Tori’s eyes snapped open.

Her clothes stuck to her skin, her chilled body curled to fit on the wooden bench beside her front door. Pins and needles pricked her arms and hands and feet. She scraped at the hair that clung to her forehead and lashes to find a light rain dripping softly from the eaves of the porch. Lightning flickered far off in the distance.

She sat up too fast. Her head pounded and the bench swayed. A dull throb had taken root in her arm. She drew up her wet sleeve to find her forearm wrapped with a torn piece of fabric, the unraveling hem of what, up until now, had been her favorite T-shirt. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she looked out across the porch over the lawn, peering into the shadows. The sky was dusky and violet, still too dark to see. She couldn’t be certain that everything she remembered from last night wasn’t just a hallucination or a really weird dream.

Tori eased off the bench, gripping the rusted arm to keep her balance. She crept to the door and pried it open, listening to be sure the house was still asleep before stepping inside and sliding the chain in place. Careful to avoid the creaky middles of the steps, she darted up the stairs and into the bathroom, falling back against the locked door. She looked down at herself, at the smears of mud on her jeans and the dried blood under her fingernails.

It was almost sunrise. She could run the faucet. If her mother heard, she would only assume Tori was getting ready for school.

School. The thought sent a fresh shudder through her. Maybe she could crawl in bed and tell her mother she was sick.

She splashed handfuls of water over her face. It trailed down her arms, tingeing the sink with dirt and blood. She popped a couple of pain relievers and tipped her head to take a swig from the tap. The well water smelled strange, faintly earthy and metallic, but she didn’t realize how thirsty she was until it was running cold down her cheek and she gratefully gulped it down.

When she finally came up for air, the room seemed to wobble. She held the sides of the sink to keep herself upright. And that’s when she saw them.

The dark, fingerlike bruises circling her wrist.

Hands shaking, she stripped off her sweatshirt and reached for the makeshift bandage below her elbow. The knot looked complicated and secure, but it released with a surprisingly light pull. She peeled it away from the inflamed skin. The cut was bad. Worse than she’d thought. And somehow, the terribleness of it was comforting. I must have lost a lot of blood. I must have passed out and imagined horrible things. She had probably treated her wound and wandered home, too weak to have a recollection of any of it. The bruises on her wrist were probably marks left by her own hand when she’d tried to stop the bleeding.

But the knot…

She stripped off her remaining clothes and buried them under the pile in the hamper, discarding the bloody rag and the remains of her T-shirt in the bottom of the wastebasket. Washing the laundry and taking out the trash were Tori’s chores anyway; she’d get rid of the whole mess after school.

She brushed her hair from her eyes and examined herself in the mirror. She looked as terrible as she felt. But playing sick wasn’t an option. If her mother took her to the doctor, or even just took a close enough interest, she’d never be able to explain the cut and bruises. She’d just end up in another therapist’s office. Instead, she pulled the iodine and hydrogen peroxide from the medicine cabinet and grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink. Teeth gritted, she poured the peroxide over the length of the gash and watch it bubble over, pink and speckled with dirt. Every muscle inside her clenched with the sting. She ran the shower and climbed under the hot water, letting it steam the chill from her bones as she scrubbed herself clean.

When she was done, she opened the curtain and stared at herself in the mirror. At the pink and purple lines crisscrossing her arms and thighs, visible in the steamy glass against the winter-pale skin she always kept covered. Turning away from them, she snatched a towel from the cabinet and got down to the business of covering them up.

Tori had become good at this, slathering angry wounds with antibiotic ointment, stretching butterfly strips over the length of a fresh cut and hiding it under a thin layer of loose gauze and bandages that no one would notice through the sleeves of her shirt. Always black. Always long-sleeved.

Tori jumped at the bang on the bathroom door. “Quit hogging the bathroom, Tori! You’re going to make us late for school.” Pulling her towel tighter around herself, she checked the lock, but Kyle didn’t try to come in.

“I’m almost done!” she called back, cringing when her sore throat cracked on the last syllable.

Breath held, she listened for the sound of his retreating feet on the hardwood. Kyle was ten, and keeping secrets had never been his strong suit. When she was sure he was gone, Tori scrambled, burying the bandage wrappers in the wastebasket and checking the shower and sink for signs of blood. She waited for the slam of his bedroom door before creeping across the hall to her room.

The pink walls were too bright and her room was freezing, the lace curtains wavering in the damp breeze. The window was open again, a wet spot darkening the floor where the rain must have blown in during the night. But she’d closed it last night, before she’d left. She was certain of it. She slammed the window shut and examined the springs. They seemed fine. Tori, on the other hand, was far from it.

The sheets and blankets were still peeled back on her bed, and she thought hard about climbing under them. But even if she crawled under the covers and closed her eyes, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep. She massaged the lingering marks on her wrist, then drew the curtain closed and sat in her damp towel on the edge of her bed. Just another bad dream. Just shock and blood loss and an overactive imagination. That’s all it could have been.

Groggy and sore, she put on her school uniform, pulling the sleeves of the thick dark emblem sweater over the collared shirt all the way down past her wrists. Everyone assumed Tori’s wardrobe was a fashion statement, including her mother. That the black sweatshirts she wore regardless of the season was a dark mood she’d eventually grow out of, like her hair. She’d cut it short when she’d started swimming, into a cute blunt bob that fit easily inside her swim cap. But for the last year, she’d kept it cropped close, trimmed tightly around her ears. She dragged her fingers through it, hardly checking if it fell in place.

She headed downstairs and peeked around the door frame into the kitchen. Her mother dug noisily through cabinets in a paint-spattered smock, mumbling to herself about a pan that had been missing since the move. After a while, she gave up trying to find it. She splashed coffee over the sides of her mug while she busied herself making Kyle an overly complicated breakfast of dippy eggs in maple toast. Her mother coddled him too much, making excuses for his bad attitude and the long, silent stretches he spent in front of a game console, saying he was too young to know how to cope with so many transitions after the death of their father a little more than a year ago. But sometimes Tori wondered, however juvenile it might be, if her mother paid Kyle more attention because he was actually hers. Tori’s parents were convinced they couldn’t have children, so they’d arranged to adopt. They chose Tori. But then a few years later, much to everyone’s surprise, her mom got pregnant with Kyle, and he fit in every way that counted—he had their mother’s hair and eyes, and their father’s freckles and protruding ears that looked fun and eager on Tori’s father’s face, but looked a little ridiculous on Kyle. Or at least, they used to. Tori darted a quick glance where he sat at the table, hunched over his hot chocolate, not bothering to look at her. The older he got, the more striking the resemblances.

“Can I make you a plate?” Her mother’s spatula hung almost hopefully over the pan. The butter began to sizzle and burn. Her expectation that a change in Tori’s breakfast choices, like a change in her hair or clothing choices, might be indicative of an improvement in her mental well-being set Tori’s teeth on edge. But she forced herself to smile back, grateful her mother didn’t know she’d slept on the front porch.

“No, thanks.” She reached up to the top shelf of the pantry for a box of Cheerios and felt her bandages pull. The small effort made her woozy. She poured herself a glass of orange juice, remembering something from eighth grade health class about blood loss and shock, and orange juice being good for that. She sucked it down in four big gulps, then refilled her glass.

They all paused at a hard knock on the door. Tori’s mother rushed past, muttering about it being too early for visitors. Tori and Kyle listened from the kitchen as she struggled with the chain.

“Alistair, good of you to drop by,” her mother said in an overly cheery voice she usually reserved for people she wasn’t sure she liked yet. Alistair Slaughter was their neighbor on every side, and the thing Tori liked least about living here. It was his late father’s land they were living on now, a fact Alistair hadn’t seemed to come to terms with, given the frequency of his unannounced visits.

Tori peeled back the curtain and saw Jesse Slaughter through the open window of the passenger seat of Alistair’s truck. “Good morning, Jesse,” her mom called out to him. He looked up and waved at her. His eyes found Tori’s through the kitchen window. He pulled the bill of his ball cap lower over his eyes and raised a couple of fingers to her in a half wave, biting back a cocky smile. Tori let the curtain fall closed, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. “I wasn’t expecting company,” her mother said.

“Mrs. Burns,” Alistair said. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast.”

“Please, call me Sarah.”

“I’d rather not.” Alistair cleared his throat sharply and continued before Tori’s mother could catch her breath to answer. He spoke in a worn, leathery drawl. Even though her family had already been here for a month, the thick, scratchy dialect was still rough against her ears. “Just wanted to let you know that I came by this morning to pick up the last of my father’s equipment from the shed. Had to cut the padlock, seeing how you already changed the keys. Anyhow, we’re done here…for now. Whatever’s left behind ain’t worth much good, so I guess you’ll welcome yourself to it.” Just like everything else went unspoken, and Tori could picture her mother pursing her lips.

“Thank you.”

“There’s been a disturbance over in the northwestern field. In the cemetery.”

Tori set her glass in the sink and crept into the hall behind her mother.

“Looks like someone dug up a hole. May be just neighborhood kids. But I plan to find out who did it, and when I do, they’ll answer for it.” Alistair’s gaze turned on Tori. She lowered her head at the mention of the cemetery. Did Alistair know she was there last night? Could he have been the one to tie that knot on her arm and leave her on the front porch? Not likely. If he’d found her there, he would have banged down her mother’s door and made sure she (and everyone else) knew about it. There wouldn’t have been any thoughts on privacy, or polite conversations to spare anyone’s feelings. Tori tossed her bangs out of the way and looked the man straight in his eyes. “Anyhow, I figured you probably didn’t know. You might want to get down there and take a look.”

“Thank you, Alistair. It was very kind of you to come by,” her mother said. She moved to shut the door, but Alistair braced it open with the toe of his boot. His pinched smile revealed tightly gritted teeth. Hospitable enough on the surface, but not so welcoming once you got past that.

“I couldn’t help but notice you don’t have any equipment of your own. How do you plan to fill it?”

Tori’s mother tucked an errant curl behind her ear and turned up the wattage on her uncomfortably bright smile. “I appreciate you thinking of us, Alistair, but we’re pretty resourceful. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

A muscle ticked in Alistair’s jaw. “I’m sure you will,” he said crisply. “It’s your land. You can do whatever you like with it. For now.” He reached into his pocket and handed an envelope to Tori’s mother. She hesitated before taking it. With a grumbled good-bye, Alistair plucked at the brim of his hat, and his muddy boots clunked down the porch steps and disappeared into his pickup where Jesse still sat, pretending not to watch them. Rifles hung in a rack across the truck’s back window, and as they drove away, Tori had to look through them to see Alistair eyeing her disdainfully in the rearview mirror.

She didn’t have to guess what was inside the envelope—probably the monthly land lease payment Alistair had grudgingly agreed to pay them in exchange for letting him farm two of his father’s old fields—but Tori’s mother didn’t open it. Drained of color, she tucked it into her pocket and disappeared into the house without a word.

Alistair was wrong. This wasn’t the Burnses’ land. The longer they were here, the more Tori was convinced she couldn’t possibly be any farther from home.