold fingers, it’ll drag every last part of me that’s still good and hopeful out into the sea to drown.

“Where are my gym clothes?” I snap as Callum leans in the doorjamb, watching me as the other boys stay where they are in the living room. Somehow, they’re really good at taking turns with their one-on-one time. It’s like, being together as long as they have, they can read each other without having to ask, without having to hash things out with words.