SARAH AND I HAVE STARTED running together. We do shorter runs than Nick and I did, and we take a different path. Sometimes she gets sick of maintaining a steady pace and she sprints off like a jackrabbit and then waits for me to catch up. I tell her it’s good practice for when she’s in cross-country again. Or, rather, when we do cross-country together in the fall. I think I’m going to be good at it. I think I’m going to be better than her. I haven’t mentioned that to her. Not yet.

A couple of times, Mona has run with us. When she does, Sarah sucks it up and runs alongside us the whole way.

We don’t talk much on these runs, even when it’s the three of us. We don’t talk about Charlie, or that night. Don’t talk about all the other drugs the police found when they searched his room, or what we’ll say when we’re called up to testify against him. Don’t talk about how his father resigned, the official word being that he wanted to “spend more time with his family” and the unofficial word being that he was forced to resign after it came out that he hadn’t submitted Anna’s samples for testing, that he’d lied to cover up for his son. Maybe there will be a time when we’ll want to talk about some of it. Maybe there won’t.

It’s different, but we don’t talk about Brian either. Don’t talk about how he and Mona sit across from each other at lunch sometimes, at the far edge of the cafeteria. Sarah and I try not to pay too much attention to the two of them together, try not to notice how most of the time they don’t talk and they definitely don’t touch. It’s private, whatever there is between the two of them, and delicate. But it looks a little like hope, like a new beginning.

I think Anna would have liked that.

I think she’d have liked how Mom brought down a photo album from the attic the other day, and we looked through it together, looked at old pictures of her. At the photo of her on the homecoming court, her hair stiff with hair spray, and a huge, huge smile on her face. Anna’s smile. I’m not sure why I never noticed that before.

Sometimes I tell Anna about these things—all the things she’s missing. All the things I think she’d want to know about.

Sometimes I almost think she can hear me.

Sometimes I almost think I can hear her respond.