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I shrug. As much as I’d like to deny it...I very much want to know. “Okay, what did he do?”

“He was drunk. He got in a fight outside of a bar—he got in a lot of fights when he was drinking—and punched the guy in the face. It was just a single punch, but the guy’s nose went into his brain. He was dead instantly.”

I blink. He’s watching me process this information, and probably wondering if I’m going to judge him for this the way I’ve judged him for everything else.

“That’s pretty interesting,” I tell him. “Probably a more interesting subject than how good you are at football.”

He laughs, while shaking his head, no. “Probably, but it’s a story I’m not willing to tell just anyone.”

“But you told me.”

He sighs. “For some reason, I trust you.”

I do my best not to smile at that, but I fail. “It’s probably the whole religious thing.”

“Believe me...nothing would make me less likely to trust you than that.”

I want to argue on my father’s behalf. Leila was caught having sex in the girls’ bathroom—that’s why she got in trouble. That she tried to kill herself afterward has nothing to do with my dad. I guess, however, that I can also see the situation through Ford’s eyes. It’s easier if you have a scapegoat, plus they’ve had a tough run, with his dad going to prison and his mom raising them alone. To have his sister shipped off during their senior year would be hard to forgive.

It’s not my place to ask him to see it from my dad’s perspective. But perhaps, now that we’re friends, he’ll eventually give it a shot anyway. He knows I’m not the villain here—nor is my church. I’ll give him the space he needs to realize my father isn’t the villain either.

At lunch on Friday, the conversation revolves around break. In New Hope, Christmas was about the holiday. In Penhallow, it’s about where they will travel, about whether or not there’s snow out west, and about whether or not the drinking age is eighteen where you are headed (Lauren is in luck—it’s eighteen in Nevis.)

I have little to contribute to most of our lunchroom conversations, but this is the one Kappy notices.

“Will you see family over break?” she asks me.

I shake my head. “I don’t have a lot of family, and we don’t speak to the family we have. I had a cousin who got into drugs and ran away, and you’re supposed to separate yourself from families like that.”

Kappy’s jaw is open. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve got such a bad cousin or because I’m part of a community where having one could tarnish your whole family. “Did his parents ever try to look for him?”

It’s funny, how much I’ve discussed this subject here when it never came up in New Hope. I suppose it’s just that there, a kid running away and getting pregnant while unwed is a shameful secret.

Here, it’s just...life. A mistake. A kid who messed up.

“Her,” I correct. “They did, but by the time they found her she was pregnant.” I can still see Mary Joyce kicking and screaming as my father and hers pulled her into the house next door. Her belly was so huge I couldn’t believe she was only carrying one kid.

She never once came to her window, no matter how many things I threw at it.

“What happened then? Did she have the baby?”

I wince. “They took her to a home. You know...one of those places where pregnant teens can live until they have a baby? And she ran away again. They said she was saying crazy stuff when she left and when they found her, like maybe she was on some kind of drug. Anyway, she was found in Atlanta, but it was too late. The baby died with her. I guess she was trying to give birth there by herself.”

“Wow,” says Kappy. “That’s insane. But what kind of drug could she have been on for that long? I mean, it would have to be something she’d taken before they found her, and it was still in her system weeks later?”

In New Hope, they gave us the impression that you might take a drug and it would stay inside you for years, but I’m not certain that’s true. I hear a lot of people talking in the halls about tripping or getting high, and I’ve never once heard the sort of horror story they used to tell us back home. “If she was schizophrenic or something, they’d lie about it because they wouldn’t want people to think they had bad genes. It’s important, there, being a family people will want to marry into. Honestly, I was only ten, so I’m not even sure that I’m remembering it right.”

Kappy frowns. Maybe she, too, is questioning our gene pool. If she knew I was messaging each night with Ford, she’d really question it.

I settle into the grass across from Ford that afternoon, arranging my skirt so it covers my thighs. His gaze drifts to my legs and for a half second my breath holds. I’m not supposed to like the way he’s looking at me, but I do.

I check my notes for what I’m missing from the footage I’ve gathered. "I didn't ask you before, but where are you going to school?"

The people who applied early decision or early action—nearly everyone—are getting their decisions in this month. I imagine he's already heard.

"Fenwick," he says. He laughs. "Don't worry if you've never heard of it. No one has. It's in Massachusetts."

I lean back on my hands. After all these weeks hearing my friends discuss Ivies and "hidden Ivies" and "public Ivies," I know the school decision is a big deal. And Ford is smart. He must have had options. "Why'd you choose it?"