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She looks at me for a long moment, uncertain. She probably thinks that if it was as simple as it sounds, I shouldn’t be so upset. And maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t always been this lucky, and the memory has stained me. I can’t seem to wash it off.

Danny and Luke are both in the kitchen when I get downstairs. Luke rises and Danny, watching him, follows suit. I thought the scrapes looked better once I was out of the shower, but Luke’s face says something else entirely.

“Hey, hon.” Danny gingerly reaches out an arm to touch my good side. “Feeling better?”

“Good as new,” I tell him.

I look over to where Donna is working, trying to figure out what she needs.

“Don’t,” Luke growls.

“I can just—”

“Juliet,” he says, and his voice is commanding in a way I’ve never heard it, “sit.”

“Yes, hon,” Donna urges, “of course. Get off your feet.”

I limp toward the table and Luke walks around to my side.

“Change places with me,” he demands. Because from his seat, on the far side of the table, it would be difficult for me to jump up and down throughout dinner.

I open my mouth to argue, and his eyes darken so dangerously that I do as I’m told.

“What was the car like?” he asks.

I glance up. Even if the Allens believe the world is fair, I know the truth and I suspect Luke does too. People lie. People will save themselves first, always. I could know the make, the model, the license plate. I could ID a mole on the guy’s inner right thigh and have his skin under my nails and he’d still say it was an accident or a misunderstanding and everyone would believe him.

“It doesn’t matter. Even if I knew who they were, they’d deny everything and say I fell off my bike on my own.”

“I know that,” he says. “I just want you to tell me what you saw.”

“It was a silver car. Small. I have no idea what make. Surfboards on the roof.”

“Did you see any of them?”

I close my eyes. “I only remember the one who grabbed me.” Another stain in my memory. His eyes were so…cold. He saw me bleeding, he saw my ruined bike and ripped shirt and he was still laughing. “He had a pierced eyebrow. A tattoo on his knuckles. That’s all I remember.”

The garage door opens, signaling the pastor’s arrival. Donna frowns. “We should stop talking about this.”

Luke’s head jerks toward her. “Why’s that?”

She blinks in surprise at his tone, then swallows. “Because I think Juliet would prefer this story remain…between us.”

It takes all of us a long second to understand what she hasn’t said: that if we tell the pastor, he’ll work it into a sermon. He might even wait a few months, but then give just enough detail that no one doubts it was me. “A young girl, biking home from her job at the diner,” he will say, and the whole congregation will shift toward me, remembering those weeks when I was bruised.

Most likely, they’ll think I brought it on myself, and I don’t know why I hate them for it when I’m thinking it too. Whether it’s logical or not, it still feels that if I was a better person, it wouldn’t have happened at all.

If I was the kind of girl the Allens think I am, would my father have left? Would my brother have died? Would I need to work at a diner to save money so that I’m not homeless once I finish high school?

If I was that other, better girl, would Justin still have done what he did? Would those guys have tried to grab me?

I can’t escape the feeling I somehow brought it all on myself.

“What state?” Luke asks. “What state were the tags?”

I shake my head. The answer isn’t going to help. “California,” I reply quietly as the door opens.

The pastor looks at me, sitting on the far side of the table. I’m not even sure it’s the scrapes that catch his attention so much as it is the fact that I’m in the wrong place and not being helpful. “What’s this?”