I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the clock and dreading the last bell.

I really didn’t want to tell my parents I had fainted at school, but Mrs. Calloway had given me a note that needed to be returned tomorrow with a parent’s signature. She said it had something to do with state policy regarding injuries and illnesses at school, and that if I didn’t return the signed note, she would have to call them herself.

There was no way I was getting out of telling them. They were completely going to freak out and lock me in my room for a month so they could keep me safe.

But what they couldn’t know was that I wasn’t safe anywhere. Whatever had come for Hailey was coming for me. I could feel it like a dark cloud hovering over my shoulder.

I needed to be out looking for answers, not locked away in my room. But how was I going to convince them of that?

Maybe if I could figure out a way to get Dr. Millner on my side, my parents would loosen up a bit. If I could convince her that my main source of stress was my lack of freedom, she could tell them to stop hovering. They would listen to her.

But I wasn’t scheduled to see her until Friday. That felt like a lifetime away at this point.

I walked out to the parking lot and groaned when I saw my sister standing by the car with her arms crossed and her mean face on. She had obviously already heard about the incident in the lunchroom.

“What in the world are you still doing here?” she asked. “You should have come and gotten me out of class and had Mom pick us up. What in the world happened?”

“Just get in the car,” I said.

She stomped her foot and climbed into the passenger’s seat, obviously not going to let this slide.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “You’re sneaking around, lying to Mom and Dad about where you’re going and who you’re spending time with. You say everything is fine, but then you pass out cold in the cafeteria and don’t even call to let Mom know? What’s going on with you lately?”

“Do you really have to ask me that?”

I backed up too fast and nearly ran into Jenny Foster’s new Ford Focus. She beeped her horn at me and gave me the finger.

“Sorry,” I shouted, even though my windows were rolled up and she couldn’t hear me.

I backed up slower this time, checking my side mirrors to make sure I wasn’t going to hit anyone. An accident in the parking lot would be the cherry on top of this shit-sundae of an afternoon.

“I don’t want you to be mad at me, but I can’t keep covering for you,” Kimi said. “Not if you won’t talk to me about what you’re thinking and what’s really going on. Are you sick?”

“No, I’m not sick,” I said. “I just had a rough day, and I got dehydrated and passed out. End of story.”

“Bullshit and you know it,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

My hands were shaking again, and I was too angry and upset to drive. I pulled over into another parking space near the exit.

“Fine, you really want to know what’s going on with me?” I said, turning my body towards my sister. “My best friend died in a terrible car accident, and I never got to say goodbye to her. I can’t even remember what happened or why we were both so messed up that night. Then, some guy shows up at school and happens to know a lot more about what was going on with Hailey than I ever imagined. And then today at lunch, Nicole tells me that even though she originally said she didn’t see us at the party that night, she actually did see us. In fact, she remembers that Hailey was already high on something when we got there. And to top it off, Hailey apparently told her that she’d slipped something into my drink on purpose to help me chill out and relax. So, yeah, I’ve been a bit stressed.”

Kimi sat there with her mouth hanging open and tears hovering on the edge of her eyelids.

“Oh my god, Marayah, I had no idea,” she said. She reached for my hand and pulled me into a hug. “I mean, I obviously knew about the accident, but I didn’t know about Hailey slipping something into your drink. Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, tears finally letting loose and streaming down my cheeks into my sister’s black hair. I couldn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t want her getting mixed up in all of this.

“And hold on a minute, did you say Jordan knows something about what happened?” she asked, pulling away so she could look at my face. “How would he know anything? Didn’t he just move here recently?”

I swiped at the tears on my cheeks and took a deep breath. Crap. I’d told her way too much, which was only going to make this day worse.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “And I know you’re curious, and you just want to help me figure all this out, but I honestly don’t even understand it all myself. Just trust me when I say that the less Mom and Dad know about this, the better. There are some things I need to take care of and figure out before it will all be over.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” she asked, genuine fear in her eyes.

“Maybe,” I said. “But locking me away in Longview is not the answer. And neither is locking me away in my room. The only way out of this is to keep moving forward until I have all the answers about what really happened to Hailey that night.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” I stared at my sister. Was she really going to help me keep this a secret from our parents?

“Yes,” she said. “I’m with you, whatever you need. Just promise me that when you’ve figured everything out, you’ll tell me what really happened.”

“Deal,” I said, even though I knew she would never believe me. “I have to tell them about fainting, though. The school nurse is making me bring back a signed letter in the morning.”

I took the note out of my bag, and Kimi snatched it out of my hand.

“Give me a pen,” she said.

I stared at her, mouth open. “What?”

“Give me a pen. I am a pro at signing Mom’s name,” she said. “Last year when they were visiting you at the hospital all the time, I sat at home and spent hours practicing so that I could sign off on all my bad grades. I didn’t want to stress them out any more than was necessary.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. “And what bad grades? I thought you were a straight-A student?”

She shrugged, dug a pen out of the glove compartment, and signed the paper. When she handed it back to me, the signature was indistinguishable from the real thing.

“We all have our secrets,” she said.

I put the letter in my bag and pulled out of the school’s parking lot, heading toward home.

Kimi was right, we all had our secrets. And I couldn’t help but wonder what secrets I was still hiding from myself.