“So.” She slides into the window seat and draws her knees up to her chest, like Dara used to do. “Have you given any thought to what we talked about?”

Aunt Jackie suggested we try a séance. She said it might help me to speak directly to Dara, to tell her all the things I want to say, to apologize and ask her forgiveness. She swears by it, says she talks with Dara all the time that way. Aunt Jackie actually believes that Dara is hanging there on the other side of existence like some kind of ghostly scarf, pinned to a wall.

“I don’t think so,” I tell her. I don’t know what scares me more: the idea that I’ll hear her, or that I won’t. “Thanks, though.”

She reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing. “She isn’t gone, you know,” she says, in a quieter voice. “She’ll never be gone.”

“I know,” I say. It’s just a different version of what everyone else will tell you; she’ll live on inside you. She’ll always be there. Except that she did live on inside me—she grew there, rooted like a flower, so gradually I didn’t notice. But now the roots have been torn out, the wild, beautiful flower pruned back, and I’m left with nothing but a hole.

The doorbell chimes. For one crazy second I think it might be Parker, even though that makes no sense. He’s miles away, at college, moving on like everyone else. Besides, he would never ring the doorbell.

“I’ll get it,” I say, just to have an excuse to do something, so Aunt Jackie will stop staring at me pityingly.

It isn’t Parker, of course, but Madeline and Sarah Snow.

The two sisters are dressed identically in plaid knee-length skirts and white button-downs, though Sarah’s shirt is unbuttoned to reveal a black tank top, and her hair is loose. Her parents, I know, put her in parochial school for her senior year—something about the evil effects of public school education. But she looks happy, at least.

“Sorry,” is the first thing she says, when Madeline bounds into my arms like an overeager puppy, nearly knocking me over. “Fund-raising. She wanted you to be first.”

“We’re selling cookies for my basketball team,” Madeline says, peeling away from me. It’s funny to think of Maddie—who’s small for her age, and scrawny as a newt—playing basketball. “Wanna buy some?”

“Sure,” I say, and can’t help but smile. Maddie has that kind of effect on people, with a face like a sunflower, all wide and open. The ten days she spent hiding out, sneaking around, worried Andre was coming after her, miraculously don’t seem to have traumatized her too badly. Mr. and Mrs. Snow aren’t taking any chances; Sarah told me they’ve put both their daughters into therapy, twice a week. “What kinds you got?”

Maddie rattles off a list—peanut butter, chocolate peanut butter, peanut brittle—while Sarah stands there, fiddling with the hem of her skirt, half smiling, never taking her eyes off her younger sister.

In the past month she and I have become friends, or kind of friends, or at least friendly. We’ve gone with Maddie back to FanLand, this time so she could show us, with a certain degree of pride, how she had managed to stay hidden for so long. I even went swimming at the Snow house, lying side by side on deck chairs with Sarah while Maddie showed off front flips from the diving board, and the Snow parents circled back and forth to check that we were okay, like planets compelled to orbit their daughters. Not that I blame them. Even now, their mom sits in the car, engine on, watching, as if both girls might vanish if she looks away.

“How’ve you been?” Sarah asks, once Maddie has assiduously marked down my order and then, obeying some eternal rhythm of her own, dashed back toward the car.

“You know. Same,” I say. “How about you?”

She nods, looking away, squinting against the light. “Same. I’m on house arrest, basically. And everyone at school treats me like I’m a freak.” She shrugs. “But it could be worse. Maddie could be—” She breaks off abruptly, as if suddenly aware of the implication of her words. It could be worse. I could be you. My sister could be dead. “Sorry,” she says, as red creeps into her cheeks.

“That’s okay,” I say, and I mean it. I’m happy Maddie made it home safely. I’m happy skeevy Andre is sitting in jail, waiting to get served. It feels like the only good thing that has happened since the accident.

Since Dara died.

“Let’s hang out again soon, okay?” When Sarah smiles, her whole face is transformed and she looks suddenly beautiful. “We can watch a movie at my house or something. You know, since I’m on lockdown.”

“I’d like that,” I say, and watch her move back toward her mom’s car. Maddie is already in the backseat. She presses her lips to the glass and blows out, making her face puff up, distorted. I laugh and wave, feel an unexpected pull of sadness. This, the Snows, the new friendship with Sarah—this is just the first of so many things I’ll never get to share with Dara.

“Who was that?” Back in the kitchen, Aunt Jackie is stacking apples, cucumbers, and beets on the counter, a sure sign that she’s about to threaten me with one of her famous “smoothies.”

“Just someone selling cookies for school,” I say. I don’t feel like fielding questions about the Snows, not today.

“Oh.” Aunt Jackie straightens up, blowing the long bangs out of her eyes. “I was hoping it might be that boy.”

“What boy?”

“John Parker.” She returns to rummaging in the fridge. “I still remember how he used to torture you when you were little. . . .”