“Have you or your husband been having any problems lately?” Finke asked. “Disputes? Legal issues?” Kristina shook her head.

“No other threatening messages, or phone calls?”

She again shook her head. “I just can’t imagine—”

“Mom, wait.” Gemma felt the words like nausea. It’s my fault. It’s because everyone thinks I’m a freak. Her mom knew that Gemma had a rough time in school, but Kristina’s sympathy always made Gemma feel worse. The only thing more painful than being unpopular was being the unpopular daughter of a former popular girl. She took a deep breath. “I know.”

“What?”

“I know who did it.” Now all the cops were watching her—pityingly, she thought. She felt her cheeks heating up and was absolutely positive she did not look pretty like her mom. When Gemma blushed, she looked as if two pigments were trying to throttle each other beneath her skin. “It’s just some stupid girl at school. She probably thought it’d be funny.”

Was it her imagination, or did her mom, just for the tiniest second, look relieved? “Oh, honey,” she said, and started to put her arms around Gemma. Gemma sidestepped her.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“You still want to file the report?” Finke asked, but Gemma could tell he no longer thought it was a good idea. The whole vibe had changed. No one was looking at her. The cops were loading up, restless, eager to get back to more important things than some high school girl’s social humiliation. Maybe they were annoyed they’d been dragged out here in the first place.

“It’s up to you, sweet pea.” Kristina reached out and threaded her hand through Gemma’s hair. “What do you think?”

Gemma shook her head. As tempting as it was to imagine Chloe in a prison-orange jumpsuit—surely, surely, even Chloe wouldn’t look good in prison orange—she knew that if she made a big deal out of it, things would only get worse. Then she’d be Frankenstein-the-Crybaby. The Alien Snitch.

Still, she felt the sudden, overwhelming desire to scream. Chloe and her little pack of wolverines had been doing their best to make Gemma miserable for years. But they had never done anything this bad. They’d come to her house. They’d taken the time to fill a Halloween mask with rocks or concrete rubble or metal shrapnel from their mechanical hearts. They had said that she deserved to die. Why? What had she ever done to them?

She was an alien, adrift on an unfriendly planet. Hopeless and lost.

“Are you sure?” Kristina said, smoothing Gemma’s face with a thumb. Gemma was scowling.

She took a step backward. “Positive,” she said.

“Okay.” Kristina exhaled a big breath and gave Finke a weak smile. “Sorry for all the trouble. You know how girls are.”

“Mm-hmm,” he said, in a tone that he made it clear he didn’t and had no desire to, either.

Gemma felt like going straight to her room, possibly forever, but Kristina managed to get an arm around her shoulders. For a thin woman, she was surprisingly strong, and she held Gemma there in a death grip.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having problems at school?”

She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

Kristina smelled, as always, like rose water and very expensive perfume. So expensive that it actually smelled like new-printed money. “I don’t want your father to worry, do you?” She smiled, but Gemma read anxiety in her mother’s eyes, decoded the words her mother would never say: I don’t want him to think you’re more of a disappointment than he already does. “Let’s just tell him there was an accident. A kid and a baseball. Something like that.”

To hit a baseball from the street through the living room window, the kid would have to be a first-draft pick for the major leagues. Usually her parents’ willingness to lie about things big and small bothered Gemma. If her parents were so good at making up stories, how could she ever be sure they were telling the truth?

Today, however, she could only be grateful.

“Baseball,” she said. “Sure.”

Gemma woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare that, thankfully, released her almost as soon as she opened her eyes, leaving only the vague impression of rough hands and the taste of metal. In the hall, Rufus was whimpering.

“What’s the matter?” she said, easing out of bed to open the door for him. As soon as she did, she heard it: the sudden swell of overlapping voices, the angry punctuation of silence. Her parents were fighting.

“It’s okay, boy,” she whispered to Rufus, threading a hand through the scruff of fur on his neck. He was a baby about fights. Immediately, he darted past her and leapt onto the bed, burying his head in her heap of pillows, as if to block out the sound from downstairs.

She would have gone back to bed, but at exactly that moment, her father’s voice crested, and she very clearly heard him say, “Frankenstein. For Christ’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Gemma eased out into the hall, grateful for the plush rug that absorbed the sound of her footsteps. Quickly, she moved past paneled squares of moonlight, past guest rooms always empty of guests and marble-tiled bathrooms no one ever used, until she reached the main staircase. Downstairs, a rectangle of light yawned across the hallway. Her father’s study door was open, and Gemma got a shock. Her mother was perched on the leather ottoman, her face pale and exhausted-looking, her arms crossed at the waist to keep her bathrobe closed. Gemma had never, ever seen anyone besides her father in the study. She had always assumed no one else was allowed to enter.