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I look down, unfold her fingers, and raise an eyebrow.

“What?” she asks, blushing. “He’s a nice guy.”

Micah Harding is a nice guy, or at least, everyone thinks he is. Everyone also thought Emily Vaught’s dad was a real stand-up dude, and I know better.

“No,” I tell her, when I get a look at the jersey number that’s down for the count. “That’s Blake Peery.”

Blake Peery, who pissed into the manatee pool at the zoo on our junior-class trip and had to be escorted out by security. Somebody took a video of him yelling, “But it was the manatees, not the womanatees; it’s not a hate crime!” which went viral and earned him half a million followers on Instagram over the weekend. He’s got this whole YouTube series now where he stealth pisses in public places, and people eat it up. Because basically anything guys do with their dicks is solid gold.

My phone rings, and when I see it’s Mom calling, I pick it up, answering with a tight, “Ja?”

“Der Hund der Zedeker-Frau ist tot,” Mom says. The fact that Quentin and I speak German isn’t something that nudged us toward the normal column when we were growing up. I distinctly remember counting off with the other kids in kindergarten on the first day, my eins, zwei, drei not matching up with everyone else’s one, two, three. I switched to English fast, tossing my hair and smiling, because even at five I’d had enough people tell me what a pretty little girl I was that the messaging had stuck.

Being pretty was not part of Mom’s genetic lottery, and neither was luck. A cornice piece from the rotting roof fell right on her head when she was a teenager, apparently knocking the English language right out of her. Grandpa can’t speak at all, Mom only speaks German; we can’t keep him in the house, and Mom never leaves it, so Quentin and I had a hell of a social hole to climb out of. Luckily, stepping on other people’s heads to get to the top is just another place where my foot comes down naturally.

“War es ein gewaltsamer Tod?” I ask Mom.

“Er wurde von einem Auto angefahren,” Mom says.

“Is everything okay?” Cassie asks, eyes wide.

“Yeah,” I lie. “Mom baked cookies. It’s just that everything sounds awful in German.”

Which is pretty much the case, but also the last time Mom tried to bake cookies the whole traumatic brain injury issue got in the way and we all ended up with mouthfuls of salt and baking soda. She’s calling now to tell me that Widow Zedeker’s dog got hit by a car, which is a bummer because the old guy used to cross the road and jump into Quentin’s lap, which was one of the only things that kept my brother going in the weeks after his accident.

“Es fängt an,” I say to Mom, then hang up.

“What did you say?” Cassie asks, stunned—like most people in Bethington are—at bilingualism.

“ ‘It’s beginning,’ ” I tell her, nodding toward the field, where Blake Peery is on his feet and the game is back on.

And this time, I’m not lying.

Eight

Ava

Panda’s bones breaking underneath the wheels of a rusted-out Chevy Silverado shuts off everything inside me.

I don’t feel anything when I pick up Panda, or when his two front legs bend the wrong way at the joints. He’s a sack full of broken glass; everything inside of him crushed. A sob is squeezed from my lungs, but my respiratory system is the only thing that’s in mourning. My brain processes the sound, realizes someone is crying, but releases the information as nonsensical because I’m the only one here, and I’m past that point.

I’m somewhere else, somewhere I’ve been before. A place where I allow the soft blanket of nothing to settle around me, not permitting anything to come close, or find its way out. This includes words, and I don’t have any for Widow when I make it back to Restoration Acres.

“Give him to me,” Widow says.

The transition is awkward; the stretching of Panda’s ligaments audible as they hold together bones that shouldn’t be so far apart.

“Hey, buddy,” Widow says, looking down at her dog and rocking him back and forth. “Didn’t move fast enough one last time, huh?”

She glances up at me, and even though I don’t have words, she reads my face.

“He was an old dog,” Widow says, turning her attention back to Panda, whose head is cradled against her chest. “It’s better this way. He didn’t feel a thing.”

I don’t argue with her, don’t tell her that he definitely did because a dog doesn’t make a sound like that unless it’s feeling something, and that thing is agony. I don’t tell her that he was still trying to run, like pain is something you can leave behind if you just keep moving your legs.

“It’s okay.” Widow looks to me, saltwater tears accumulating at the edges of her eyes, which narrow when she spots my wrist. “You’re hurt.”

I shake my head, my own wounds inconsequential. Panda bit me but saying so feels like a betrayal, all things considered.