THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY THE TRACK team had its first meet of the season.

My first race was the 100-meter. Longer distances could involve a certain amount of strategy, decisions about whether to try to take the lead at the beginning and hold on to it or save your energy for a burst at that final stretch, but the 100-meter was all about pure speed—strategy only got in the way.

I was positioned four lanes in. The girl on my left slowly cracked each of her knuckles, ignoring my pointed glare as she finished one hand and moved on to the other one. I wanted her to fall flat on her face and later develop early arthritis in all her finger joints.

Then I put thoughts of her and her hopefully unpleasant future aside and focused on taking deep, deliberate breaths. I could do this. It was running, and I was a runner. This is running and I am a runner.

“Ready!”

Inhale. Exhale.

“Set!”

Inhale. Exhale.

The starter pistol fired.

My feet hit the track. One, two. One, two. One-two, one-two.

My arms pumped, my legs reached forward, and everything else followed.

This is running and I am a runner.

I was only dimly aware of the other people on the track. It wasn’t about them anymore. It was only about me.

One-two, one-two, one—

I hit the finish line in first place.

I came to a halt, feeling light-headed.

“Great job, Jess!” my dad yelled from the bleachers. My mom held his arm and beamed at me. I was glad they were here, that they had seen me win.

Sarah and a bunch of my teammates cheered. And Lauren looked unhappy, the ultimate sign of success.

As I headed back to the stands, Mr. Matthews grinned at me and put his hand up for a high five. I hesitated. It wasn’t clear how to avoid it without being obvious, though, so I quickly slapped his hand and then beat a hasty retreat to go sit with Sarah.

“Good job,” she said. “Your parents are pretty cute, getting all excited.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Did your parents come?”

“My dad did,” she said.

“But not your mom?”

“Nope, she had lunch plans with one of her girlfriends or something.” She gave a weird laugh. “It’s probably just as well. The last time she came to a meet she pulled me aside afterward and told me I should be careful—she’d noticed that my thighs were getting ‘bulky.’ ”

I looked at her thighs. They looked strong and hard. Bulky was not a word I would have applied to them.

“They look fine to me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re obviously not the thigh connoisseur she is.”

I shook my head and thought back to the last time I’d seen her mom, all willowy limbs, her hair up in a perfect chignon. Beautiful and ethereal, as if she’d be blown to pieces by a strong wind. Then I thought about my mom and how she’d always told me and Anna how beautiful we were, how proud of us she was. We’d laughed and made stupid faces and said what about now? Are we beautiful now? Are you proud of us now? And she’d said yes, always.

Sarah sighed. “The pathetic thing is that sometimes I look at her and she’s so damn pretty that I catch myself wondering if all the stupid stuff she does—fasting, strange green protein shakes, obsessive moisturizing—is worth it. And then I get scared she’ll suck me into caring about it the way she does. That one day I’ll trade my eyeliner—which she hates—for her stupid coral lipstick and twenty years later, boom, I’ll be preaching the gospel of hot yoga and spending over an hour in front of the mirror each morning to achieve the ‘natural’ look.”

“I like your eyeliner,” I said. “It makes you look like a warrior.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes, even though I’d meant it—the eyeliner made her look fierce and tough, like an Amazon. We sat in silence for a few moments, and then I broached a subject I’d been wondering about for the last few days.

“If you wanted to go somewhere with someone, where would you go?” I asked.

“That’s super vague,” she said.

“Like to drink,” I said. “Or other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” Sarah grinned at me, her eyebrows arched.

“This is hypothetical,” I assured her. “You can bring those eyebrows back down already.”

“Hypothetical my ass.”

“No, really,” I said. “Where do most people go? For stuff they can’t or don’t want to do at home.”

“So, what—you’re just doing a sociological study of teenage habits in Birdton, right? Just an impartial survey to map the behavior of the natives?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, with you it’s almost possible. Well, the big place is the quarry. Especially to drink, but also to, you know, make out in dark corners or have the sexy-sex.”

“The quarry? That was where there was a big party, right?”

“Yeah, probably. Anyway, most people have three options: the backseat of their car, if they have one; some random place that just happens to be available when they need it; or the quarry.”

“I guess privacy is kind of hard to come by around here.”

She smiled. “Yeah, yet people find a way.” She stood up. “All right, my heat is coming up, so I’m going to head on down—wish me luck.”

“I doubt you’ll need it,” I told her.

“Thank you,” she said, placing her hand over her heart, beauty queen style. “That just means so much.” Then she pointed at my bag. “You got a message.”

I followed her finger and saw a dim light shining through the thin canvas of my bag. “Thanks,” I said, but she’d already headed off to the track.

It was only after I unzipped my bag that I remembered my phone wasn’t there. It was lying right beside me on the bleacher. The phone in my bag wasn’t my phone at all. It was Anna’s.

I pulled it out, and there was a text on the screen:

Stop calling me, little girl.

I stared at it, bewildered.

You don’t know, I thought. You don’t know that Anna is dead.