ou secret so just tell me instead of making me chase around for it!"

"Oh, I don't give away people's secrets." If Doug's words dripped sarcasm, Keke's gushed it like the biggest waterfall at Slide with Clyde. "That's why you didn't tell me your mom--" Even in the middle of confronting me, Keke couldn't bring herself to say it. My mom was insane. "And that's why you didn't tell me you had amnesia. Because you don't trust me with something that important. Now everybody knows my own best friend doesn't trust me. Y ou made a freaking fool out of me--"

"Just tell me what happened!" I screamed. My voice set the locks buzzing against the lockers. "How did you find out? Who else knows?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I didn't need to yell at her. I knew exactly who else knew and how she'd found out. I jerked up my backpack and stomped toward the door to the pool.

As I reached the door, Keke put her hand on my arm and pulled, eyes full of fear. "Y can not tell them you heard this from me. Doug will kill Mike. Mike

ou will never speak to Lila again. And Lila . . . and me . . ."

"Then tell me what it is."

Keke pressed her lips together.

I jerked open the door before Keke could stop me again. I headed straight across the pool deck, empty except for Lila and Mike sitting close together on the lawn chair. When Lila saw me, she jumped up, holding out my clipboard, almost as if she were ready to make up with me. "I can't believe you forgot this!" She saw the look on my face and stopped.

I closed the steps between us and took the clipboard from her. "Tell me what happened Friday night."

She gaped at me, then wailed over my shoulder at Keke, "Y told her!"

"I didn't tell her what happened," Keke clarified. "I told her she needs to find out . She can't go around not knowing, Lila, and I don't care if it does break you up with your boyfriend."

"Y just don't want me to have a boyfriend," Lila squealed. "Y can't get a boyfriend so you don't want me to have one either!"

ou ou

"Whatever," I mumbled, skirting Lila and approaching Mike, who had edged toward the pool. He watched the twins silently as if he had nothing to do with any of this. I walked right up to him and stopped inches from his face so he couldn't pretend he didn't hear me, one of his usual tactics for saying nothing. "Michael." I smiled, skin stretched so taut across my face that it might break. "Baby. Tell me what happened."

He turned red as a stop sign and shook his head.

"Doug is not going to kill you." As Mike's eyes widened, my voice rose. "He is not going to beat you up or whatever he threatened to do to you." I wasn't sure Mike was really safe, but I was desperate. "Doug is full of shit, in case you haven't noticed. Now, for the last time, what the f**k happened?"

As a diversion, Mike jerked the clipboard from my arms and slung it into the pool.

Behind me, both twins gasped.

The plastic board floated for a few seconds. The wind stirred ripples that lapped at the pages, soaking them. Then the clipboard nose-dived.

I didn't stay to watch it hit bottom. My arms were still extended like I could grab the clipboard and save it. I put my arms down. Turning for the gate to the parking lot, I called over my shoulder, "Thanks for being true friends."

Never get into a shouting match with twins. They emptied their clips into my back, still shouting at me as I crossed the parking lot to the Benz. Right back at you, pot calling the kettle black, talk about a true friend.

Bitch!

That last bullet jogged the keys from my hand as I reached for the door of the Benz. I bent to pick them up and noticed I hadn't repainted my fingernails since Saturday, which wasn't like me at all. A huge chip had formed in my thumbnail.

It wasn't like me to talk on the cell phone while driving, either. That wasn't safe. As I pulled out of the parking lot onto the street, I pressed the button to call Doug. I got his sarcastic voice-mail prompt.

Speeding down the straightaway where I'd wrecked, my thumb hovered above the button to call my dad's cell. But what good would that do me? If he had the accident report, it was in his office, which was off-limits to me. He would tell me no, I couldn't go in there to retrieve it. I could ask permission, be denied, and do it anyway. Or I could go ahead and do it. Or I could call to ask him what might be in the report that my ex-friends wanted me to know. But then I'd be admitting I was missing part of my memory and I was crazy like my mom, as he'd suspected all along.

When I reached my house I sat in the Benz in the courtyard for a few last seconds, soaking up the late afternoon sun on my skin. I had to go in, I had to find out, but these were my last breaths being innocent. I was afraid what I found out would change my life forever.

And then I walked into the house. Past the cameras in the living room, the cameras down the hall. My dad's office was so forbidden, two cameras were trained on the door.

Here I paused again. The room had become officially forbidden when I was in middle school and my dad found me looking through his office drawers for invisible tape for a school project. He grounded me from seeing Keke and Lila. I screamed and pitched a fit, because the only thing worse than being grounded when you're a kid is being grounded when you know you didn't deserve it, when you were only looking for tape for school, and my dad wanted me to go to school, didn't he? I remembered every detail of that drama queen day--the school project on the history of daylight savings time, the sheet of scrapbooking paper with little clocks I'd bought as a cute border for the report (thus the tape), the pink polo shirt I was wearing, the pink wristwatch I stared at as I rocked in the chair on the front porch, willing the hands to move and my mom to come home from her Saturday at work. Eventually she pulled up and I ran across the stone courtyard and threw myself into her arms. She told me she couldn't undo the punishment my dad had doled out because parents worked as partners, but she would talk to him. Eventually she got my sentence reduced from a week grounded to two days grounded. And she laughed at my idea that my dad didn't want me in his office because he had something to hide. No, he just needed an oasis. Starting a business like Slide with Clyde was stressful. Living with two women was stressful. He simply wanted one place in the house all to himself. I could understand that, couldn't I?

Looking from one camera to the other and wiping the tears from my eyes, I stepped through their invisible force field protecting the open door. Checked the top of my dad's desk, the in-box, the out-box, the drawers, the filing cabinets, the shelves, the counter. The accident report wasn't there.

Feeling more and more panicky about what could be in that report, I dashed out to the Benz. I had one more source to try for this report--the police station--but now it was after five o'clock, and with my luck, they'd be closed. I was shaking by the time I parked in the courthouse square, next to my mom's office.

But I heaved a huge sigh as I slammed the door of the Benz and saw I'd gotten my first break all week. Two parking spaces down, Officer Fox was just stepping from his truck in his police uniform. He must be arriving for work.

I hurried toward him. "Hey!" I said, trying to sound surprised and pleased to see him.

"Hi," he said warily. "I was just coming to get an extra copy of the accident report, you know, for insurance and stuff."

He nodded shortly and kept walking past me, toward the door to the station. "Y need to come back during regular office hours with your dad and a

ou check for two dollars made out to the DMV." He disappeared into the building.

I stood there stunned for a few seconds. Then I galloped after him and swung through the glass door before he could escape deep into the office where I couldn't catch him. He was unlatching and lifting a section of the front counter to let himself through.

"Why?" I called to his back. "I'm a licensed driver in the state of Florida. I'm the driver, it's my wreck, it's my accident report, and my two dollars spends like my dad's."

"Hey there, Zoey," a deep voice boomed behind me. The police chief closed the glass door behind him, carrying a paper sack from the Grilled Mermaid.

"Hey, Chief," I said with a grin, hoping he'd caught only the tail end of me yelling at his deputy. My mom had introduced me to the chief around town when I was growing up. During parades and festivals along the beach strip, he always rode above the crowd on a horse. He and my mom worked together--or against each other, since my mom defended the people he arrested. But I'd never been in the police station before, and I hadn't thought of him when I stalked in here demanding my life back.

"Fox," he snapped. "Get Miss Commander whatever she needs."

Officer Fox disappeared into the back.

The chief turned to me and smiled sympathetically. "Heard about your car wreck."

That was more than I could say. "Y sir, it was scary."

es,

"Heard your mom made a big jailbreak yesterday."

This was why I'd hoped no one would ever find out about my mom. I grinned again and pretended I could laugh at it like he could. I needed his help. I needed that report.

"I've been over to the hospital a couple of times in the past few weeks," he said. "They're still not allowing her to have visitors?"

I opened my mouth to speak. For fear of sobbing, all I could do was shake my head no. He'd been to see my mom? I'd thought I was alone.

"Y let me know if there's anything I can do for you or for her." He patted me twice on the shoulder and maneuvered through the counter like Officer Fox

ou had. "Fox!" he hollered.

The chief and Officer Fox passed each other in the corridor, and Officer Fox slid the precious document onto the counter. "Two dollars," he grumbled.

I fished in my purse, tossed two bills on the counter, and slapped my hand down on the paper before he could take it away.

Just as quickly, he covered my hand with his. "Don't go to Doug's house."

He might as well have said, Don't open the box, Pandora. "Right." I snatched the report and ran.

"I mean it, Zoey," he called after me.

"Why can't I go over there?" I asked as I backed out the door.

"Because it's Thursday."

Whatever. Outside in the orange light of the setting sun, I scanned Officer Fox's diagram of the wreck, his quaint depiction of a stick-deer, and his clumsy legalese until I found what I was looking for.

Doug wasn't the passenger in Mike's car. He was the passenger in mine.

direction of the docks, then turned left toward the bluff.

But I began to wonder, as the Benz crept through a thicket that threatened to close in over the road. Palmettos scraped the paint and moths fluttered across the windshield. Satellites could be wrong.

I really wondered when the thicket opened to the starry sky and the full moon over the rolling ocean, with the docks almost directly underneath me. I drove across a causeway built up between islands so someone could live out here. Someone rich. Someone not Doug. But I couldn't turn around until I reached the other side. I inched the Benz forward, off the narrow causeway and underneath the canopy of an enormous live oak.

In front of me was Doug's house. I knew this because I saw his Jeep pulled to one side of the clearing and abandoned, the open interior strewn with leaves. The house itself was a 1970s split-level with blue paint peeling from the trim work.

And in front of the house, ten men sat in a circle around a campfire. I was close enough to see them shuck oysters and tilt up bottles of beer. In fact, I caught Doug, who did not drink while he was in training, in midswig. What had I driven into? Instinct warned me to back out the way I'd come, but I could never make it in reverse without backing off the narrow causeway and into the sea.

Doug limped toward me on his crutches. I'd thought maybe his dad let him have one beer on special occasions--but no, I could tell from the way Doug examined the ground before every step that he was buzzed. I parked the car and hurried to meet him before he fell down.

"Zoeyyyy," he called. "Just the person I wanted to see me at my lowest. Come have a raw oyster." When he reached me he set his chin on my shoulder and whispered, "My dad thinks we're together. Not because I lied to him, but because Friday night I thought we were together, and I was all happy about it until I went over to your house Saturday morning and talked to you and found out we weren't. But that's way too complicated to explain to a salty dog. So just smile and nod, if you don't mind." He hobbled away from me and made an enormous vertical circle with one crutch, gesturing for me to follow him.

Not buzzed. Plastered.

I caught up with him and whispered, "Is this your crew meeting?"

"Ha. Is that what I called it? Every Thursday all the deckhands from my dad's boat hike up here for oysters and beer. Also my dad's roughneck friends come, and their cousins who heard the words free beer , and anything else that might have wandered up from the wharf." The familiar snarky sense of humor let me know Doug was in there somewhere, but his delivery was low and rapid fire as if his playback control was set too fast, lubed by alcohol. "All of them get free beer, and raw oysters, and the chance to take potshots at Fox the Y ounger."

"What kind of potshots?" I asked, beginning to worry.

"Insults for not drinking beer," he said huskily. "Because you know that means you're gay. Teetotalling and homosexuality are the twin and intertwined forces of evil."

"But you're drinking."

He stopped not far behind the circle of guffawing men and looked down at me. "Because, as my dad keeps telling me, I don't have no chance on that fag swim team now that my leg's broke. And if you faced a night of ten salty dogs riffing on your cast, you'd drink too. Abstinence is for pussies."