There’s a sound like thunder in the air, a crack that makes my teeth hurt. I cringe slightly, but it isn’t me who’s been slapped, but Penelope.

“This conversation is over,” Pamela hisses at her oldest daughter. When she grabs Pen’s arm and shakes her, I feel this awful fidgety feeling inside of me. “You don’t need the damn lock. Unless you’re, what, inviting boys over to fuck? Is that why you need this?”

“I need the lock to keep them out,” she whispers, but at the time I don’t quite make the connection. Pamela turns away from her daughter, like she didn’t hear her in the first place. We both watch as she pounds down the stairs and out the front door, shoving the deadbolt into the trash at the edge of the curb.

I turn back to look at Penelope, but she doesn’t return my stare. I’ve disappointed her.

Pamela comes storming back into the house, heading straight up the stairs and shoving me with her shoulder. I end up stumbling, losing my balance and pinwheeling backward; my ears ring as my head hits the wall on the way down, my back screaming in agony as I find myself dizzy and disoriented at the bottom of the stairs.

I fell, that’s what happened. It takes me several seconds to make the connection.

I groan as I sit up and Pen yells, sprinting down the stairs after me.

She helps me up, but I can never forget the look on her face, the one that says that what I’ve always secretly hoped for—a change of heart from our mother—is never going to happen. Pamela has the power to get us away from here, away from her abusive husband, out of poverty. She could even keep stealing credit cards and robbing her rich friends. If she spent half of that money on housing and clothing and food for her kids, we’d be set.

That never happens.

I always intended to make up for that moment, when I should’ve stood up to my mother for Pen. After Pam slapped her, I should’ve shoved that bitch down the stairs. I should’ve killed Kali.

What if I get a third chance to make things right, and I fuck that up, too?

“You’re out of your element,” Kali says, smiling at me as she leans over the bed and looks down at me. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

And then she kisses me, and I wake up.

I have the dream again on both Saturday and Sunday night, waking up the next morning with an emotional hangover.

Fuck I hate Monday morning nightmares with a passion.

A serious fucking passion.

Sara Young surprises me on Monday with a map that leads right to Tom’s forested property. I’m so fucking tired that I can barely keep my eyes open as I lift my head up to see what she’s just laid out on the desk. As soon as I register what it is, the blood drains from my face and the room spins.

On the outside, I stay as stoic as possible.

“What is this?” I ask, yawning and letting the sleeves of the hoodie I’m wearing fall over my hands so Sara can’t see how hard they’re shaking. I’ve barely slept for three nights. And not because of the sex with Hael. Instead, it’s because I keep dreaming about Pamela and Penelope and ending that same dream with mocking remarks from Kali. And the more I dream about them, the sicker I feel on the inside.

“That’s what I came to ask you. It’s a map that Neil left in one of his jacket pockets. We found it when we searched his locker at the station.” Sara leaves the map where it is, a bad photocopy of a napkin with hasty scrawls on it. How could Neil have known about that place? I think, my mind scrambling as my body slumps in the chair, feigning boredom.

I spent the weekend riding Hael’s dick in too-tall heels. Today, I’m sitting here wondering how the fuck the Thing found Havoc’s hiding place. And what Sara Young is going to do about that.

“I followed the map out there, nice property. Seems to belong to a one Tom Muller. Does that name ring any bells?” Sara asks, and we both know she already knows the answer to that question.

“Victor’s mother’s boyfriend,” I say with a loose shrug. “What’s your point?”

I bet it was the night Neil killed Ivy; he probably followed the boys out there. I resist the urge to bite my thumbnail. Won’t help. I’ll just smear my lipstick everywhere. I’m already wearing a wrinkled hoodie, my blond and red hair loose and wavy over my shoulders. Not sure how Cal or Oscar would miss that, but what other explanation is there?

“I walked the property, but it’s several hundred acres.” Sara exhales and folds her hands together on the surface of the desk. “I should be honest with you, Bernadette.”

“Okay?” I start, my heart thundering. So what? Some street cop found a map to a forested property. Doesn’t mean shit. But it does. It means everything because that’s just the sort of place a person might bury a body that they don’t want found.

“I’m not with the Springfield Police Department. I’ve actually been working undercover for the VGTF.”

I stare right back at her, no reaction. Bullshit, I think, but the way Sara’s staring at me, I wonder if she isn’t telling the truth.

“You’re with the VGTF?” I repeat, thinking about the Violent Gang Task Force. It’s a division of the FBI, a division focused on—surprise, surprise—gangs like Havoc. But there’s no way. There’s no way Sara’s here because of Havoc.

“I’m not here for your gang,” she tells me, as if she can read my mind. There’s something patronizing in her tone that tells me she considers us kids. All of us. At least for now. She has no fucking clue. What is it about people over the age of twenty-one? It’s as if your brain snaps and you can’t remember what it’s like to be young and angry and desperate. Being in high school doesn’t preclude us from anything—not even murder. “I came here to investigate your stepdad, actually, right from the moment I was assigned as his partner.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, sinking into the sweatshirt to make myself seem smaller. I cannot let Sara Young get a read on me at fucking all.

“Because I think you know what he used this land for. I want you to tell me what you know. We want to end this investigation, but we’re still missing answers to key questions.” I just stare back at her because we both know we’re bullshitting one another here. “Do you know where Neil is, Bernadette?”

“This is seriously like the fiftieth time you’ve asked me that,” I snap at her, wishing I could just get up and run, find the boys, figure out a plan. Cal might be right: we might have to kill Sara. “My answer hasn’t changed. Can I please fucking go now?”

“If you remember anything,” she continues as I rise from the chair, nice and slow. Like I’m about to explode if I don’t get the hell out of here. “Let me know. I’m aware of the captain’s issues with your boyfriend, something to do with a jilted daughter.” She gives me a look. “We could maybe help with those charges.”

I say nothing, thinking of Hael as I rode him in those heels the other night.

I feel irrationally upset as I stare back at the woman in front of me.

“You lied to me, and now you want me to be your snitch?” I clarify, but she’s shaking her head, refuting the words I haven’t even finished saying. “And all that to get rid of some trumped-up charges created by an overcontrolling father who just can’t accept that his daughter’s not a little girl anymore?” I laugh as I back away toward the door. I make sure to keep the long sleeve of the hoodie over my hand as I reach for the doorknob, so Sara won’t see me shake. “You’re going to have to try harder than that,” I say, and then I leave, slamming the door behind me.