A cool breeze stirred Calla's hair, a warning that the warm weather would not last.

"Can you stay at my place tonight?"

"I'm sure." Calla kicked a pebble out of her path. The sun warmed her shoulders, offsetting the chill in the air. She squinted up at the sky.

"Please," Rachel whispered, her voice breaking. Calla resisted the urge to sigh. "I can't believe the funeral is tomorrow."

"Mom'll be home in an hour," Calla lied. "I can head over then. You can do this, Rach." She paused, then amended: "We can do this."

Her focus traveled down the road, to the battered red Honda in her driveway. Rosalind had been home for over an hour now, but Rachel didn't need to know that.

She can survive for an hour without me, Calla reasoned. She had more pressing matters to attend to than her best friend's tears.

Cold? Perhaps. Practical? Undoubtedly.

They said their goodbyes and Calla exhaled, quickening her pace. Each step brought her closer to the old white farmhouse she called home. Everything about it screamed domestication. The chipped paint. The broken front porch steps. The little picket fence that came no higher than her waist. It was an old, rundown piece of crap, but she had a strange attachment to it.

It was the one place where she could close the door and shut out the world—and with it, the mask she wore.

Calla barely had time to unsling the bag from her shoulders before Rosalind descended on her, a bag of groceries still in one hand. "There you are."

"Here I am." Calla took the groceries from her mother's arm. "Where else would I be?"

"Dead in a ditch," she said unceremoniously. She backtracked into the kitchen. "I don't want you wandering around after school, especially now that practice is cancelled this week."

Another inconvenience to Calla's daily routine. Track practice gave her something to do—something beyond fantasizing about the way a person's skin might look when peeled from their bones.

"I'm not wandering around. It's a ten minute walk." Calla gathered up the plastic bags from the counter and stowed them beneath the sink, saving them for—what, a rainy day? She had no idea, but her mother liked to keep them around "just in case", whatever the hell that meant.

Rosalind came up behind her and kissed the top of her head, playing absently with the ends of her hair. "How was Rachel?"

"Sad."

"Honey."

"The funeral is tomorrow." Calla's mind was a million miles away. She tried to force herself back into the present, but her thoughts kept straying to her bedroom. "Rach wants me to come over tonight."

Her mother sighed. Her hands fell from Calla's hair. "I suppose that's alright. How can I say no?"

"So you'll give me a ride?"

She smirked as she turned away, disappearing into the pantry. "Nice try."

Good. Calla typed out a quick text to Rachel, letting her know she'd need a ride after dinner. I need all the time I can get.

And she wasted none of that time. Calla closed her bedroom door and got to work, heading straight for her closet.

She scanned the floor, staring at her discarded costume from the Halloween party just three short nights ago. She ran the thin material over her fingertips, but found nothing amiss. The tights were spotless. The skirt, wrinkled—but otherwise suitable. She held each article of clothing up to her nose and took a deep breath.

Sweat. Maybe a hint of vodka. But no scent of iron. No whiff of earth.

Calla dropped the costume into her hamper and scanned the floor for her shoes. She'd insisted on wearing boots that night. Rachel's boots, as a matter of fact.

They weren't in the closet.

Suspicious now, Calla exited the closet and fell to her knees. She peered under the bed and froze.

A pair of muddy boots stared back at her.

She grabbed them and rushed into the bathroom. They were leather, and Calla had no idea how the hell she was supposed to clean leather, but she did her best with a washcloth and warm water. The mud fell away, dirtying the sink and filling the air with the scent of warm earth. She scrubbed at every crease until the water ran clear and the smell of leather overpowered the smell of grime.

What gives, Calla? She carried the boots into her bedroom and sat them on her purple bedspread. Filthy boots...

And filthy hands.

Her eyes strayed to the open window. At the edge of her vision, a large oak tree—technically on their property, though its branches extended into county land—provided the only cover between her house and the apartment complex next door. The field stood between them, dead grass stretching to the distant tree line.

"Calla!" her mother called. "Can you come set the table?"

She cursed, glaring at the boots on her bed.

Time. She needed more time.

"Calla." A warning.

"Sorry," she called, hurrying out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She brushed past her mother, trying to channel the same melancholy she'd been working so hard to perfect all day. "Was just packing a bag."

From the living room, Calla could hear the low hum of the local news station. She pretended not to take much interest—pretended, and failed. Her hands were in the sink, cleaning plates. But her eyes were on the TV, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

"You can go turn that up," her mother offered quietly. "I know you and Rachel must be wound up about this mess."

Calla needed no further encouragement. She darted into the living room and grabbed the remote, cranking up the volume. She wasn't sure why the news channel had been left running, but she had a feeling it had something to do with her obsessive need to check for fresh reports three times a day.

Sheriff Marks peered out at her from the screen. Dark circles weighed his eyes down, and the little hair he had left was unkempt, sticking up in the back like a stray stalk of corn.

Christ. The man had seen better days.

Calla hovered in the space between the living and dining room, unable to peel her eyes away from the screen.

"We want to assure the citizens of Greenwitch County that we are doing all that we can at this time." The sheriff rubbed at his forehead, pulling his hair as he did so. No wonder he looked such a hot mess. "We have not, at this time, identified any suspects in Tracy Smith's murder. The weapon—a knife from the Smith's kitchen—has not been found."

An odd feeling began to stir in her gut.

"The department would like to ask the citizens of Greenwitch to report any unusual behavior," Sheriff Marks went on. "We will not rest until we have the killer in custody."

The reporters in the crowd exploded with questions. Sheriff Marks winced. And Calla, who had no time for the useless blather that was sure to follow the official report, turned off the TV.

She padded back into the kitchen and began rifling through the silverware, her mind elsewhere.

Filthy boots. Filthy hands.

Mud and blood. Mud and blood and blood and blood.

Calla's fingers brushed the butter knives, and she froze.

Filthy boots. Filthy hands.

Filthy knife.

She glanced over her shoulder. Her mother was occupied, slicing meticulously through a red onion.

"One sec," Calla muttered, dropping a set of silverware and a pile of napkins on the dining room table before rushing over to the front door. "I forgot something in the car. Is it unlocked?"

"Hmm-hmm," Rosalind hummed, distracted.

Calla slipped out of the front door, her stomach twisting into uneasy knots. She knew there was a chance she would be seen. But there were a hundred yards between her backyard and the apartment complex—a hundred cold, obscure yards. She doubted anyone would bother spying long enough to catch what she was up to.

Hurry, Calla. Time is ticking.

She circled the house, her sights set on the oak tree at the edge of their property. Beneath its branches, the ground was soft and wet. Her shoes sank into the earth, and a horrible certainty stole over her.

She glanced down at her sneakers. The soles were already coated with a layer of mud.

At the base of the tree, near one of the larger roots, the earth had been disturbed. It wouldn't be enough to notice. Not at a distance, anyway. But Calla knew what to look for.

A patch of leaves covered the worst of the damage. Taking care to avoid a deep patch of mud, she crouched over the plot of upturned earth and flicked aside fallen leaves. Clods of mud—thick and unappealing—lay scattered, as if someone had dug through the ground and not done a very good job of covering their tracks.

Calla closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, allowing the cool air to penetrate her lungs.

And then she began to dig.

*     *     *     *     *

Calla stared down at her hands, thinking of knives and blood.

A bead of sweat rolled down her back. She bit back a huff and shifted, trying to get comfortable. A hard task from her spot in the first row of the overcrowded church. She forced herself to stop, to focus—to sit still. She needed to channel thoughts of grief. Grief was safe. Grief was normal.

That's all it takes, she thought, casting her eyes downward, pretending to be overcome with emotion and not overcome with an oncoming heat stroke. Make them believe. You're one of them.

You. Are. Normal.

Even from a young age Calla had understood the importance of looking normal—since it soon became apparent that she wasn't. Not at all.

She still remembered her mother's worried looks when she would do something that fell into the not-so-normal category, even as young as six years old. Like that time she squeezed a puppy a little too tight—and laughed a little too hard when it squealed in pain. Or when she hit Jessica Sneider for taking her toy in kindergarten. She hadn't meant to scratch her, but when the blood welled, Calla watched on, fascinated, while Jessica cried and screamed.

Rachel had been the only little girl who wasn't afraid to play with Calla after that. And Calla quickly learned from her how to change her behavior, how to make her mother smile and laugh and forget about her daughter's dark days. She watched Rachel closely, mimicking the way she grinned, the way she laughed, the way she played. And soon Calla was grinning and laughing and playing, and the other kids warmed up to her again, no longer afraid.

Rachel had taught Calla her most important lesson: how to blend in. How to survive.

And how did Calla repay her? By breaking that simplest of lessons.

By killing her damn cousin.

Calla's mind wandered to her sock drawer. The sock drawer, of all places. It had seemed like a great idea at the time. Where better to hide a murder weapon?

The murder weapon. Calla still couldn't believe she'd found that knife, buried barely six inches in the ground under the old oak tree. She hadn't had time to analyze it. She'd barely had time to wash it off before stowing it, frantic to hide the evidence.

But she had no doubts: the knife would be a match for the missing blade from the Smith's kitchen. Which really left her with only one conclusion.

I killed Tracy Smith.

On her left, Rosalind buried a sneeze. The jolt brought Calla back to the present. She blinked. Warm bodies surrounded her, pressing in.

"And yea," the preacher boomed out from the head of the church, his gelatinous arms outreached toward the crowd, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

"Tracy didn't even like church," Rachel murmured to her right, tears catching in her throat. "She said people who went to church were sanctimonious pieces of—"

"Rachel," Patricia Smith hissed from her other side. She gripped her daughter's hand, hellfire in her hazel eyes.

"She would hate this." Rachel's chin jutted out defiantly.

She would, Calla thought, her eyes straying over to the sleek black casket, the base blanketed with a thick layer of white roses. And she'd hate those tacky white roses, too.

Calla said as much under her breath. Rachel choked back a horrified laugh.

The preacher made a few more closing remarks. Rachel held her tongue just long enough for him to bid the mourners farewell before turning back to Calla, her eyes gleaming with tears.

Yet the words that spilled out were fierce and full of loathing. "Guess who didn't show?"

Calla raised an eyebrow and twisted around, one arm braced against the back of the wooden pew. She scanned the crowd; most of the faces were familiar to her. "There's a lot of people here, Rach."

"Gareth," Rachel hissed. She pushed Calla's cheek to the right, steering her line of sight. "That pig."

Calla swallowed back a retort. Of course Gareth hadn't shown his face. The kid had been screwing Tracy behind Astrid's back since the eighth grade. The whole town knew about his indiscretions. Calla imagined he didn't relish the thought of sitting through a funeral service for his side piece.

She kept her thoughts to herself as she turned back to Rachel. "Well, yeah. He's a piece of..." Her eyes flickered over to her mother, who had stood to give Patricia a hug. "You know."

An angry tear spilled down Rachel's cheek. Before she could sweep it away—and destroy her makeup in the process—Calla reached up and dabbed at her skin with a spare tissue.

Rachel softened almost immediately. "Calla...I don't think I can do this." Her eyes darted to a spot just over Calla's shoulder. "Jess and Astrid—"

"You're the one who's grieving." Calla forced the tissue into Rachel's hand. "You don't have to talk to anyone if you don't want to. They'll understand. I can go over and explain, if you want me to."

The relief translated to more tears. Rachel gripped her in a fierce hug, her voice a whisper when she said, "Thank you."

"No problem." Calla stood and readjusted the hem of her dress. She gave her mother a one second gesture before squeezing through the crowd that had gathered around Tracy's coffin. She reappeared on the other side, unscathed. Stephanie flagged her down, standing to grab her attention.

Calla approached and allowed Stephanie to pull her into a hug. "Hey."

"This is awful. Awful." Stephanie stepped back. Jessica took her place, pulling Calla into a stiff, awkward embrace.

"Rach is upset." Calla wasted no words. "She wanted to come over, but..."

"We get it." Jessica gave Calla a superficial smile. Something in her expression made Calla think she was trying to come across as sympathetic.

Her efforts were wasted.

"We can grab coffee or something after practice one day. That'll cheer her up," Jessica went on, oblivious to the somber atmosphere hanging about the church like a wet blanket. "Ugh. But your practice runs so late, Cal Gal. I guess we can always wait," she added, as if this simple act of decency was worth any praise.

Calla gritted her teeth against the sound of Jessica's pet name for her: Cal Gal. Jessica had been playing this game with Calla since middle school. She, Stephanie, Astrid and Rachel had been on the cheer squad together for years; Calla, on the other hand, had taken to the four hundred meter dash. Shaking pom-poms simply wasn't in her nature. Chasing down her competitors, on the other hand...

It gave Calla a deadly rush.

Nevertheless, Calla's resistance against cheer had driven a wedge between her and Jessica. For reasons unknown, the other girl simply couldn't let the matter go. Every topic, no matter how inconsequential, tied back into cheer. Tied back into the fact that Calla was not of their cheer cult.

She was separate. Other.

Calla offered a warm smile. "Coffee would be great. I know she'll appreciate it."

Rachel would hate it, in fact. She would view the gesture as shallow. Let that be a problem for Jessica to fix. Far be it from Calla to let her take the fall for her own vapid stupidity.

"We could grab a coffee now," Stephanie offered, her eyes bouncing between the two girls.

"Don't be insensitive," Jessica said, aghast.

"Tracy's body is still warm," Astrid agreed, her dark skin lustrous even in the unflattering light of the church. The two girls shared a look.

Stephanie flushed and said nothing.

"See you guys later," Calla murmured, turning and disappearing back into the crowd. She wasn't sure what to make of the exchange. Stephanie's suggestion had been innocent enough.

The crowd had thinned considerably by the time Calla made it back to Rachel's side. She turned just in time to catch Jessica, Stephanie, and Astrid escaping through the front door; the sheriff's daughter and longtime boyfriend Steven Lowry were right on their heels, together with his troublemaking friend Trevor Miles.

She could practically feel their grief fall away as they stepped through those church doors. Whatever tears they'd shed, whatever lies they'd fed one another...it would all be forgotten by the time their keys were in the ignition.

Rachel wouldn't be leaving her grief here today. She'd be carrying it around for the rest of her life.

Calla was just about to turn back around when she caught sight of Vincent and Cooper loitering by the door. Vincent stared ahead, his focus elsewhere. But Cooper watched her warily, a question in his eyes.

She stared back at him. And the longer she stared, the more she began to wonder.

Does he know I killed her?

She very much doubted that. But did he suspect?

She took a step toward him. She wanted to ask what he saw when he looked at her. She wanted to ask a great many things, in truth. About the knife in the backyard. About the pictures on that camera of his. About the dead girl on the third floor.

About the skinned cat under the oak tree.

But then he turned. And just like that, he was gone.

*     *     *     *     *

One week. Three days. Twelve hours.

Somewhere in the Greenwitch Cemetery, Tracy Smith was rotting away six feet below the ground.

"How can the knife just vanish?" Rachel seethed, throwing a sweater—never worn, the tags still attached—onto the bed. It landed on Calla's left calf, a blanket of soft cashmere.

Calla kept her eyes glued to her biology textbook, refusing the urge to look at Rachel, who currently stood in her enormous closet, no doubt glaring at a rack of designer labels. Calla couldn't look. If she did, she would see those leather boots. The leather boots. The ones she'd returned the night before the funeral, freshly washed and free of grime—and now sitting in Rachel's closet, perched amongst high heels and strappy sandals. She'd left them spotless, but the damn things tormented her anyway, a silent accusation that followed her throughout the room.

"Maybe the killer was running low on steak knives," Calla deadpanned from Rachel's bed.

"Ha-ha. Funny."

"Sorry." Calla rolled over, finally tearing her eyes away from the textbook. An animal. She was supposed to be choosing which animal she wanted to dissect for her biology project with Cooper. Instead, she was stuck here in Rachel's room, listening to her friend rage at the idiocy of small town law enforcement.

As if it was their fault the killer had left behind an immaculate crime scene.

"And of course now I'm days behind in algebra." Rachel abandoned the closet and plopped down on the bed beside her. "I'm doomed."

"Since when do you do your algebra homework, anyway?" Calla flipped the page and analyzed an infographic on frog dissection.

Frogs? Boring.

"Put that away." Rachel flipped the textbook onto the floor. It landed with a dull thud.

Calla sighed. "Rachel." She rolled over and propped herself up on one hand, using the other to brush back Rachel's thick black hair. "You've got to chill. Call that freshman you know. Matthew? Matt? And tell him you've got twenty bucks and a carton of cigarettes calling his name, all for the quick and easy price of some stupid algebra homework."

Rachel slowly relaxed into the plush comforter. "He's grounded. No cell phone."

"Then find someone in our grade. That brainiac. Tyler?"

"Avoiding me like the plague."

"Why?"

She twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. "He wanted to go to the winter gala with me. Y'know, for helping me out with chemistry."

"I'm assuming 'go to the winter gala with you'," Calla made a point to draw air quotes with her fingers, "means a make out session behind the bleachers?"

"If it was just the make out session, I might have said yes," she admitted.

Calla groaned. "What is wrong with men?"

"Please. We're not dealing with men."

They shared a laugh, the weight of Tracy's death lifting from their shoulders. Rachel looked like she used to, full of laughter. Full of hope.

And then the moment was gone. Rachel settled back into the covers, staring up at the ceiling.

"Tracy would know what to do." She hesitated, as if unwilling to say anything more. Her next words were so quiet, Calla wondered if they were meant for her at all. "I'm already starting to forget what her laugh sounded like."

She didn't know what to say to that. So instead, she said nothing.

"Her laugh, Calla." Rachel turned so that Calla was forced to stare at the back of her head. "It's been a week. And the memories, they...they aren't enough to keep her here."

Calla picked at a stray thread on her jeans. She had nothing profound to add to the conversation—or at least, nothing that wouldn't sound like a confession.

She decided to keep her response simple. "I'm sorry, Rach."

"Everyone's sorry. So fucking sorry."

A few seconds passed. Rachel's thin shoulders began to shake.

I'm sorry I killed her, Calla wanted to say. I don't know why I did it. I don't even remember doing it.

She waited for a wave of guilt to crash over her, to slam into her with the force of a thousand hurricanes. Or maybe she would feel anger—at herself, for what she'd done, for the awkward, shitty situation she'd put herself in. Surely she could feel that much. Rage was one emotion that came quite easily to her.

But there was nothing. The remorse never came. Even as the urge to apologize, over and over again, lingered.

Calla scooted forward until she was close enough to wrap her arm around Rachel, her face in her hair. She inhaled the smell of strawberry shampoo.

The sobs came harder then, and far uglier. But Calla didn't move. Couldn't move.

They stayed like that for a very long time.