At home, Mona was awake, hair dryer blaring on the other side of the bathroom door.

I slipped into my room, fell onto the lumpy mattress, and threw an arm over my face. Jeremy and I hadn't spoken all week, despite the fact that we'd essentially gone to the funerals together. Even Anh was growing distant. Studying together was becoming awkward, each of us looking over the other's shoulders, wondering what the other was doing to gain an edge. The silences in our conversations seemed to say more than we did. I'd clammed up when she'd asked me to dish on my relationship with Reece, and neither one of us wanted to broach the topic of the murders. I couldn't blame her for wanting to spend more and more time with Jeremy. I'd kept my promise to Reece by protecting his secret, at the cost of my relationship with my best friends.

It hurt to think about it. A peculiar feeling fluttered low in my stomach when I remembered Reece's lips. I rolled onto my side and curled my body around the frayed comforter. I squeezed my eyes shut and dreamed.

I woke to the sound of a man's voice. Strange, because Mona never brought men home. I blinked, trying to place it in the dark, and bolted upright in bed.

Reece.

I fumbled with the lock and threw open the door.

Reece stood in my living room, his height more pronounced under the low ceiling, his features more severe in the dim light. Mona paced a slow circle around him to shut the door, and then came around his other side, giving him a stern once-over.

She didn't look at me. Her rhinestone eyes rested squarely on Reece.

"This boy . . ." She drew the word boy into a question. "Says he's a friend of yours?"

Reece lowered his eyes. Mona's stare took in all of him.

I swallowed hard.

"I can explain." My mind reeled for a plausible story. One that might explain why he was standing in my living room.

"Don't bother. You're not leaving." She crossed to the kitchen and slapped her cigarettes against her palm, shaking one loose from the pack.

"Why not?" I'd intended to sound indignant and rebellious, but it came out more like a whine.

"Don't think for a minute I don't know what's going on at school. When the principal cancels after-school activities and sends a letter to all the parents recommending curfews, then I have a damn good reason to keep you home on a Friday night."

"I'm not going out alone-"

"You're not going anywhere with him! He reeks of trouble. He came on a motorcycle, which I forbid you to ride!" She drew the collar of her robe higher. "And I know for a fact he has a fake ID."

Reece wiped his upper lip. My eyes flicked back and forth between the proud angle of my mother's chin and his downcast face.

Mona tapped her ash and gave him a long, hard look. "Ask him, Nearly. Ask him about his record. Boys like him always have one." She held her robe shut with one hand and sucked in a drag. "Your father certainly did."

My eyes cut to Mona's. They glistened as if that one sentence had turned a lock and loosed a secret. "What are you talking about?"

Reece shuffled, twitchy and uncomfortable. "I should go," he said quietly.

For the first time I noticed the silk collar under his leather, his buffed boots, his clean shave, and the gel in his mussed hair. He could have texted me. I could have sneaked out and met him down the street, but he came in to meet my mother. And she was the pot calling the kettle too black.

I repeated myself louder. "What do you mean?"

She smoked and didn't answer, that whispery secret scratching behind her eyes.

Reece opened the door. "It was a bad idea anyway," he muttered. "I'll see you Monday." He slipped out, head down. I turned back to my mother, torn between uncovering my past or fixing my future.

"We're leaving," I said.

The ashtray clattered to the floor behind me, scattering filth into the air. I threw open the door, calling Reece's name over the roar of the bike. My mother's robe filled the security door as I swung a leg over behind him. I glared at her through the bars and leaned in close, wrapping my arms around his chest. If he was leaving, he was taking me with him.

34.

I closed my eyes and rested my helmet between his shoulders, anchoring myself in leather and the smell of his cologne. The rest of the world blurred around me.

He downshifted to a curb and I lifted my head, blinded by the light on Gena's front porch. I unwound myself from Reece's waist and unfastened the helmet, waiting for him to lead the way.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble." He scratched the back of his head and looked at me sideways, abashed for some reason I couldn't figure out. He hadn't done anything wrong.

"She shouldn't have said those things."

"She's your mom. She cares about you."