Of course you know now what had happened to stop the trial, but we didn’t know until hours later, when we saw it on the news.

The man who killed Stephanie got careless. In the town of Kitchener, a few days before the end of Casey’s trial, he tried to grab a girl coming out of her Girl Guide meeting. The little girl started screaming, and a flock of Guides flew out of the church and surrounded him. They hung onto him, dragged him down, and blew their whistles until help came running.

The Girl Guides became heroes. They got a national medal of bravery and appeared on all the TV shows. You probably saw all that.

The cops impounded the man’s car, where they found a t-shirt Stephanie had stolen from me and I had never missed. It was the shirt she was wearing when she was killed. It had her blood on it and hairs from the guy’s head on it. They also found clothing belonging to a kid he had murdered in Windsor. He confessed to both murders and his confession checked out.

He had been lying in wait for us, hiding in the forest on the edge of the camp, waiting for his best chance. He grabbed Stephanie because she was a little bit apart from the group, so she was the easiest to get to. He hit her on the head while she was sleeping so she made no noise when he took her away.

There was no real reason why he did it. He chose Ten Willows by chance; he chose Stephanie by chance. It wasn’t personal. He just liked killing kids. Some men are like that.

I never had to answer Mr. Tesler’s question.

I still don’t know how I would have answered it.

Because of course I shoved Stephanie’s t-shirt into Casey’s bag.

I’d been searching for the little brat for hours. I kept trying to talk Casey into sneaking away with me, going to hide out in an empty cabin or even walk home through the rain, but she wouldn’t. She even almost snapped at me.

“She’s just a little kid,” she said. “She could have fallen. She could be hurt. We can’t stop looking just because we’re tired and wet.”

And she flounced away from me, back into the woods.

I started grumbling so much and so loudly that Mrs. Keefer suggested I go back to my cabin and pack up Stephanie’s belongings as well as Casey’s and my things.

Casey’s stuff was already mostly packed. All the other campers were gone. I packed up my things then packed up Stephanie’s. I took Stephanie’s bag up to the dining hall where her mother could pick it up. Then I went back to my cabin to sweep.

I found the Tinker Bell t-shirt when I was sweeping under the bunks.

I didn’t feel like hauling it all the way back to the dining hall. I looked at my bag and I looked at Casey’s and I looked at the garbage pail.

If I put the shirt in the garbage pail, someone might see it there and ask why I’d thrown it away, and that would have been a hassle.

If I put it in my bag then I’d have to either get it to Stephanie or dispose of it at my house. Both seemed like too much work.

So I put it in Casey’s bag. It was the easiest.

I should have thrown it in the woods or left it on the floor.

I never should have been asked to deal with it in the first place. It wasn’t my t-shirt. It shouldn’t have been my problem.

Casey was back in school the following Monday. The halls buzzed with the news of her return.

I didn’t actually see her until lunchtime, but first I encountered The Cactus gang. They pushed their way to the front of the cafeteria checkout line with an arrogance that told me they weren’t the least ashamed about what they’d done.

“I see your girlfriend is back in school,” Amber Bradley said.

“Probably thinks she’s some kind of hero,” said Nicole, poking me in the back. “Probably thinks the school will welcome her with open arms.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Nathan added.

“Why are you saying this to me?” I asked.

“Just in case you two have any notions of picking up where you left off,” Amber replied. “We don’t want that sort of thing at Galloway High. Casey may or may not be a murderer, but she is still weird, isn’t she?”

The group pushed past me into the cafeteria.

“So you just get away with it?” I called after them.

Amber came back and stood two inches from my face. “Get away with what?”

“Everything. Trashing her house, making money off those lies—everything.”

“You’re getting away with it,” Amber replied, a nasty smirk on her face. “Casey was fair game to us. She was never our friend. We never cared about her. What’s your excuse?” With that, she turned away and rejoined her friends.

Casey came in while I was having my lunch. She walked toward an empty table, her lunch tray in her hands. The cafeteria went silent.

The Cactus gang blocked her way.

“We don’t want you in our school.” Amber’s voice was loud and clear and mean.

Casey tried to move through them, but they knocked the lunch tray out of her hands. The sound of the dishes crashing to the floor made us all jump.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then I saw Casey do the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. She held her hands out in front of her as if she were still holding the lunch tray, and began walking again toward the tables. The Cactus gang parted and let her pass.

She surveyed the room, her eyes resting on me for a brief second, then moving on. She found a vacant seat at another table, sat down, and pretended to eat her lunch. She was calm, unhurried, and unafraid.

That’s when I knew that Casey had already left Galloway. Oh, she’ll be there until she finishes high school, but the town can’t touch her anymore. Amber’s meanness, the church’s pettiness, even my disloyalty—none of that mattered to her. Nothing we did could hurt her, ever again. She had beaten us all.

Watching her, I was overtaken by the depth of what I had lost, of the friend I’d thrown away because I didn’t have the courage to stand by her. Loneliness overpowered me, and I could barely breathe.

I couldn’t stand it. I jumped out of my seat and ran from the cafeteria. I stopped at my locker only long enough to grab my coat. At home, I threw some things into my mother’s car and I started to drive.

“Get out of this town,” Mom had implored, and, for once, I was doing as she’d asked.

That was nearly five months ago. I had meant to go far away, maybe to Arizona, but I couldn’t seem to get more than fifty miles away from Galloway. I drifted for a while, picking up cash here and there for this and that, and then I landed at the Roach House.

I phone Dad every now and then. He wasn’t surprised that I’d left. Mom’s the same, he says. He doesn’t know when she’ll be coming home.

There was a letter from Casey waiting for me in the mailbox the day I left home. She must have mailed it a few days before I testified, when it still looked like she’d be spending her life in prison. She wrote:

Dear Jess,

Mela finally told me that you are going to testify against me, and I’m writing to tell you that it doesn’t matter.

I would have been hurt by it, except that just after she told me, a cockroach wandered into my cell. I took one look at it, and I automatically knew it was an American cockroach, of the order Blattodea, family Blattidae, one of six hundred species worldwide. I knew its Latin name, Periplaneta Americana, and I knew that the females produce up to fifty egg cases, each holding a dozen eggs.

I reminded myself that I’m the same person, in or out of prison. There are bugs everywhere, and my life, my passion, my self, will not be ruined unless I let it be ruined.

I did not kill Stephanie, but I did fall asleep, allowing Death to come in the night and take her from us, before she had a chance to stop being annoying and become the person she was meant to be. I’ll have to live with that forever. But I didn’t kill her. And I will find happiness, and meaning, even in the penitentiary.

I don’t know why you allowed the world to change you, Dragonfly. You used to have such courage.

Casey

Casey was wrong about me, you know. I never had courage.

If I were courageous, I’d drive on back to Galloway and try to make things right with her again. But how can I do that? How can I prove to her that I’m someone who deserves to have her for a friend?

Mom would know. If I could talk to Mom, she’d tell me what I should do. If I could get her away from that hospital, get those awful drugs out of her system, I could convince her that I’ve changed, and she’d help me win Casey back. Casey trusts her. And Mom knows how hard it was on me to live in that town. And what I went through while Casey was in detention.

I could really do that, you know. I could drive up to the hospital in the morning, as soon as I got off shift. I can go up to her ward during visiting hours, so my presence wouldn’t look suspicious. I can take some extra clothes with me, get her out of that hospital gown they probably have her wearing, then take her calmly down the elevator and put her into the car.

We can even come back here to the Roach House for a few days. There’s a storeroom in the back she can sleep in, just until the drugs wear off and she can call Casey.

“Come out here and join us,” she’ll say to Casey. “My brave daughter gave me my life back. Come out here and we’ll drive to Arizona and get away from everyone!”

And Casey will come because she loves my mother and she loves me, and everything will be back to the way it used to be.

Back when we were friends.