I waited for Kimi in the parking lot after school and tried to decide exactly what I was going to tell her. Mom and Dad had set the rule that I was only allowed to go to school and back, but I needed to go see Hailey’s mom today.

And I needed to be alone when I did it.

Should I tell Kimi the truth and trust her to keep her mouth shut? Or should I give some other excuse?

“How was school?” I asked as she walked up.

She waved goodbye to her friends and got into the passenger seat of the car. “It was decent,” she said. “I’ve already got a ton of homework, which sucks. How about you? Did you have a good day?”

“It was boring, which I guess is as good as can be expected,” I said, which was mostly true.

I’d caught the new guy watching me a few times in the hallway and at lunch, which had made me uneasy and curious at the same time. How was he connected to all of this?

Since he’d moved to town months after the accident, it didn’t seem likely that he had anything to do with it, but I couldn’t explain the similarities between him and the guy from my dreams. I’d dreamt of him again last night. It was unsettling.

Once I got done talking to Hailey’s mom, I would start digging into the new guy’s story and see what I could find.

For now, though, I had to convince Kimi to keep my afternoon plans a secret from our parents.

I pulled into the driveway at home, and Kimi slipped out of her seatbelt and opened the door, but then she paused and looked at me.

“You coming in?” she asked.

I gripped the steering wheel. “Actually, I have somewhere I’d really like to go,” I said. “But I’ll be back in an hour.”

She dropped her shoulders and stared at me. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “This is your first day with your car back and you’re going to do exactly what you were told not to do? If Mom finds out, it’s going to be months before she lets you have the car again.”

“How is she going to find out unless you tell her?” I asked, blinking repeatedly.

“Well, there’s about a million ways,” she said, giving me a stern look. “She could come home early to check on you. You could get a speeding ticket. Someone else could see you and mention it to her. You know how this town is with their rumors and talking about everything everyone else is doing.”

I couldn’t argue with her there. This town was all about the rumor mill.

“What’s so important that you have to do it today?” she asked. “Can’t it at least wait a week until Mom has stopped hovering over you and has started to trust you a little bit more? Breaking the rules isn’t like you, Marayah.”

I sighed. Maybe the old me didn’t like to break the rules, but look where that got me. No one trusted me or believed my story, anyway. If I was going to find the truth, a few rules were going to get broken in the process.

“It can’t wait,” I said. “I don’t want to go into it, because every second we sit here is another one I could be on the road to do this. I have to be back in two hours to beat Mom home, so I need to get going.”

“You’re not going to meet up with some boy, right?”

“No, nosy pants,” I said.

“Then what is it?” she asked. “You know Mom is searching your room every day for drugs, right?”

I wanted to scream. Of course she was, because I was a raging drug addict. Obviously.

“You think I’m going to buy drugs?” I asked. “Please, just go.”

Kimi’s face fell. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings, but she was the one who’d brought up the drugs. Even my own sister believed those lies, which hurt me more than I wanted to admit.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. This is just something I really need to do. For me. I promise I’ll explain it to you later, okay?”

“You better,” she said. “And what do I tell Mom if she comes home early, or she calls to check on you?”

I shrugged. “Just tell her the truth.”

“If you say so,” she said, finally climbing out of the car. “I’ll see you later. Don’t be late.”

She slammed the door and as soon as she was inside the house safely, I backed away and drove straight to Hailey’s mom’s house. It only took me about five minutes to get there, and I was relieved to see a car in the driveway.

Of course, I’d been so determined to get here that I hadn’t had time to actually think about what I was going to say. Now that I was here, though, sadness and fear crept through me like a spider, weaving its web right across my heart.

Mrs. Feldman wasn’t doing well at all, from the looks of it. Had no one been checking on her?

The front yard looked as if it hadn’t been mown all summer. The once-beautiful flower beds by the front porch had been taken over by tall weeds, and part of the awning over the door was ripped and hanging down.

The shades on all the front windows had been pulled down. The trash can under the carport was stacked high with trash bags that spilled out onto the concrete. Even her car was covered in dirt and bugs.

Nothing here had been taken care of in months.

Sadness weighed me down as I waded through the knee-high grass to the front door. I rang the doorbell, wondering how long it had been since Hailey’s mom had had a visitor.

Hailey’s house was nothing like mine, and it wasn’t exactly in the nicest of neighborhoods. It was a simple one-story home with two small bedrooms, a modest kitchen, and a living room. Hailey and her mom had shared the only bathroom in the house.

It wasn’t fancy, but it had been clean and comfortable when Hailey was still alive.

It wasn’t hard to see just how rough things had been for her mom since she’d died.

I rang the doorbell again and tapped my toes anxiously inside my shoes.

Surely she was home if her car was here, but if she didn’t answer in the next few minutes, I would have to come back some other time. I probably should have called first, anyway.

But just as I turned to leave, the door creaked open.

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it,” she said, but when I turned, she let out a little whimper and brought her hand to her mouth. “Rayah, is that you?” she asked, using Hailey’s nickname for me.

I nodded. “Hi, Mrs. Feldman,” I said. “I’m sorry I should have called first. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

She pushed the screen door open and motioned for me to come inside. “Oh, my goodness, Rayah, you are not bothering me one bit,” she said. “Please, come on in. I can’t believe it’s really you.”

She pulled me into a hug, and I could feel her ribs through the thin dress she wore.

I stepped inside, and the smell of the place hit me like a truck.

It was a damp and mildewed kind of smell with something vaguely rotten underneath it all. Dirty clothes covered the floor, topped by old pizza boxes and bags of trash. The lights were dimmed all the way down and the curtains and blinds were all drawn. It felt like a cave in here.

The only light was from the flicker of the television screen.

“I’m sorry the place don’t look so good,” she said. “I’ve been working a lot and haven’t had time to get it cleaned up much, but come on back to the kitchen. Do you want something to drink?”

“Oh, no thank you,” I said. I had to follow a thin pathway through the mess just to get to the kitchen.

This was much worse than I could have imagined. Watching her mom walk in front of me, her unwashed hair and nearly skeletal frame obvious when she stepped into the light of the hallway, I wanted to cry.

The kitchen wasn’t much better, but at least the floor wasn’t covered in trash. The dishes, however, were piled high in the sink with days-old food all over them. Beer bottles, cans, and leftover takeout containers littered the countertops. It looked like the place hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and judging by the smell, maybe much longer.

“You sure you don’t want nothing to drink?” she asked. “I’ve got some lemonade, I think.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I mostly just wanted to come see you.”

“I’m so glad you did,” she said. She placed her hand on mine and smiled. “Here, sit down. I was just making some hot tea. I’ll get you a cup.”

She poured hot water from a tea kettle into two small teacups. She unwrapped two tea bags and placed them in the cups, then put them both on the table between us.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot, girl. When I lost my Hailey, I was so scared we were gonna lose you, too.”

“I’m so sorry about Hailey,” I said, weak words for what I was really feeling inside. I hadn’t wanted to cry, but the tears came whether I wanted them to or not. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Me neither,” she said, sniffling and wiping under her nose with a napkin. “Some mornings I still knock on her door to make sure she’s ready for school or to ask her how her run went, but the second I see her room, I have to remember it all over again.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that, because the thought of it totally broke my heart.

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, though,” she said. “I tried to keep in touch with your mom to find out how you were doing, but I should have come up there to Longview to see you. I wasn't sure I could handle it at the time, though.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “No one really came up there.”

“You poor thing,” she said, grabbing my hand across the table. “I know you been through some hard times, and just like me, prolly nobody even knows.”

I nodded. “I miss her, too,” I said. “And I still feel like there are all these questions that no one can answer for me about what happened that night.”

Her eyes widened for a second, and then she looked down at the table. “I was hoping maybe you could answer some of my questions, too,” she said. “It just don’t make no sense. It wasn’t like Hailey to be doing drugs or drinking and driving, but they keep insisting she was doing all that. But I told them a thousand times that they had to be wrong. ‘Test results don’t lie’ they said to me, and I guess they’re right. But it still don’t make no sense.”

“It doesn't to me, either,” I said. “I’m having a lot of trouble remembering everything about that night, but me and Hailey, we never did stuff like that. You know that, but nobody believes me. Not even my own parents, I don’t think.”

It felt good to finally say those things without worrying that I would get sent for another therapy session on denial.

“It’s hard to argue with the results of the official tests,” she said. “But something isn’t right. They keep dragging my baby’s name through the mud when she’s not here to defend herself. What was really going on with her, Rayah?”

Chills ran down my spine.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” I said.

She shook her head. “That girl was going to make something of herself and be the first one in my family to really be somebody. She didn’t deserve to die this way.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault, Rayah. I know that,” she said. “Whatever happened that night, you was messed up in it, too, somehow. And I’m glad you survived it, even though I know you’ve had one hell of a fight to get where you are now. I just wish my Hailey had been so lucky.”

Guilt ripped through me. It wasn’t fair that I was still sitting here and she was gone. She was the one who had all the talent and was really going to make something of her life. I didn’t even have a clue where I wanted to go to school or what I wanted to study, but Hailey’d had it all figured out. She could have had her pick of schools, and probably would have had a full scholarship to any one of them.

“Mrs. Feldman, can you tell me what you remember about that day?” I asked. “My doctor told me we’d gone to a party at Leslie’s late that afternoon and were supposed to stay there overnight, but that we’d left at some point and no one was sure why. Do you know anything about that? Did we come here first? Did we say anything about where we were going or who we were meeting up with?”

She wiped the tears from her cheeks and shook her head.

“Not that I can remember,” she said. “You guys were here in the early afternoon, hanging out for a bit after Hailey’s run. You talked about going to that party, but as far as I knew you were going to stay there and not come home until Sunday afternoon.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me, too, but no one seems to know why we left,” I said. “Was Hailey acting strange at all that week leading up to the accident?”

“Strange?” she asked. “Like how?”

“I don’t know. Just not herself, I guess. Did she seem scared or withdrawn?”

Mrs. Feldman looked at me curiously. “You’re not saying you think she was really messed up with those drugs, are you?” she asked. “Because if that’s what you think—”

“No, of course not,” I said. I couldn’t very well tell her about the note or the strange symbol, but I knew those things were related. “I just wish I could make sense of what really happened.”

Mrs. Feldman shook her head. “I don’t blame you, Rayah,” she said. “And I honestly don’t know if there was something going on with her. I was working two jobs and falling straight into bed when I got home. But Hailey could always take care of herself. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. I sighed, feeling the weight of it all so heavy on my shoulders. I kept seeing her words on that piece of paper.

It wasn’t an accident.

I needed answers, and it didn’t look like I was going to get any from her mother.

“Do you mind if I go into Hailey’s room for a few minutes and look around?” I asked. “I know that’s a strange thing to ask, but I just feel like maybe it will help me remember something. Or maybe feel a little closer to her.”

“Oh, gosh, honey, you are welcome to,” she said. She wiped her hand across her tired face. “I’ve hardly had the energy to go in there myself, even after all this time. I keep thinking I should box her things up and put them away. Like maybe it would make me feel better or get some kind of closure, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I still don’t want to believe she’s really gone.”

“I know,” I said.

I didn’t want to believe it either. This whole thing felt like a bad dream I couldn’t force myself to wake up from.

I stood and placed my teacup in the sink. Mrs. Feldman didn’t stand up. She just sat there staring into space, as if lost in some memory.

I left her there and walked down the small hallway to Hailey’s room. The sign she’d made when she was younger still hung on the closed door, her name encircled with a wreath of pink and green hand-painted flowers.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Stepping into her room was like stepping into the past. I could almost see her still sitting on the pink comforter with her laptop open, watching YouTube videos and laughing.

“You’ve got to see this,” she would have said, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her.

But she wasn’t really there, of course. The dresser was covered in a fine layer of dust, one of her shirts still laying in a crumpled ball across the top. I ran my fingertip across the white painted wood of it, sending a tiny dust cloud into the air.

Everything looked exactly the same as it always had. It didn’t look as though her mother had even stepped foot in here since the day Hailey died.

I was grateful nothing had been disturbed. That meant there might still be clues as to what was really going on with her leading up to that night.

Hailey had kept a journal pretty religiously, writing in it every night before she went to bed. I searched for it in her usual hiding place under the mattress, but it wasn’t there. I opened the drawers of her side tables and the top few drawers of her dresser and desk.

The familiar red leather journal was nowhere to be found.

But I knew Hailey. She rarely ever took it out of her room, because she was terrified someone would find it and read it. Of course I’d never even read it myself, but I knew that she wrote about all her thoughts and feelings. She’d once told me that the journal was an embarrassingly raw retelling of everything that happened in her life.

She’d once jokingly made me promise that if anything ever happened to her, I was to destroy it so that no one ever found out about her secret crush on our history teacher, Mr. Powell.

If something had been going on with her, she would have written about it in that journal. So where was it?

I searched the room for her purse or her school backpack, thinking maybe she would have taken it with her or thrown it in there, but I couldn’t find either of those in her room. The only place left to look was her closet, so I threw open the door and stared inside.

She had a small closet compared to mine, not one of those walk-in closets you see in newer houses. It was a tiny little space that she’d always kept neat and organized. Her shoes were arranged in double rows along the floor and her clothes hung neatly according to length from left to right.

Inside, I didn’t see her backpack, but I did notice something strange. Her favorite pair of running shoes were in the center of the back row of shoes, and they were covered in mud.

Or was that mud?

I crouched down to get a closer look.

Hailey was obsessive about her running shoes. She never would have left them dirty like this, but they were completely covered in what now looked to me like black tar. And it wasn’t just the soles of the shoes. It was the laces and the entire front of them, too.

My stomach drew into knots as I thought of the black oily liquid dripping from Hailey’s mouth in my dream.

I got down on my knees and reached for the shoes, but as my hand brushed the dress hanging above them, something on the wall in the back of the closet caught my eye.

Goosebumps broke out along my skin, and I pulled my hand away as if it had bitten me. I didn’t want to see whatever was back there, but I knew I needed to.

I couldn’t explain it, but I suddenly wanted to get the hell out of there. This room that had been a place of refuge and joy for me most of my teenage years had turned dark in an instant, and I had to look over my shoulder just to make sure no one was standing there.

Carefully, with trembling hands, I pushed Hailey’s clothes out of the way and stared at the wall that had been hidden behind them.

A single symbol had been drawn over and over in wild, thick lines. Three triangles with three dark circles surrounding them. The entire back wall was covered with them.

My hand flew to my mouth, and I fell back onto the rug. Panic consumed me like a raging fire.

What the hell was going on?

“Rayah? Everything okay in there?” her mom asked from the hallway.

The door to Hailey’s room was only partway opened, but I didn’t want her coming in here and seeing this.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to control the terror in my voice. “I just tripped over something, but I’m okay. I’ll be out in a second.”

“Okay,” she said, but she sounded concerned. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” I said.

I reached into my back pocket for my phone, and as quickly as I could, I snapped several photos of the drawings in Hailey’s closet. I also took a picture of the tar-like substance on her shoes.

I carefully rearranged the clothes so that they were covering the drawings again and closed the closet door.

With one last glance around, I left my best friend’s bedroom and said goodbye to her mother, wanting to get as far away from that place as I could.

I had no idea what I was going to do, but there was no doubt in my mind at that point that something unnatural had happened to my friend. Something evil.

And whatever it was, it was happening to me, too.